Summary: I'm glad it was short. This is an attempt to create a commercial version of Sinek's book Start with Why. Weird b/c his seminars are already commercial. This workshop is just too corporate and misses everything I liked about the first book.
Sinek partners with a few people to write this book and it shows and it feels disjointed as a result. This might work if you are a structured person who needs to meet with others to better understand who you are and why you are doing things. He's trying to figure out how to sell this concept to a corporation that needs to have leaders agree on why. That might be good for lowercase why. It's great for managing down. But kind of mediocre for managing up.
But I think if you're a real leader, you're going to do this with a few people when you need to brainstorm and otherwise be in a room by yourself thinking about this sans whiteboard. Your job is to lead. It is not to make consensus happen. The stuff he's talking about is great if you are truly confused and you truly need to see where others stand in their motivation, which, btw, as a real leader, you ought to already have a sense for. But if you want to figure out the driving why your role is to figure it out, sell it, and figure out if it can't be sold to who you need to sell it to. That is a totally different looking thing. this ain't it.
p. 30 - "The Tribe approach is also the method you should use if you want to discover the WHY of the entire organization and the founder is no longer actively involved." Ouch. Leading by consensus seems like the worst possible way to make an organization work. You'll ended up with a very blended compromise set of goals and direction. That's the opposite of Apple. After all Jobs talks very clearly about the idea that he sets the why. He even talks in his biography about the idea that most people don't know the right why, b/c you are doing something new. OUCH OUCH OUCH.
p. 35/36 He has this statement you're supposed to fill in the blanks for
To ____ so that ____
The first one is supposed to represent "the contribution you make to the lives of others. The second blank represents the impact of your contributions."
The pendulum has really swung too far into this realm that person A is trying to help the world be better. I mean it is such drivel and egoism to think that you have the ability or right to do that for anyone. Assuming even care or believe what you're doing is good for them. We are so much more honest when we realize we live our own personal existence. Our why is our why. A company's why is their why. If you want to join, awesome. But as soon as we pretend like what we're doing is something that in and of itself is for others, we're a bit full of shit. People have to follow b/c they want to, because they believe in it, not because you've convinced them to believe in it. That's fleeting.
p. 196 - He says to come up with a group why and that not everyone will agree that this is the company why. You know, that's still crazy for me. There is a single leader at your company called the CEO. That person chooses people that align with their why. In fact, in order to get that job, you got to convince the board that your why is the right why. It is hers or his job to set the why.
If you're not that person, you can then influence that person's refinement of the why. In fact, that's part of your job. You can also decide it doesn't align with your why and make your decisions accordingly. That makes it easier for you to determine the boundaries surrounding how you're treated. But you will never get anything real done if you're doing this haphazard compromise version ascribed in this book about why (at that's even true for individual why).
Even if the CEO has not established why there is a why in their head, a why that has been tacitly communicated. If they don't have one, then that's when I company fails. You will never be able to tell if the company is in the right direction without Why. The idea that it would be set by a committee is crazy sauce.
If you make individual life choices by committee, you will also always be compromising. You'll never get to the why that matters, your why. Most unhappy people live this way. They are living their parent's why society's why their university's why. Why is the expectations that you have for yourself. It's like circular, b/c I feel like he's writing about it, but he's missed it in the execution of what to do.
p. 217, As a result of missing it he has this point he makes about the difference between happiness and fulfillment. "Happiness comes from the things we do for ourselves... Ironically, people whose why is in the service to others, rather than for themselves, are the ones who ultimately best serve themselves, because in the end, they experience the deepest fulfillment."
This is downright dangerous for young people to think. I mean, if you are weak, and you try to live other people's burdens at the same time that you're trying to strength train, you will hurt yourself. Then there is serving others to the extent you are not appreciated. This is all weird. This hasn't been thought through enough. The original book is about my why it is cool. Do you agree with my why? Awesome let's work on the why together and see if others also like the why. You're doing your thing b/c it's awesome, not b/c other people need to be served. If others are helped that's great and that comes from you just being awesome, not because you were trying to impose your awesome.
Anyway, not a fan. Too corporate.