This dialogue intensifies as we scrutinize the pursuit of being "the best in the world," questioning whether this accolade truly holds value or merely distracts from a deeper calling within the corporate realm. Engage with us as we contemplate the ephemeral nature of such a title and the ramifications that follow its loss. This episode promises to offer a fresh lens through which to view business strategy and leadership, challenging you to rethink what truly drives long-term success.
This dialogue intensifies as we scrutinize the pursuit of being "the best in the world," questioning whether this accolade truly holds value or merely distracts from a deeper calling within the corporate realm. Engage with us as we contemplate the ephemeral nature of such a title and the ramifications that follow its loss. This episode promises to offer a fresh lens through which to view business strategy and leadership, challenging you to rethink what truly drives long-term success.
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Speaker 1:
I this is on reaching leadership and I'm your host, travis Moss, and we are covering some arguments against Simon's work. I went out into the internet and I found three different. I mean, I found a lot of different arguments against his work, but I took three of the first ones that I found and I said why are people squawking about Simon's work being irrelevant? And what I've done is I've taken those three. We've got three episodes, this being the second one. I've left out the authors, but I'm taking some of their work and we're talking about that. We're trying to get some lessons out of that and we're trying to set ourselves up so that, as we get into the material we played a little bit devil's advocate we get some space in our brain for how this stuff might fit in a little bit. So a consultant's website why Simon Sinek is fundamentally wrong. I read the entire thing that this guy's got on this homepage and this whole long Explanation of how he views Business and business consulting and I can't actually say that he's trying to do it like a shake down assignment as much as he's trying to say he knows more than Simon, he's better than Simon and he actually introduces Jim Collins's work and he says well, jim Collins, you know, is smarter than Simon, and you could probably make the same arguments with Jim Collins's work, and I really like Jim Collins's work. So I thought it'd be very interesting to kind of pick it through this a little bit. And so the first quote from his work is to my mind, this proves that you can't have a why unless you know who your why will appeal to. Well, unless your why is the who, you can identify anybody that you like. I Want to work with rich people, I want to help homeless people. Good for you. Why. Every business consultant, business guru, manager that I've ever had whatever, has Always said go find a niche and specialize in that.
Speaker 1:
Next, you know, one of the problems with that is you're looking at who first. You're saying, oh, I want to work with rich people, or I want to work with, you know, female engineers or whatever you're trying to target. You're trying to target a person before you actually know, before you have some kind of genuine Interested cause. You actually have genuine interest in that. You're looking for the person first and then you're saying, okay, now, what do they need that I can sell them? It's kind of a backwards way of thinking, because business is a long marathon. Unless you're looking for I mean you could be looking for I'm gonna be in business for the next five years, I'm gonna file this fat, I'm gonna make a lot of money that I'm gonna close it down, fine, you can do that. But if you're looking at saying I want to build business, I want it to scale, I want it to be a long-standing thing, whatever that's really, this is a. This is a bad way to start. It's a bad way to start to just say, okay, who can I sell stuff to? And then try to figure out with me, because you're gonna have a lot of hard times. You're there, you're gonna have a lot of challenges and when you are not passionate about what you're doing, when you're just trying to do things to make a buck or get attention or whatever, when the hard times come, you're gonna have a hard time actually surviving.
Speaker 1:
Interesting thing about who is that? Who changes over time. Who's die, who's go away, who's move away, who's change their minds, who's follow trends Right. Who's a person? That's the problem with this or a group of people? Or a stereotype of people, a broad group of people. No matter how defined your niche is, it's still going to be a broad group of people, because a niche has to be big enough that you can support your business off and that also means that there's a limited amount of winners. Because if you already have the niche that I want to work on and you're already best in the world, how do I compete? That's the point of some of these arguments here that we're going to get into.
Speaker 1:
But you cannot own who. I can't own you. If you're my target, I can't own you. I can't own the target. All I can own is why you might be interested in me as a service or product producer. That's the only thing that I can actually control is why you might be interested. I cannot control you and how things change around you, but the why the why you're interested in me that can be everlasting. There can be some qualities there that you see that you go yeah, those are every green qualities I'm interested in. Whatever they put out there, I'm interested in checking out. I may not buy it, but I'm interested in checking it out.
Speaker 1:
I am where I am now because I feel like when I got into the financial industry, I was taking advantage of it, and I think it happens to so many people when they enter the financial industry. I think it happens to clients and I think it happens to the professionals. I want to use the experiences that I've had to help people get more other money in life. I want to see people have those breakthroughs. I want to see people find peace to the questions that they've had that they have. People not have to be exploited in order to get help.
Speaker 1:
The people I might be forever helping, or be helping in general, might be forever changing. Right, I might help somebody and they're done with me. They've got their help. They move on to the next part of life. The people could be changing. The trends could be changing. The way the industry helps or doesn't help people could be changing. But the guiding principle of my why, the reason why I'm doing it, that's the rally cry, that's the call, that's what people are actually attracted to. That's why we shape the things the way that we shape the things in our company. That's why people want to come work with us. That's underpinning every message, or at least it should be. I own that and I also can gift that.
Speaker 1:
Shirley, your overarching goal is to build a successful commercial enterprise. Well, I don't think you can do this by starting with why, referring to Jim Collins, he believes that a successful strategy is formed from overlapping one, what you are deeply passionate about, your why, with two, what you can be best in the world at. And number three, what best drives your economic engine. It's the third point missing from Simon Sinek's Golden Circle viewpoint. Sorry, and I really really like Jim Collins' work, but sorry, we cannot all be the best in the world. We all think we're the best in the world, but we're not all going to be the best in the world. In fact, most of us will never be the best in the world at anything.
Speaker 1:
And even if you think you're the best in the world, you don't know everybody in the world, so you don't know if you're the best in the world. It's just a foolish, finite way of thinking I'm there and what doesn't matter? If you're the best in the world, how do you even define it in the first place? It seems to be awfully arbitrary to me. And who cares? What happens when you are the best in the world? Does everybody just all of a sudden start bowing to you? What actually happens if you say I'm the best in the world at something, okay, good for you. What happens if you're no longer the best in the world? I used to be the best in the world. Okay, now you're a has been Set yourself up for failure there. What if you cannot or never will be the best in the world? Should you even try? Did you even make an effort? Can't be the best in the world? Why try?
Speaker 1:
What drives your economic engine In relationship to a time horizon that you are playing at? If you are playing a 12 month game, you will make very different decisions than if you were playing a 10 year or 20 year or infinite game. So driving your economic engine is kind of a complex discussion because it's situational and within the same business, things might need to change periodically for short amounts of time and for long amounts of time. You probably have to continually be evolving the commercial imperative that should drive every business, while any business that loses sight of their commercial imperative is foolishly run. However, businesses fail every day that are being run for that commercial imperative. So, without a guiding sense of purpose, sprinting towards a pile of money, it's like a runway train You're gonna get off the tracks, you're gonna crash and burn.