Book: 20200724 to 20200811, "Start With Why" by Sinek, Simon

20200724 - Introduction: Why start with why?

Martin Luther King. How many angles are there that we can observe his speech? "Power of Habit", "The Crowd", "Start With Why", etc.

Inspiration. Common imagination.

"Sapiens" says that everything human own and do, is based on common imagination. Inspiration is about how to create long last common imagination. Then people are motivated to achieve incredible result.

"Why" is the beginning to create this common imagination.

Part 1: A world that doesn't start with why

20200725 - 1. Assume you know

Asking why from the very beginning to avoid unnecessary trouble in the future.

It's definitely "first principle".

I think this book is great, which will be another 10 point book!

20200726 - 2. Carrots and sticks

Manipulation works. But it's the easy fix, not the correct fix.

Easy fix brings us short term benefit, but cause long term trouble.

Correct fix is hard. It takes more time and more resource in short term, but, eventually it leads to success.

This is how I do my work. Like what <The four hour work week> says, automating our work is the right solution. But, to build a automated system is hard. It needs good skill and deep understanding about the business requirements. Once it's done, one hour work per day is possible.

Part 2: An alternative perspective

20200727 - 3. The golden circle

"What, how, why". or, "Why, how, what".

This is the reason that all those giant companies fell apart.

They put too much attention on existing products, and don't want to give up the stable profit, until been crashed by other new companies.

Products itself is not the goal. They are the method to reach the goal.

The goal should be specific, and can be easily fused into the products and services.

When we do our work aiming for "why", we focus on long term benefit. The "why" reminds us not to get distracted by short term benefit.

20200728 - 4. This is not opinion, this is biology

Actually, it's not biology but psychology.

Products/services need to meet client's psychological need, let the clients made decision by their fast thinking. Fast thinking is more about emotion, it is more about the desire in our deep heart.

Functionalities and price are important, but if two products have similar functionalities and price, it's psychology let the user make decision.

Unfortunately, this is still about manipulation to me. A higher level of manipulation.

"First Principle" is a better guide, I believe.

iTune and App Store is not psychological manipulation. They belongs to First Principle.

20200730 - 5. Clarity, discipline, and consistency

There is no difference between sales and dating.

So true. First Principle itself is not enough, because other competitors can always copy what we do.

We have to set up loyal relationship. To do that, the company needs to show real care about their clients.

Not every client worth a company's products/services. Just like not every product/service worth us to purchase it. 20/80 rule tells us that we should always pay attention to 20% of the clients, which can bring us 80% of long term profit.

Part 3: Leaders need a following

20200803 - 6. The emergence of trust

Gorden Bethune gave half of the cost saving to all the employees of Continental Airlines. Why half? Why not 30% or even 10%? I think he wanted to tell the employees: You are important. You are as important as our shareholders.

"We measured things the employees could truly control. We made the stakes something the employees would win or lose on together, not separately." ------  Gorden Bethune.

When every employee knows where to go, and if every employee can contribute, the company gets tremendous power and progress.

The slogans of Uniting are: "Better Together." "Synergy through diversity." "Be yourself."

Sounds good, but they are not practical. I think these are absolutely correct nonsense, which are useless. What does "be yourself" mean anyway?

The slogan of Apple Inc. ? "Think different."

Not easy to apply to daily work, but at least encourage everyone to try bold changes.

The one of Tesla? "To accelerate the advent of sustainable transport."

This one is very clear and specific. Every employee knows what to do to push for it: optimize procedure to cut cost, improve quality and produce more products.

How to hire the people who fit with minimum effort? Ideally, only encourage the people who fit apply for the job. The salary should not be too high, and the work content itself should be part of the incentives. Even challenges could be part of the incentives.

In the end, trust is the source of productivity (to employees) and influence (to customers).

As a employee, how do I know that if I make the cake becoming bigger, then I can get a bigger share of the cake?

As a customer, how do I know the slogan of a company is the real belief of this company?

[20220413] To build great (millitary) team, we need all team members to understand "why", not just "how". This is where "trust" come from.

20200804 - 7. How a tipping point tips

What is the "why"? Common imagination. Shared intuition.

