Start With Why (22 page)

Our flag is infused with so much meaning that some have tried to pass laws banning its desecration. It’s not the material out of which the flag is sewn that these patriots aim to protect. The laws they propose have nothing to do with the destruction of property. Their goal is to protect the meaning the symbol represents: the WHY. The laws they drafted tried to protect the intangible set of values and beliefs by protecting the symbol of those values and beliefs. Though the laws have been struck down by the Supreme Court, they have spurred contentious and emotionally charged debates. They pit our desire for freedom of expression with our desire to protect a symbol of that freedom.

Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, knew all too well the power of symbols. In 1982, he was the first president to invite a “hero” to sit in the balcony of the House chamber during the State of the Union address, a tradition that has continued every year since. A man who exuded optimism, Reagan knew the value of symbolizing the values of America instead of just talking about them. His guest, who sat with the First Lady, was Lenny Skutnik, a government employee who had dived into the icy Potomac just days before to save a woman who had fallen from a helicopter that was attempting to rescue her after an Air Florida plane crashed into the river. Reagan was trying to make a point, that words are hollow, but deeds and values are deep. After he told Skutnik’s story he waxed, “Don’t let anyone tell you that America’s best days are behind her, that the American spirit has been vanquished. We’ve seen it triumph too often in our lives to stop believing in it now.” Skutnik became Reagan’s symbol of courage.

Most companies have logos, but few have been able to convert those logos into meaningful symbols. Because most companies are bad at communicating what they believe, so it follows that most logos are devoid of any meaning. At best they serve as icons to identify a company and its products. A symbol cannot have any deep meaning until we know WHY it exists in terms bigger than simply to identify the company. Without clarity of WHY, a logo is just a logo.

To say that a logo stands for quality, service, innovation and the like only reinforces its status as just a logo. These qualities are about the company and not about the cause. Don’t forget the dictators. They understand the power of symbols, except the symbols are often of them. Likewise, so many companies act like dictators—it’s all about them and what they want. They tell us what to do, they tell us what we need, they tell us they have the answers but they do not inspire us and they do not command our loyalty. And to take the analogy a step further, the way dictators maintain their power is through fear, reward and every other manipulation they can think of. People follow dictators not because they want to, but because they have to. For companies to be perceived as a great leaders and not dictators, all their symbols, including their logos, need to stand for something in which we can all believe. Something we can all support. That takes clarity, discipline and consistency.

For a logo to become a symbol, people must be inspired to use that logo to say something about who they are. Couture fashion labels are the most obvious example of this. People use them to demonstrate status. But many of them are somewhat generic in what they symbolize. There is a more profound example: Harley-Davidson.

There are people who walk around with Harley-Davidson tattoos on their bodies. That’s insane. They’ve tattooed a corporate logo on their skin. Some of them don’t even own the product! Why would rational people tattoo a corporate logo on their bodies? The reason is simple. After years of Harley being crystal clear about what they believe, after years of being disciplined about a set of values and guiding principles and after years of being doggedly consistent about everything they say and do, their logo has become a symbol. It no longer simply identifies a company and its products; it identifies a belief.

In truth, most people who tattoo Harley-Davidson logos on their bodies have no idea what the stock price of Harley is. They have no idea about some management shake-up the week before. That symbol is no longer about Harley. The logo embodies an entire value set—their own. The symbol is no longer about Harley, it’s about them. Randy Fowler, a former U.S. Marine and now general manager of a Harley-Davidson dealership in California, proudly sports a large Harley tattoo on his left arm. “It symbolizes who I am,” he says. “Mostly, it says I’m an American.” Customer and company are now one and the same. The meaning of Harley-Davidson has value in people’s lives because, for those who believe in Harley’s WHY, it helps them express the meaning of their own lives.

Because of Harley’s clarity, discipline and consistency, most will know what that symbol means, even if you don’t subscribe to it yourself. That’s the reason why when someone walks into a bar with a big Harley logo on his arm we take a step back and give him a wide berth. The symbol has become so meaningful, in fact, that 12 percent of Harley-Davidson revenues are strictly from merchandising. That’s remarkable.

