Additional authors: David Mead and Peter Docker
Subtitled: A practical guide for discovering your purpose for you and your team
This book is basically the next step for those who’ve read Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why. The authors provide a quick overview of Sinek’s framework for why ‘why’ is so important, then they get into the nitty gritty for finding our why. They lay out very specific instructions including steps and scripts.
I’ll also start my takeaway with a brief overview of Sinek’s framework before getting into my thoughts on this book.
Sinek states we (as individuals and as organizations) operate from a “golden circle” – which is made up of three nested circles. The outer circle is our ‘what’, the next inner circle is our ‘how’ and the core circle is our ‘why’. Knowing our why is what gets us up in the mornings, drives us through challenges, and builds loyalty as it gives potential and existing customers something to connect to.
That’s a really basic description of the golden circle and why why is so important.
For the past 5 or 6 years I’ve been deeply curious about purpose and meaning, especially as it relates to our work and career, so I’ve certainly been intrigued by Sinek’s approach.
Every few years I bring out this book as a way to check in on my own ‘why’ and explore this approach with fresh eyes. Unfortunately, in all the times I’ve given this a go, I’ve never felt like this approach got me to my why. It might very well work for you though – there are a lot of people and organizations who pay big money to go through this, so it definitely gets results at least at some level.
So what is their approach? It’s basically using experiences from our past to tease out themes which run through our life. These themes and experiences help us identify what’s meaningful to us across the wide arc of our lives and the lives of our organization.
Certainly, there are more nuances to the process than described here, but the basic approach? Gather stories which are important then look for threads and themes through them, which lead to discovering your why.
I think part of the trouble with this approach is that it leans very heavily on the identifying of those threads and themes. They recommend having a facilitator as a way to help identify those, both for individuals looking to discover their why, and for organizations. And maybe that’s where my attempts at this approach fall short – maybe my helper wasn’t up to par?
I don’t think it needs to be that hard to find our why – at least a ‘why’ that gets us going. Craving that why – not knowing our purpose but wanting to – can feel so frustrating. How can we make it easier for people to feel like they’ve at least got something to lean towards without having to go through this intimidating process?
If you’d like to hear my approach for finding purpose, send me a message or book a call to chat about it. I’d be happy to share that with you!
