Start With Why and Remember It

Start With Why and Remember It

by Tim Empringham, MBANo Comments
Simon Sinek started the Start With Why movement with his incredible TED Talk, "How Great Leaders Inspire Action". Every once in a while I see a great example of why "the why" is so critical. Today I came across one of those examples that I felt compelled to write about in an article "What Happened to the Internet's Favorite T-Shirt Company?" on Racked.com. The article takes a look at the Threadless T-Shirt company, their rise to fame, and their current struggles to remain relevant. Sinek's premise is that most organizations (and individuals) start by defining what they do, then move on to how they do it, and if they have time (infrequently), define why they do it. The what-how-why approach results in an undifferentiated company that has difficulty creating an emotional connection with their customers. Instead, Sinek pushes a why-first approach which connects to the emotional side of the customer by starting from the purpose of the company. Only after the...
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Branding Revamp – Succeed Sooner

Branding Revamp – Succeed Sooner

by Tim Empringham, MBA2 Comments
I've been doing some work to streamline my branding to a more consistent image, and to align my personal brand to my presence on the Internet. As a result I'm in the process of retiring the "Key Consulting" branding that I launched several years ago and have consolidated all of my Internet and other branding around my personal brand as seen at right. (more…)...
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Why are you Here… and What are you going to DO about it?

Why are you Here… and What are you going to DO about it?

by Tim Empringham, MBANo Comments
Over the past few months I've come across some very valuable thinking and ideas that have made me examine a great deal of how I approach my life and work, and I've been struggling a bit to pull the ideas together into a coherent and meaningful framework.  This is my attempt to summarize and bring clarity to those thoughts. The first source of inspiration that triggered some of this thinking was a TED talk from Simon Sinek where he outlined the concept of the "Golden Circles", an assertion that we naturally work first to define What we do, then examine How we do it, and finally (if we have time) we look at Why we are doing it. Simon's assertion is that our natural tendencies, while rooted in the science of the brain, are fundamentally backwards. The first question we should be asking ourselves is Why? Shortly after seeing Simon's talk I was on a one week leadership training course and I had an opportunity to...
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