How great leaders inspire action

Building the right company culture and setting a mission everyone is behind is a prerequisite for success. Easy to say, much harder to do.

Simon Sinek, in his Ted lecture, articulates much of why this matters and how it can be done. There’s some good material in here and it can be useful for resetting the way you position your company or product. It’s a good piece to share with your own team, if nothing more than to get everyone thinking in a different way. Sinek uses a simple model for explaining why companies like Apple get it right and most other fall short – it might explain why Apple’s market cap has just over taken Microsoft’s .

Sinek, explains that your average everyday Joe would describe Apple’s business in the following:

• “We make great computers. They’re beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to buy one?”

Mr. Jobs, on the other hand, would describe it more like this:

• “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. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?”

Herein lays the answer…

If you have another 15 minutes handy, a great lead-on from from the Sinek video is Steve Job’s Commencement Speech given at Stanford in 2005. Again, a good starting point if you are looking for a culture tweak or you want to build some clarity around your mission.