Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

The leader sitting at the top of the organization is the inspiration, the symbol of the reason we do what we do.

The good news is, it will be easy to know if a successor is carrying the right torch. Simply apply the Celery Test and see if what the company is saying and doing makes sense. Test whether WHAT they are doing effectively proves WHY they were founded. If we can’t easily assess a company’s WHY simply from looking at their products, services, marketin

Once you know WHY you do what you do, the question is HOW will you do it? HOWs are your values or principles that guide HOW to bring your cause to life. HOW we do things manifests in the systems and processes within an organization and the culture. Understanding HOW you do things and, more importantly, having the discipline to hold the organization

Just as Apple’s WHY developed during the rebellious 1960s and ’70s, the WHY for every other individual or organization comes from the past. It is born out of the upbringing and life experience of an individual or small group. Every single person has a WHY and every single organization has one too. An organization, don’t forget, is one of the WHATs,

The best HOW-types generally do not want to be out front preaching the vision; they prefer to work behind the scenes to build the systems that can make the vision a reality. It takes the combined skill and effort of both for great things to happen.

Most people in the world are HOW-types. Most people are quite functional in the real world and can do their jobs and do very well. Some may be very successful and even make millions of dollars, but they will never build billion-dollar businesses or change the world. HOW-types don’t need WHY-types to do well. But WHY-guys, for all their vision and i

In his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations, Everett M. Rogers was the first to formally describe how innovations spread through society. Thirty years later, in his book Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore expanded on Rogers’s ideas to apply the principle to high-tech product marketing. But the Law of Diffusion of Innovations explains much more than j

Analysts were stumped as to why the TiVo machines weren’t selling better. The company seemed to have everything going for it. After all, they had the recipe for success: a great-quality product, money and ideal market conditions.

Most companies have logos, but few have been able to convert those logos into meaningful symbols. Because most companies are bad at communicating what they believe, so it follows that most logos are devoid of any meaning. At best they serve as icons to identify a company and its products. A symbol cannot have any deep meaning until we know WHY it e