Start With Why

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. Stay 
any later and they are taken out of a bonus pool. Because employees 
know they have to leave by 5:30 p.m., wasted time has dropped to a 
minimum. Productivity is high and turnover in low. Consider how 

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much you get done the day before you go on vacation. Now 
imagine every day is like that. That's what Dwayne Honore figured 
out how to do. Because he figured out how to mea$ sure a value he 
holds dear, that value is embraced. Most importantly, because 
Honore's actions pass the Celery Test, others can clearly see what he 
believes.
Money is a perfectly legitimate measurement of goods sold or 
services rendered. But it is no calculation of value. Just because 
somebody makes a lot of money does not mean that he necessarily 
provides a lot of value. Likewise, just because somebody makes 
little money does not necessarily mean he provides only a little 
value. Simply by measuring the number of goods sold or the money 
brought in is no indication of value. Value is a feeling, not a 
calculation. It is perception. One could argue that a product with 
more bells and whistles that sells for less is the greater value. But by 
who’s standard?
My uncle used to make tennis rackets. His rackets were made the 
exact same factory as a name-brand racket. They were made of the 
same material on the same machine. The only difference with that 
when my uncle's rackets came off the assembly line, they didn’t put 
the well-known brand logo on the product. My uncle's racked sold 
for less money, in the same big-box retailer, next to the name brand 
rackets. Month after month, the name-brand rackets outsold the 
generic-brand ones. Why? Because people perceived greater value 
from the name-brand rackets and felt just fine paying a premium for 
that feeling. On a strictly rational scale, the generic rackets offered 
better value. But again, value is a perception, not a calculation, 
which is the reason companies make such a big deal about investing 
in their brand. But a strong brand, like all other intangible factors 
that contribute to the perception of value, starts with a clear sense of 
WHY.

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START WITH WHY 
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If those outside the megaphone share your WHY and if you are 
able to clearly communicate that belief in everything you say and 
do, trust emerges and value is perceived. When that happens, loyal 
buyers will always rationalize the premium they pay or the incon-
venience they suffer to get that feeling. To them, the sacrifice of time 
or money is worth it. They will try to explain that their feeling of 
value comes from quality or features or some other easy-to- point-to 
element, but it doesn't. Those are external factors and the
 feeling
they 
get comes completely from inside them. When people can point to a 
company and clearly articulate what the company believes and use 
words unrelated to price, quality, service and features, that is proof 
the company has successfully navigated the split. When people 
describe the value they perceive with visceral, excited words like 
"love," that is a sure sign that a clear sense of WHY exists.
Good Successions Keep the WHY Alive
There were three words missing from Bill Gates's goodbye speech 
when he officially left Microsoft in June 2008. They are three words 
he probably doesn't even realize need to be there.
"I'll be back."
Though Gates abdicated his role as CEO of Microsoft to Steve 
Ballmer in 2000 to lend more time and energy to the Bill and 
Melinda Gates Foundation, he still maintained a role and a presence 
at the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. His plan 
was always to completely leave the company in the care of others, 
but like a lot of founders, Gates forgot to do one thing that would 
allow his plan to work. This one oversight could have a devastating 
impact on Microsoft and may even require him to come back 
someday to right the ship he built.
Bill Gates is special. Not just because of his brain or his 
management style. Though important, those two things alone are 

