Why Simon Sinek is fundamentally wrong about starting with “why” | Hacker News Reader

Why Simon Sinek is fundamentally wrong about starting with “why”

monkhouseandcompany.com

26 pointssimonjgreen26 comments

To summarise the author's point, he thinks that 'why' is the wrong place to start and that 'who' is the correct place to start.

Sinek argues that most companies lose their purpose and deviate from their core business (and potentially into unprofitability/inability to launch new products and services successfully) because they focus too much on 'what' they are selling or 'how' they deliver to their customers. The solution to this is to start with 'why' - having a core purpose that will drive all other aspects of your product/service and delivery.

The author of this article asserts that this leaves out a 'who' - the customers that you are selling to. He says that one needs to begin by choosing your target market and aiming all efforts tailoring the experience to them.

I think this is a bit backwards - especially when he is trying to suggest that Sinek is "fundamentally wrong". To me, it would seem that if you start off with a higher level purpose, then the 'who' will fall out of that. I want to manufacture and sell a completely open source mobile phone because I believe that all humans should have access to commodity communications devices that aren't tied to a proprietary OEM or service carrier. The 'who' from this will come out as either 'people who have an interest in open source and freedom' or 'people who want a cheap commodity device'. How do I pick between these groups to focus? I go back to my 'why' and elaborate it. I don't pick one arbitrarily (i.e. start with 'who') and then pick a raison d'etre based on that choice.

I think it's also fair to point out that Sinek seems to have a weird fascination with trying to back up his points with Bullshit science (the TED talk mentioned in the article tries to assert that his methods are correct 'because of biology' which is tenuous at best. He makes many similar claims), but overall I think the 'golden circle' of starting with a purpose is fundamentally sound and absolutely not disproved or even really contested by this article.

I think your analysis is mostly correct.

I get pretty annoyed by Sinek's schtick because the terms he picked are so ambiguous (unsurprising for people into bullshit science) that it's hard to know if there's more to his theory than obvious business bromides.

If by starting with the why, you mean starting with the purpose, I think it mostly makes sense. You have an end in mind, a vision, and from there derives a set of products (means to that end), and the target customers are going to be the people who subscribe to that vision.

Couple problems with that:

a) "Why" is also often mistakenly understood to have a causal or motivational sense: why did people start that company? Why are you doing that? Those things might have nothing to do with the purpose of the company itself, if it has any. It could just be that the founders felt like doing something.

b) The vision of the company, and what it delivers, could just as well be described as a "what" than as a "why". The functional benefits of the product are what people are buying. The products (means to the benefit) are the "how".

Basically, every term he uses can be reinterpreted differently and still make sense, which causes more confusion than clarification every time this topic is brought on the table.

I think that's fair. As a shorthand 'why' is very succinct, but is definitely ambiguous. Even expanding to 'core purpose' I feel that many companies or movements mistake having one to having a catchy mission statement or a set of 'values' which could have been procured from a PR agency but ultimately don't trace fully to product offering or even justify the ongoing existence of the entity.

Why is very popular in the design community, like the five whys [0]. But now I'm always at odds when I speak about it after listening to Richard Dawkins and other scientists say "why is a stupid question." They advise to ask, "what led to this?" And doing that has helped me reframe situations and make discoveries.

Even still, why is a great shorthand in many contexts. :)

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys

I think the author is being a tad pedantic here. You can't possibly find your "who" unless you already know your "why." In fact, they go hand in hand really.

It should also be noted that your "why" might be as easy as "because I feel like it." Take Jim Carrey for example. Did he sit around thinking "Hmm, what kind of audience will like this weird face? Maybe if I stick my teeth out this way and make this sound, I'll have found my niche."

Most of the successful businesses I've been a part of just started because someone felt called to create something, or perform some service for some reason that just sorta popped up. Others caught wind, and asked for more. Then more customers showed up, and a business was born. Rarely can you arrive in this place through pure analysis.

Just live, serve, and share with your community. Whatever your gifts are will be reflected in how you choose to move through the world.

See, that's the reason why I dislike this whole "Start with the Why" charade. The term is just too ambiguous.

The way you use it is about the motivation for the founder/company. That motivation is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to the nature and success of the company. Steve Jobs could have started Apple because he thought it was a good way to make a boatload of money. Who cares? Certainly not the customers. What causes the company to exist isn't the point.

The other way to understand the "why" is more about the purpose or meaning or even vision for the company. These are also, to a large extent, arbitrary, but they make more sense. The purpose of the company, in the broadest sense, is to offer people a worldview they may or may not subscribe to, and in which the products they sell play a justified role.

Personally, I think before "who", you need to define "where" (to). You need to paint a picture of your vision, so that people who will subscribe to it can identify with it, and hopefully with your products. It's a more vision-centric way of doing things.

"Who"-first is your run-of-the-mill "customer-centric" approach. The customer is always right, adapt to their needs and just give them what they ask for. It works to an extent, but suffers from "People would have said faster horses" problem.

> Who cares?

At a point what made Apple able to print money was that customers identified with Apple as 'caring about the same things'--shared deep values. So technically doesn't matter if Steve Jobs actually had these values--if he could convincingly pull it off anyway--but it does make it a whole lot easier if you don't have to fake it.

I don't think this required a specific vision in any product roadmap, just the belief that the product will be different, beautiful, etc made for people like 'us'.

Of course. A vision goes far beyond having a product roadmap.