It’s not just logos, however, that can serve as symbols. Symbols are any tangible representation of a clear set of values and beliefs. An ink-stained finger for Iraqis was a symbol of a new beginning. A London double-decker bus or a cowboy hat—both are symbols of national cultures. But national symbols are easy because most nations have a clear sense of culture that has been reinforced and repeated for generations. It is not a company or organization that decides what, it symbols mean, it is the group outside the megaphone, in the chaotic marketplace, who decide. If, based on the things they see and hear, the outsiders can clearly and consistently report what an organization believes, then, and only then, can a symbol start to take on meaning. It is the truest test of how effective a megaphone has been produced—when clarity is able to filter all the way through the organization and come to life in everything that comes out of it.

Go back to Apple’s “1984” commercial at the beginning of chapter 9. For those who have seen it, does it make you think about Apple and its products or do you simply like the sentiment? Or the line “Think Different,” does it speak to you?

If you’re a Mac customer, you probably loved this commercial; it may even give you goose bumps when you watch it—a surefire test that the WHY is connecting with you on a visceral or limbic level. In fact, this commercial, after you learned it was from Apple, may have reinforced your decision to buy a Mac, whether for the first time or the tenth time. This commercial, like all Apple’s advertising, is one of the things Apple has said or done that reinforces what they believe. It is every bit consistent with the clear belief we know they embody. And if the commercial speaks to you and you’re not an Apple lover, odds are you still like the idea of thinking differently. The message of that ad is one of the things Apple does to tell their story. It is one of the WHATs to their WHY. It is a symbol. It is for these reasons that we say of a piece of advertising, “It really speaks to me.” It’s not really speaking to you, it’s speaking to the millions of people who saw the ad. When we say that something like that “speaks to me,” what we’re really saying is, through all this clutter and noise, I can hear that. I can hear it and I will listen. This is what it means for a message that comes out of the megaphone to resonate.

Everything that comes out of the base of the megaphone serves as a way for an organization to articulate what it believes. What a company says and does are the means by which the company speaks. Too many companies put a disproportionate amount of weight on their products or services simply because those are the things that bring in the money. But there are many more things at the base of the megaphone that play an equal role in speaking to the outside world. Though products may drive sales, they alone cannot create loyalty. In fact, a company can create loyalty among people who aren’t even customers. I spoke favorably of Apple long before I bought one. And I spoke disparagingly of a certain PC brand even though I’d been buying their products for years.

Apple’s clarity, discipline and consistency—their ability to build a megaphone, not a company, that is clear and loud—is what has given them the ability to command such loyalty. They are accused of having a cultlike following. Those inside the company are often accused of following the “cult of Steve.” All of these compliments or insults are indications that others have taken on the cause and made it their own. That experts describe their products and marketing as a “lifestyle” reinforces that people who love Apple products are using WHAT Apple does to demonstrate their own personal identity. We call it “lifestyle marketing” because people have integrated commercial products into the style of their lives. Apple, with great efficiency, built a perfectly clear megaphone, leveraged the Law of Diffusion and invited others to help spread the gospel. Not for the company, for themselves.

Even their promotions and partnerships serve as tangible proof of what they believe. In 2003 and 2004, Apple ran a promotion for iTunes with Pepsi—the cola branded as “the choice of the next generation.” It made sense that Apple would do a deal with Pepsi, the primary challenger to Coca-Cola, the status quo. Everything Apple does, everything they say and do, serves as tangible proof of what they believe. The reason I use Apple so extensively throughout this book is that Apple is so disciplined in HOW they do things and so consistent in WHAT they do that, love them or hate them, we all have a sense of their WHY. We know what they believe.