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not the formula for building a $60 billion corporation from scratch. 
Like all visionary leaders, Bill Gates is special because he embodies 
what he believes. He is the personification of Microsoft's WHY. And 
for that reason, he serves as a physical beacon, a reminder of WHY 
everyone comes to work.
When Gates founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975, he did 
so to advance a higher cause: if you give people the right tools, and 
make them more productive, then everyone, no matter their lot in 
life, will have an opportunity to achieve their real potential, "A PC 
in every home and on every desk," he envisioned; remarkable from 
a company that didn't even make PCs. He saw the PC as the great 
equalizer. Microsoft's most successful software, Windows, allowed 
anyone to have access to powerful technology. Tools like Word, 
Excel and PowerPoint gave everyone the power to realize the 
promise of the new technology—to become more efficient and 
productive. Small businesses, for example, could look and act like 
big businesses. Microsoft's software helped Gates advance his cause 
to empower the "everyman."
Make no mistake, Microsoft has done more to change the world 
than Apple. Though we are drawn to Apple's well-deserved rep-
utation for innovation and challenging the business models of more 
than one industry, it is Microsoft that was responsible for the 
advancement of the personal computer. Gates put a PC on every 
desk and in doing so he changed the world. As the physical em-
bodiment of the company's WHY, the "everyman" who fulfilled an 
amazing potential, what happens now that he's gone?
Gates himself has always held that he receives a "disproportionate" 
amount of attention for his role at Microsoft, much of it, of course, 
due to his exceptional wealth. Like all inspired leaders, he 
recognizes that his role is to lead the cause, but it is others who will 
be physically responsible for bringing that cause to life. Martin Lu-
ther King Jr. could not have changed America walking across a 

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START WITH WHY 
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bridge in Selma, Alabama, with five prominent civil rights leaders. 
It took the thousands of people marching behind them to spur 
change. Gates recognizes the need for people to produce real 
change, but he neglected to remember that any effective movement, 
social or business, needs a leader to march in the front, preaching 
the vision and reminding people WHY they showed up in the first 
place. Though King needed to cross the bridge from Selma on his 
march to Montgomery, it was what it meant to cross the bridge that 
mattered. Likewise in business, though profit and shareholder value 
are valid and essential destinations, they do not inspire people to 
come to work.
Although Microsoft went through the split years ago, changing 
from a company that intended to change the world into a company 
that makes software, having Gates hanging around helped Micro-
soft maintain at least a loose sense of WHY they existed. With Gates 
gone, Microsoft does not have sufficient systems to measure and 
preach their WHY anymore. This is an issue that will have an ex-
ponential impact as time passes.
Such a departure as Gates's is not without precedent among 
companies with equally visionary leaders. Steve Jobs, the physical 
embodiment of the rabble-rousing revolutionary, a man who also 
personifies his company's WHY, left Apple in 1985 after a legendary 
power struggle with Apple's president, John Sculley, and the Apple 
board of directors. The impact on Apple was profound.
Originally hired by Jobs in 1983, Sculley was a perfectly capable 
executive with a proven track record. He know WHAT to do and 
HOW to do things. He was considered one of the most talented 
marketing executives around, having risen quickly through the 
ranks of PepsiCo. At Pepsi, he created the wildly successful Pepsi 
Challenge taste test advertising campaign, leading Pepsi to overtake 
Coca-Cola for the first time. But the problem was, Sculley was a bad 

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fit at Apple. He ran the company as a business and was not there to 
lead the cause.
It is worth considering how such a bad fit as Sculley even got the 
job at Apple in the first place. Simple—he was manipulated. Sculley 
did not approach Jobs and ask to be a part of Apple's cause. The 
way the real story unfolded made the fallout almost predictably 
Jobs knew he needed help. He knew he needed a HOW guy to help 
him scale his vision. He approached Sculley, a man with a solid 
r£sum6, and said, "Do you want to sell sugar water your whole life 
or do you want to change the world?" Playing off Sculley's ego 
aspirations and fears, Jobs completed a perfectly executed manipu-
lation. And with it, Jobs was ousted from his own company a fen* 
years later.
Apple thrived on Steve Jobs's fumes for a few years as businesses 
started buying up Macintoshes and software developers continued 
to create new software. But it wouldn't be long until the company 
would begin to falter. Apple just wasn't what it used to be. It had 
gone through the split and ignored it. The WHY was getting fuzzier 
and fuzzier with each passing year. The inspiration was gone. 
Literally.
With a capable executive like Sculley running the business, there 
was no one to lead the cause. New products would be "less revolu-
tionary and more evolutionary," reported