Apple's vision (presumably) is about projecting a world where consumer electronics are well designed, better integrated in people's lives, beautiful, enjoyable, allow more creativity (bicycle for the mind), and so on.

Agree. I also prioritize why then usually how with what dead last. I focus on why because it helps simplify and clarify requirements.

However the who is our current customer set, which we knew already. Customer's will balk at a great why if it doesn't align with their sense of value for the money they pay.

So in fact after the first cut of why there will be refinement as business people check through as customer proxies and how much effort it takes. So why in the absolute sense is neither independent nor so superlative that it stands on its own.

Why helps with strategy and the long game (right requirements now means less labor redo later) but we will always have a primary dependence on who -- customers who assess what we do.

I remember listening to Start with Why, where the author proposes an example ad for Apple that starts with why:

> Let's look at that Apple example again and rewrite the example in the order Apple actually communicates. This time, the example starts with WHY.

> Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently.

>The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly.

> And we happen to make great computers.

> Wanna buy one?

Or, in another paragraph:

> People with Apple laptop computers, for example, love opening them up while sitting in an airport. They like that everyone knows they are using a Mac. It's an emblem, a symbol of who they are. That glowing Apple logo speaks to something about them and how they see the world. Does anyone notice when someone pops open the lid of their HP or Dell computer? No! Not even the people using the computers care.

I don't know. Maybe it's good for marketers. But for anyone who isn't interested in tribalism, groupthink or status symbols, the book is bewilderingly shallow.

Show me someone who's not interested in status symbols and I'll show you someone with very little self-awareness.

Do not disagree that the book is shallow, however.

I don't understand this whole business self-help industry at all. All this philosophizing about purpose, every time I hear someone talk about this they've started a company where you read three pages of text and you still have no idea what they're actually selling.

Just build something that's actually useful. Make a drone that uses 20% less energy and flies 20% faster than all the other ones and there's someone who'll buy it probably, why does anyone need these self-help gurus?

I can't find the link now, but there was an article link on HN about 90 days ago about that criticized allocation of money to innovation saying essentially that self help joined forces with disruption which has lead to tons of money and market growth in helping people to be entrepreneurs. He then says that in fact most of what was produced is waste, redos of existing services with no ultimate business impact. Underlying this is the apple remit of being different and having a creator or inventor role.

Funny, if the post had started with Why, I would be reading it to the end, I got lost. What was the point exactly?

Please stop using Apple as an example of anything. Not that Apple is bad, but that Apple is such an outlier in every dimension, but required excellence in more than one of those dimensions to get where it is, it isn't something that others can replicate.

I am not going to learn how to be a genius from Feynman or how to run from Usain.

Who do you think Feynman and Usain learned from?

We often can't learn from the highest performers in the field, they either have a sub-lingual understanding of their craft or there are so many competing variables to optimize that they can't teach others.

You can learn more from someone who had to toil through a subject than for someone to whom it came naturally. The journeyman with scars can transfer more skill than the master.

While it’s entirely possible someone who struggled more may be the better teacher, it’s equally possible the natural performer can be a great teacher too. Or both could equally stink at teaching. What makes someone a great teacher in my experience isn’t necessarily someone who is a natural or struggled through a subject with scars to show for it, but rather someone who is good at distilling concepts down to make them easy to understand and resonate with for the learner. That person may very well be neither of these two extremes.

Been thinking about this a long time. Sinek does nail some things but not this.

I'd rephrase it to 'start with the individual'. A huge chunk of internet businesses today sit down and look at a single individual and ask themselves - how can I make this experience better, for this person?

And then they look at the next person.

And from there they try to generalise the best possible solution, while introducing no-futz personalisation

Spotify, Netflix, iPhone, it's easy to forget that it's personalised to you until you look at someone else's.

I think lot of these analyses are post hoc woo-woo psycho-babble.

I am a 3x entrepreneur (1 failure, 1 moderate success, 1 ongoing) and IDK of anyone who got to product market fit using the "start with why" or even "start with who". As some others have pointed solving a "problem" involves looking at the who, what and why conjunctively and iterating like a demon.

Most businesses are just winging it, but stick with it and iterate furiously.My 2c.

On mobile, this site has a “Get in Touch” element floating on the middle of the right edge that blocks a little (but annoying) part of the article’s text.

A plea: Please avoid adding obstacles to the users. Things are getting harder on mobile, instead of better, in the last couple of years. Like we reached peak usability and then forgot it was one of the most important goals.

Shiny UI elements are only good if they don’t mess up the core goal of your project.

// end of rant (sorry)

Isn't that the guy who puts out all kinds of stuff on leadership but has never been a leader himself?

Pass.

Who informs nothing. Lots of companies knew who they were marketing to but went to shit because they didn’t know why.

What do you expect from a 'new age' consultant selling books and concepts to create audience?

Marketing people love to talk about marketing.

Identify a problem. Offer a solution that people are willing to pay for. The whys, whos, etc. are all wrapped up inside.

The potential upside can be derived from how many people have the problem and how much they are willing to spend to solve it.

I really liked what Simon said when I was an employee untill I started building my own business. Now his presentations look and sound annoying like arrrrrggg! Building profitable business is fucking hard,man!!! U’ve got to take care of 1000 things, you’re in a constant dog fight and if u fail u only got yourself to blame.

Unlike many commenters (I perceive), I read the whole article.

Monkhouse isn't disproving Sinek, but rather reinforced that WHY is important but the WHO should be the BullsEye within.

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