A lesson from Simon Sinek

 

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I was recently introduced to a very smart man, a man by the name of Simon Sinek. Simon is considered to be a leadership expert and has a theory entitled the Golden Circle, which is the subject of his TED Talk. A video I encourage everyone to watch.

His idea of the golden circle stands on the belief that most brands, corporations, and even people don’t know why they do what they do. Let me explain. According to Sinek, the golden circle is divided in to three smaller circles: the why, the how and the what. Most corporations work from the outside in, first the what, then the how, and most don’t even know the why. 

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He uses this to explain how companies such as Apple are so successful. “The Why: Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently; The How: We make products that are beautifully designed and user friendly; The What: We just happen to make computers. Wanna buy one?” This is how he defines Apple’s success, through their ability to work from the inside out.

To give you another example, I chose a different brand that Simon does not mention. This brand operates in a completely different field and is equally successful. This brand is called Marvel. Marvel first started as a comic book publisher back in 1939, under the name of Timely Comics. Through a lot of hard work, and the help of a man called Stan Lee, Marvel has become not only the biggest name in comic book history, but also one of the largest and most successful movie studios in the world. Let us put Marvel in Simon’s Golden Circle:

The Why – Marvel believes in defying the laws of reality and making people’s lives better.

The How – They create stories and characters that allow us to live in those fantastic worlds.

The What – They make comic books, television shows, and movies.

I am a big Marvel fan, and I am one because I buy why they do what they do, not what they do. I have been a fan since I was a kid, and their ability to keep me a fan more than 20 years later, is remarkable.

Simon also talks about a different concept in this TED Talk, something called the Law of Diffusion of Innovation.

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People sit in different parts of the curve based on different purchases. We have innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. For example, I can fall in the early majority given a purchase I made 8 months ago. The purchase was an Apple TV. I certainly was not one of the first ones to buy it, I waited a while to buy it. My reasons were simple, I did not buy it before moving to the US because it does not work as well in Portugal. As soon as I moved here, I bought one within the first week. I believe I’m the early majority category simply because I was not one of the first to buy it, and I definitely wanted someone (early adopters) to try it first and see how it works. I’m not in the late majority because the Apple TV has not yet reached that level of market penetration, unlike the iPod, iPhone or iPad.

I also bought an iPhone 5s, and I bought it within the first month it was released. I can be considered an early adopter for this purchase. Why an early adopter? Well, I was not one of the innovators that were there the night before, waiting in the rain for 8 hours to buy a phone, but I certainly new I wanted one I therefor was in the second category of people who bought it.

One last example, and this one refers to what I talked about in the golden circle. Marvel. Everything Marvel does I’ll be in that first category, the innovators. Marvel released four movies this year, CaptainAmerica: The Winter Soldier, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of FuturePast and Guardians of the Galaxy. For all of them I was in theaters the first weekend they released. That’s how devoted I am, and will continue to be since Marvel has the calendar full until 2019.