One Thing I Got WRONG | Simon Sinek

this is one thing i got wrong in my book which is i said that most leaders will uh either experience an existential flex once maybe twice sometimes never in a career i never expected that every leader would be facing it simultaneously but the principles are still are still the same whether we're all going through it together or not which is it's not about the daily flexibility of business this is profound 180 degree strategic shift [Music] i'll give you my favorite example um in the late 1970s uh apple's already a successful company they've already come up the success of the apple one the apple ii steve jobs is already a famous ceo and understand uh apple had a just cause they had a vision a very clear vision which is they wanted to empower individuals to stand up to incumbent uh uh power they wanted to empower individuals to stand up to big brother this revolutionary spirit and if you remember um uh that's what they that's what they stood for right the computer revolution they were one of the leaders of the computer revolution um uh and jobs and a few of his senior executives um as executives do went and visited another company and they got a tour of xerox xerox park which is xerox's r d division and xerox showed them something they invented called the graphic user interface which allowed a computer user to click a mouse and move a cursor across a desktop to use icons uh to work the computer now this is a profound technology because prior to that you had to learn a computer language so driven by the the idea that one day an individual be able to compete against a corporation job jobs sees this new technology and goes back to his team and says we have to invest in this graphic user interface thing he sees it as a leapfrog technology to advance their vision and one of the leaders who was there that day said we can't we've already invested millions of dollars and countless man-hours in a completely different strategic direction if we go down that path we will blow up our own company to which jobs actually said better we should blow it up than someone else well that decision led to the macintosh a computer user operating system so profound that the entire software of windows is designed to act like a macintosh and the reason a computer is now household appliance was because of their willingness to make that profound strategic shift and so the reason uh leaders usually don't make an existential flex is because they're too afraid of the short-term losses they're too afraid of of the disruption even if they sometimes see it as necessary um one of my favorite examples of a failure uh was blockbuster blockbuster was the only significant uh national video rental chain uh you know they were the 800 pound gorilla and this little company called netflix showed up and saw the rise of the internet and the potential for streaming in the future the technology wasn't quite there yet but everybody knew it was coming but they started experimenting with an entirely new business model called subscription and if you remember you could get the dvds and keep them for as long as you wanted and then send them back and the ceo of blockbuster at the time went to the board and said i think we really need to experiment with subscription and the board would not allow him because the company made twelve percent of their revenues from late fees they were so afraid to give up twelve percent of revenues that they literally committed an act of suicide blockbuster doesn't exist and netflix is determining the future of television and movies now the the the they will say the internet put them out of business nonsense they put themselves out of business and so we're seeing that right now in cobit as well there are companies that are desperately clinging to their old business models but this this marketplace you know if you're not willing to pivot the marketplace will put you out of business and so we're seeing wonderful uh uh disruption happening positive disruption taking advantage of covid to make changes they see it highly necessary where they may not have made these changes prior because they were just too [Music] afraid

Channel: Simon Sinek

Views: 162,412

Rating: 4.9597173 out of 5

Keywords: simon sinek, start with why, inspiration, motivation, leadership, career, inspire

Id: 6F4Umb8A0lI

Length: 4min 12sec (252 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021