Start with Why

WHY are some managers and organizations more innovative and successful than others? How can they repeat the success over and over again? That’s because it’s not about WHAT you do, but WHY you do it. In its own simple way, the book shows us how true leaders create loyal companionship. As a project manager you are the tool, it matters WHY you do what you do.

Full description

Start with Why. How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. This also applies to project managers. In this bestseller Simon Sinek presents the idea that great leaders inspire others by putting the Why (the purpose) before the How (the process), or the What (the product). In our projects we know it as the purpose or the desired impact (WHY), the plan (HOW) and the deliverables (WHAT).

Start with Why created waves of discussion and change around our office.  We love this book.

In summary, we recommend Start with Why to everyone because Sinek’s revolutionary philosophy on leadership can easily be used in any professional and personal situation that calls for inspiration and influence.

 As a project manager, the book gives inspiration to:

  • WHY does your project exist? (Not deliverables, they are just a means to the desired impact)
  • WHY should stakeholders and project participants care?
  • To motivate action, you can manipulate or inspire. Manipulation is short-sighted and costs, inspiration is free and persistent
  • Inspiring people require a real purpose, a WHY
  • A clearly expressed WHY makes your project distinct from the rest and tells WHY it is so important for the organization
  • Humans want to belong to communities and culture
  • Be authentic. Know your WHY and align decisions, actions and communication with the WHY

“It is not logic or facts but our hopes and dreams, our hearts and our guts, that drive us to try new things” Simon Sinek

 

Book: Start with Why

Author: Simon Sinek

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, Paperback 2011, Language: English, 256 pages, ISBN-13 9781591846444

 

quote

"Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus."

- Margaret Thatcher

Who is airborn leadership?

As a project manager I have always lacked a platform where I could click in and get inspiration, relevant knowledge and concrete tools, regardless of time and place. A wireless toolbox where knowledge came to me through the air. A help that could give me a much needed boost in my current challenge.

You have never been more important as a project manager. Projects are the engine in developing a better business, new products, improvements in society and the global transformation to sustainable energy and production. Your leadership is therefore crucial. As a leader and project manager, you are the tool that creates the results.

I hope airborn leadership can be your gateway to knowledge within project management, no matter what journey you are on.

John Ryding Olsson Founder & author
John Ryding Olsson Founder & author John Ryding Olsson

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