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

Passion comes from feeling like you are a part of something that you believe in, something bigger than yourself. If people do not trust that a company is organized to advance the WHY, then the passion is diluted.

A company, indeed any organization, must work actively to remind everyone WHY the company exists. WHY it was founded in the first place. What it believes. They need to hold everyone in the company accountable to the values and guiding principles. It’s not enough to just write them on the wall—that’s passive. Bonuses and incentives must revolve arou

efforts and behaviors that support, benefit and protect the long-term interest of the organization as a whole.

Great organizations become great because the people inside the organization feel protected. The strong sense of culture creates a sense of belonging and acts like a net. People come to work knowing that their bosses, colleagues and the organization as a whole will look out for them. This results in reciprocal behavior. Individual decisions,

If there were no trust, then no one would take risks. No risks would mean no exploration, no experimentation and no advancement of the society as a whole. That’s a remarkable concept: only when individuals can trust the culture or organization will they take personal risks in order to advance that culture or organization as a whole. For no other re

more than their job.

If the people inside a company are told to come to work and just do their job, that’s all they will do. If they are constantly reminded WHY the company was founded and told to always look for ways to bring that cause to life while performing their job, however, then they will do

Average companies give their people something to work on. In contrast, the most innovative organizations give their people something to work toward.

Companies with a strong sense of WHY are able to inspire their employees. Those employees are more productive and innovative, and the feeling they bring to work attracts other people eager to work there as well. It’s not such a stretch to see why the companies that we love to do business with are also the best employers. When people inside the comp