Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Author: Visit Amazon's Simon Sinek Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1591846447 | Format: EPUB
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Description
Review
One of the most useful and powerful books I have read in years. Simple and elegant, it shows us how leaders should lead -- William Ury, co-author of Getting to Yes A powerful and penetrating exploration of what separates great companies and great leaders from the rest -- Polly LaBarre, co-author of Mavericks at Work
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people-From members of Congress to foreign ambassadors, from small businesses to corporations like Microsoft and American Express, from Hollywood to the UN to the Pentagon. He lives in New York City.
- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Portfolio Trade; Reprint edition (December 27, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1591846447
- ISBN-13: 978-1591846444
- Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I really had to struggle with what rating to give this. Simon Sinek's idea is astoundingly insightful, very helpful, and definitely worth the price of this book let alone the Kindle price. I'm inclined to think that the world would be considerably better off if more people lived by Sinek's simple idea.
On the other hand, the book is agonizing in its redundancy, often repeating the same examples many times over to make precisely the same point as the first time the example was used. I'm inclined to think that virtually everything Sinek wrote could have been stated in a 20-page article without leaving out anything important. I daresay it might be possible to do it in five pages. That's part of the beauty of the idea: it's incredibly simple while still being astoundingly powerful. But Sinek doesn't seem to have bothered taking the time to distill the idea down into its essence for straightforward presentation in this book. It reads a little bit like he took articles from his blog, stuck them in a large word-processing document, did some minor editing, and submitted the thing as-is for publication in order to create this book.
So, the idea is worth the cost of the book and the time to read it, but the book itself is, in my humble opinion, very poorly organized and needlessly long.
I would advise those who are interested in Sinek's ideas save themselves a great deal of time and a little expense by first watching his TED Talk:
[...]
This covers virtually all the core ideas involved. The one thing Sinek never does either in this presentation or in his book is spell out what "HOW" is. It's a bit confusing in large part because it's different for each of the two communication structures.
Simon Sinek's "Start With Why" is a must read for any entrepreneur or leader struggling to create a long-term vision and guiding principles for their company or cause. The book can provide just the inspiration needed to get started in the right direction. You'll learn that the most important thing you can do as a leader is to figure out why your company or organization exists and why that should be meaningful to customers and others in society. Once the answer to this becomes clear and you believe it in your heart, the rest of the decisions about what to do and sell and how to do it become infinitely easier.
For those faced with competition, price-war and customer churn, Sinek's book can provide great insights for developing a new long-term strategy to combat these issues once-and-for-all. Sinek explains that while your product's features may be replicated and commoditized, no one can copy the kinship and confidence that your customers feel when doing business with you. This is because those feelings come from intangible values and beliefs that only you share with your customers.
How does one create such kinship with customers? The book explains the Golden Circle concept, which shows business leaders how to inspire instead of manipulating customers or employees to act. Sinek explains that trust is built naturally when you target customers that understand and believe in your WHY. So, if getting repeat and word-of-mouth business is important to you, then use inspiration, not manipulation to get the sale. Also, when business leaders properly articulate their company's WHY to employees, it makes it easier for the employees to believe in what they are selling. When sales reps sound authentic, it builds trust and loyalty with customers. It all starts with WHY.
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