Dear Leader,
Happy New Month, and welcome to March 2026
I trust this meets you in pursuit of wisdom.
Last month, I started sharing my lessons from the books I read every month.
In February, I read Start with Why by Simon Sinek – and I greatly recommend it, if you are a young leader.
Again, the goal is not to review or criticise the book but just to share with you the points I wrote down, hoping it would provide you with ingredients for thinking and meditation this week.
So, here we go:
- There are only two ways to influence human behaviour: You can either manipulate it or you inspire it. If you manipulate people, you will achieve short term success because manipulation does not breed loyalty. Leadership requires people to stick with you through thick and thin. That’s loyalty. And if you want to nurture loyalty, then you can’t rely on manipulation.
- People do not buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. WHY is about purpose, cause, belief. Why do you get out of bed every morning? Why should anyone care? Most of us talk more about WHAT we do, but we rarely talk about WHY we do what we do.
- Don’t define yourself by WHAT you do, define yourself by WHY you do it.
- It is not WHAT you do that makes you different. It is not also HOW. It is WHY. What makes you different is WHY before HOW you do it.
- Loyalty comes from the ability to inspire people. Only when your WHY is clear can you truly attract loyal people.
- If you want people to trust you, you have to talk about your WHY. Communicating your WHY earns you trust from the people who share the same values and beliefs as you.
- It is not to say that WHAT you do does not matter or HOW you do it does not matter but what matters in the hierarchy of influence and leadership is the WHY. Once your WHY is clearly communicated, it attracts the people who share the same belief and you can figure out HOW. Know your WHY, know HOW, then WHAT.
- Never lose sense of WHY you started in the first place. That’s what fuels passion and that’s what attracts others to give it structure.
- Your WHY comes from the past. It is born out of upbringing and life experience of an individual or small group.
- If you follow your WHY, others will follow YOU.
- You are not here to compete with anyone but yourself. Your sense of WHY gives you strength to keep going, keep getting up when you fall, and go again and again.
- All leaders must have two things: they must have a vision of the world that does not yet exist and they must have the ability to communicate it. Vision comes from WHY.
- Leaders never start with WHAT needs to be done. Leaders start with WHY we need to do things.
What if the goal was to do better work this week than we did last week? To make this month better than last month?
Until next time,
The Great Owete