If this "why" reflects the reality, then more and more people will follow.

Dr Matin Luther King seeded "dream" into people's mind, Moses seeded "happy life" into people's mind, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk did same thing.

Adolf Hitler also did that, and he succeeded for a while. But even if he defeated America and Soviet Union, the ending is not going to be good.

TiVo TV set? Maybe. It's more like a special version of TV which has built-in video recorder. But separate video recorder is much more powerful: it can play third-party video tape, and that is the main purpose that people buy it.

How about satellite radio or the Bible? No. They don't reflect the reality. Satellite radio is not better than normal radio in urban area. Bible describes a world that we cannot verify, so it's just illusion.

Part 4: How to rally those who believe

20200807 - 8. Start with why, but know how

This chapter reminds me with "Theranos". Elizabeth Holmes has perfect "why", which attracted a lot of people working for it. But in the end, it's a complete failure.

"Why" itself has to be feasible, it needs to be an alternative approach to implement a goal.

With the same "why", a lot of "what" can be done in different industries.

Another point is about megaphone. In my opinion, megaphone relies on luck and many years of hard work. Or else, not many people would listen to you, no matter how brilliant your "why" is.

Maybe this explains the rise of twitter. With the help of twitter, someone nobody knows may let millions of people to be affected by his/her "why", such as "Back Lives Matter". However, there is no "how" to support it, which decides that no "what" will appear. More likely, bad things may happen because everyone have different understanding about BLM, and everyone do different thing for BLM without deep thinking.

What is reality? There is always a better way to improve it. It's always different from what we perceived.

20200807 - 9. Know why. Know how. Then what?

It's not easy to transform "why" to "how", then to "what". Especially from the company to the market, even to early adopters.

There are so many thing in this world waiting us to improve, but which one should we pick up with? How do we do that?

First Principle pop up again. We need to understand the world correctly to make the right choice.

20200808 - 10. Communication is not about speaking, it's about listening

WHY is not just about a company. It could be our personal ultimate goal. That's why it could be so persuasive. It created an illusion: if buy this product or service, we are one step closer to our ultimate goal!

Of course that's not real. We are still same, no matter what we purchased.

WHY should be the highest criterion to decide HOW and WHAT. Then we will not sacrifice long term benefit for short term benefit, at least let us break the rule rarely.

Part 5: The biggest challenge is success

20200808 - 11. When why goes fuzzy

Why Walmart is falling? Because it's a family business. It's not likely that the family members are as talented as the best of best from the rest of the world.

Achievement doesn't mean success.

How to be success and happy as individual? Body, spirit, mind, all needs to be in good status. Here, SPIRIT is the key.

What is our ultimate goal? What is my ultimate goal?

20200810 - 12. Split happens

WHY actually means long term goal, and WHAT means short term goal.

When did the split happen? When the priority of WHAT is higher than WHY.

Apart from what the author suggests, another possible cause of this split is, when the WHY is completed.

For Tesla, Master Plan is just HOW. And, because their WHY is so faraway it may take at least 30 years.

For SpaceX, the WHY may take 300 years.

What is compound rate? Let the time stands by our side.

Part 6: Discover why

20200811 - 13. The origins of a why

Warren Buffett has the famous rule of 5/20 goals. The "5" stands for WHY(long term goal), and the rest 15 stands for distraction.

But most of people/companies are always struggling for survive. How can they give up short term profit? WHY itself is not enough. Imminent success/profit is a must from the first year.

Tesla make their patents open to anyone. That's consistent to their WHY: "To accelerate the advent of sustainable transport."

What if Elon Musk didn't do that? Tesla can surely make more money, and Tesla will lose the trust from their employees and their customers. Does it worth it?

Tesla has amazing pace at creativity and productivity. How much of that come from the trust? How long can Tesla go along that way?

Money is important, but money is not value. Which one is more important? Of course value.

What should I do now?

20200811 - 14. The new competition

This book is not really a "guide". It's actually summary.

Summary is important, but we cannot get direct help from it in building successful companies.

WHY is not just for companies, but is also for individuals. It fulfill our lives, and then set up the trust among people, in an organization or not.

When we trust each other, the productivity will soar!