Most of us didn’t read books about them. We don’t personally know Steve Jobs. We haven’t spent time roaming the halls of Apple’s headquarters to get to know their culture. The clarity we have for what Apple believes comes from one place and one place only: Apple. People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, and Apple says and does only the things they believe. If WHAT you do doesn’t prove what you believe, then no one will know what your WHY is and you’ll be forced to compete on price, service, quality, features and benefits; the stuff of commodities. Apple has a clear and loud megaphone and is exceptionally good at communicating its story.

In order to improve HOW and WHAT we do, we constantly look to what others are doing. We attend conferences, read books, talk to friends and colleagues to get their input and advice, and sometimes we are also the dispensers of advice. We are in pursuit of understanding the best practices of others to help guide us. But it is a flawed assumption that what works for one organization will work for another. Even if the industries, sizes and market conditions are the same, the notion that “if it’s good for them, it’s good for us” is simply not true.

I know of a company with an amazing culture. When asked, the employees say they love that all the conference rooms have ping-pong tables in them. Does that mean that if you were to put ping-pong tables in all your conference rooms your culture would improve? Of course not. But this is an example of “best practices.” The idea that copying WHAT or HOW things are done at high-performing organizations will inherently work for you is just not true. Like the Ferrari and the Honda, what is good for one company is not necessarily good for another. Put simply, best practices are not always best.

It is not just WHAT or HOW you do things that matters; what matters more is that WHAT and HOW you do things is consistent with your WHY. Only then will your practices indeed be best. There is nothing inherently wrong with looking to others to learn what they do, the challenge is knowing what practices or advice to follow. Fortunately, there is a simple test you can apply to find out exactly WHAT and HOW is right for you. It’s a simple metaphor called the Celery Test.

Imagine you go to a dinner party and somebody comes up to you and says, “You know what you need in your organization? M&M’s. If you’re not using M&M’s in your business, you’re leaving money on the table.”

Somebody else comes up to you and says, “You know what you need? Rice milk. The data shows that all the people are buying rice milk these days. You should be selling rice milk in this economy.”

While you’re standing over the punch bowl, yet another person offers some sage advice. “Oreo cookies,” he says. “We made millions from implementing Oreo cookies in our organization. You’ve got to do it.”

Still somebody else comes up to you and says, “Celery. You’ve got to get into celery.”

You get all this great advice from all these highly accomplished people. Some of them are in the same industry. Some of them are more successful than you. Some of them have offered similar advice to others with great success. Now, what do you do?

You go to the supermarket and you buy celery, rice milk, Oreos and M&M’s. You spend a lot of time at the supermarket walking the aisles. You spend a lot of money because you buy everything. But you may or may not get any value from some or all of these products; there are no guarantees. Worse, if you’re budget-constrained, you had to whittle down your choices again. And then which do you choose?

But one thing’s for sure: when you’re standing in line at the supermarket with all of these items in your arms, your celery, rice milk, Oreos and M&Ms, nobody can see what you believe. What you do is supposed serve as the tangible proof of what you believe, and you bought everything.

But what if you knew your WHY before you went to the supermarket? What if your WHY is to do only things that are healthy? To always do the things that are good for your body? You’ll get all the same good advice from all the same people, the only difference is, the next time you go to the supermarket, you’ll buy only rice milk and celery. Those are the only products that make sense. It’s not that the other advice isn’t good advice, it’s just not good for you. The advice doesn’t fit.

Filtering your decisions through your WHY, you spend less time at the supermarket and you spend less money, so there’s an efficiency advantage also. You’re guaranteed to get value out of all the products you bought. And, most importantly, when you’re standing in line with your products in your arms, everybody can see what you believe. With only celery and rice milk it’s obvious to people walking by what you believe. “I can
see
that you believe in looking after your health,” they may say to you. “I feel the same way. I have a question for you.” Congratulations. You just attracted a customer, an employee, a partner or a referral simply by making the right decisions. Simply ensuring that WHAT you do proves what you believe makes it easy for those who believe what you believe to find you. You have successfully communicated your WHY based on WHAT you do.