Kim-Peter Siefen

Start With Why

Simon Sinek

I have seen Simon Sinek giving a speech in Nordic business forum, but this was the first book I had read from Simon Sinek. Both the speech and the book talked about the golden circle but in the book it was much more in depth so I got a better understanding of it.

The golden circle got me thinking about differences between teachers and coaches/mentors(Joonas) and why it is that mentors can make you do stuff much more easily and quicker than teachers usually can. The conclusion I came to is that teachers most commonly start from “what” and follow up with “how” and ending it without telling about “why”. Then if you would ask teachers about the “why” they would either be confused, start yelling and getting angry or all at the same time. I think that this is because teachers have not really given much thought into the “why” maybe because they follow a certain curriculum.

In the other hand I thought of coaches and mentors and how they differ from normal teachers. First thing that came to my mind is that they are very successful and positive people which in my opinion is because they ask you interesting question with a solution to your “problem”. Everyone else usually tells about themselves and their business with “what” and “how” when successful people usually start with asking “why” you do that and its purpose.

So, the golden circle thought me that people with businesses usually start talking from the clearest and easiest side which is going from the “outside in” that starts from “what”, “why” and at last maybe the “why”. This gives vast amounts of complicated information about specifications without driving human behaviour in the brain. This is because most people do not know the “why”. If the person were to say “to make profit” I would consider it a false answer because it is more of a result than it is a “why”.  But when going vice versa “inside out” starting with why, things change because the conversation is going directly to the behavioural part of the brain which makes you make more wiser and quicker decisions.

This is definitely something we have not thought about enough in Bodyfied, we must start focusing more on why we do what we do and stop being about what and how we do the things that we do. Reaching out to people as well as telling other interested parties about us must be started with why from this day on.