i watched simon sinek’s tedtalk YEARS ago, and i liked it. it’s easy, simple, and provides food for thought. because it IS handy to remind people not to forget about their initial vision and their overarching goal while they get caught up with all the sh*t they need to get together to run a business, a household, or their own life. it’s clever to START with a functional specification of what you want to achieve rather than cook up an exact product right off the bat. BUT… his tedtalk makes for a poor, badly researched, and repetitive book. i am now also convinced that sinek’s head is very far up his own ass. if you are doubting whether to read this, just watch the tedtalk i linked above. it literally covers this entire book in 18 min so it WILL save you time (and a great amount of stupidity, too). if you want to save time by not reading my review either because it’s LONG, you are also very much in the right because much of it is just me repeating Bad Book!! like a broken record. anyhow, here we go. area businessman says it’s not an opinion, it’s biology. no, really, the golden circles of (1) why, (2) how, and (3) what are legit because they are pure biology. you see, they correspond perfectly to these three circles of the brain mr. business man just drew -- the neocortex, the limbic system, and… oh sh*t, that’s only two! but, you know, that’s why we humans respond so well to when businesses market their stuff with the WHY. because it plays directly on our emotional, ancient limbic system. it’s instinctive, you see? we don’t need no rationales for this. begone, neocortex. a note: nothing that sinek references is actual scientific research. it’s all just marketing aficionados happily throwing their theories out there (hi, malcolm gladwell) without a SHRED of evidence. local tedtalk guy has one (1) hypothesis and confirms it.
thinking about WHY, having that higher goal, that purpose, that vision -- that’s what fully attributes to businesses’ and people’s success. not time, resources, clever strategies or whatever the f*ck. tedtalk guy WILL find example upon example upon example of a business or a person that succeeded because of the wHY and the why ONLY. no other attributing factors.
(and no, tedtalk guy has not heard of the concept of falsifying.)
regional self-helper sometimes seems to play a weird game of “one is not like the others” but then insists that it is.
do i agree with regional self-help-guru that martin luther king was very inspiring? yes. but it’s very strange seeing mr. king named alongside apple, harley-davidson, and southwest airlines for being inspiring to a degree where it plays on your emotions, NOT your rational brain, and inspires loyalty through that.
… yes. i am VERY uncomfortable with putting martin luther king and his cause in a place where he just spoke to people’s ancient emotional lizard brains and thus got the loyalty of the masses. as if they were his customers.
see that, businesses?? that’s what y’all should be doing. no facts, only emotions. rally the people for your product, whether that’s computers, motorcycles or civil rights.
mr. visionary author often contradicts his own pop psych concepts by walking a very fine line between making an argument for genuine, inspiring authenticity while also advising businesses to play according to the ‘authenticity’ rules to gain revenue.
this is not me saying mr. visionary is being disingenuous, by the way. this is mostly me being confused. he comes out and says that manipulation and inspiration are two sides of the same coin, but that manipulation leads to eventual commercial ruin and inspiration will earn you the loyalty of your followers/customers (and thus more sweet, sweet dollars).
so, you gotta play the inspiration game and appeal to an idea or concept (the WHY) in order to achieve that loyalty. if you frame your usual sales pitches differently by focusing on the WHY rather than the WHAT, you’ll be using Inspiration (which at this point i feel is an 8th level spell) to con those f*ckers into following you! ha!
but you’re still genuine, remember. and authentic. ‘cause you’re INSPIRING, not MANIPULATING.
meanwhile, me in the background: ???????
anyway, i don’t know if this is purely an issue with semantics and me assigning different meanings to words than mr. author, but it happens A LOT.
he’ll say peer pressure is a manipulation tactic, and then turn around and claim that selling an IDEA / WHY to people will make them personally identify with it and want to make it a part of their identity. like the whole “hipster” vibe for apple users; people who identify and wish to belong to that lifestyle/subgroup will be more loyal to the apple brand.
but wait. if i am a hipster and all my fellow hipsters are swearing by apple products i sure as HELL will experience peer pressure of at least LOOKING into buying an apple product too when i feel a big desire to remain in the hipster group.
SO WHAT ARE WE, a manipulation tactic or an inspiration tactic??
resident business advisor (i am running out of names) doesn’t know sh*t about cultural differences, norms, and that things actually exist beyond the usa.
he argues that the usa is an individualistic culture versus france’s collectivist culture (really?? fRAnce?), he argues that we thrive in places that align with our own wants and goals and needs to a point where it feels painfully like, “don’t let yourself in with Scary Stuff that’s Different from you”, AND he says that not all immigrants are productive members of american society; only if they have an enterprising sort of mindset.
because if they have that enterprising mindset, they’ll be drawn to the great u-s-of-america, you see. and then they will thrive in this incredibly enterprising, WHY-focused country, where a 100% of the population is WHY-focused even though he just argued that they’re not ALL like this.
welcome to the home of the brave, land of the free, in which mr. resident business advisor has his head so far up his own america-centric, my-country-is-the-best-in-the-world ASS that i wonder how he was even able to pick up a pen to write this bullsh*t down.
and oh yes, there’s also a “Success Story” about an american ceo who, after 9/11, realized that the Ominous Middle-East had Problems With Terrorism because american kids wake up knowing they have opportunities in front of them, and middle-eastern kids wake up knowing they have no opportunities.
i mean, why else would they turn to terrorism??
simplifying to the max. it’s an art.
entrepreneurial pop psych loving cryptid only talks about the most successful, top-level, innovative ceos. (which are consequently almost all rich white guys, except tokens martin luther king and general lori robinson.)
talking only about the Successful one percent doesn’t have to be BAD, per se. but reading this book makes me feel as if all the regular employees of companies are a bunch of no-brain drones that can only thrive when their
like, of course -- people need time, resources, support and trust to be able to work on inventing and innovating new things or concepts. so yes, they will be more efficient and productive if they have leaders who support or nurture that sort of thing.
but there is no translation of the whole WHY concept for the regular person. there’s no appreciation for people who are passionate about what they do, bring a good idea to their management team, and get the support for it. there’s no equality in working together as a collective, as a team -- ONLY if the leader of a company MAKES it so. the employees themselves have zero power in this entire narrative.
he tries circumventing this later in the book by making the whole why+how+what into somewhat of a personality type, by claiming that leaders are why-people who need how-people and what-people behind them to make an idea work.
and i’m sitting here like, “hold the f*ck up, i thought the golden circle was a way to frame and approach business, life, and concepts, but now you’re telling me that the why-people are bad at the how and the what, so we need what-people to consistently produce the ideas of the why-people without ever contributing ideas themselves??”
somehow, this is worse. redundant pop psych telling you you’re not a leader but a hower or a whatter. whose fate is to mass produce like a drone for the rest of your life for a whyer. sinek literally says: “most people in this world are howers and will never change the world”.
sigh. i feel like i’m regressing with every sentence i write.
also, i will never EVER feel bad for a group of millionaires literally sobbing because even though they rake in money with their successful companies, they lost their WHY in life. and therefore feel the need to cry, together, during a series of business seminars. because it just HURTS so bad.
i’m just -- i’m OUT, this is it.
conclusion: Book Is Bad. and i need to stop it with the business self-help books.
if you legitimately want to know more about consumer psychology and how decision-making ACTUALLY works, i’d advise you to pick up kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. which is evidence-based, clever, and still current in this day and age.
✎ 0.0 stars.
