By Simon Sinek
At first look, the context, goals, and values of business and military organizations may not seem to have much in common. As organizations that serve the public, they need to garner support, inspire teams, and accomplish goals. They can learn from each other. The military could learn more about flexibility, innovation, communications with the public, and creativity from the business world. The business model could learn more about team-building, dedication to a purpose, and respect from the military. One of these most valuable ways sums up in the title of this book which also defines a major component in the military model: “Leaders Eat Last.”
While the corporate world enables and even fosters competitive conflict, in-fighting, and dog-eat-dog cynical self-interest; the military model emphasizing taking care of each other brings about much more trust, loyalty, and sense of belong — all much needed in the business world. This kind of attitude shift has the potential to shift the unsustainable trajectory of our economic patterns into more healthy ways of protecting the environment while creating collaboration, cooperations, and “Circles of Safety” for leaders and followers alike.
“A good vision statement, explains, in specific terms, what the world would look like if everything we did was wildly successful.”
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“Almost everything about us is purpose-built to help increase our opportunities for survival and success and our need for leaders is no exception.”
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“And for those who couldn't afford war bonds, they contributed by planting victory gardens, growing fruit and vegetables to help reduce the burden of rationing. This is one of the reasons we call this generation the Greatest Generation. It was defined not by excess and consumerism, but by hardship and service.”
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“as much as 50% of ready-to-harvest food will never be eaten... the average American family is throwing out nearly $600 per year... Simply learning to preserve or freeze more food could save families nearly $43 billion peer year.”
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“As much as we like the idea of being equal the fat is we are not and never will be… and for good reason.”
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“because it abstracts the value of things... we don't do well with abundance... By its very nature, scale creates distance... the more we have, the less we seen to value what we've got,”
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“Both generations X and Y grew up to believe they could get whatever they want... An overlooked and forgotten generation, Gen Xers didn't really rebel against anything or stand for much in their youth.”
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“By its very nature, scale creates distance, and at distance, human concepts start losing their meaning... The more we have, the less we seem to value what we've got.”
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“Children are better off having a parent who works into the night in a job they love than a parent who works shorter hours but comes home unhappy.”
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“For a good many Millennials excessive positive affirmation was now piled on top of excessive protection from failure and criticism... What they are better at is being distracted [but] They are a remarkably accepting generation... more inclusive and more accepting of people who are different from them.”
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“GenZ—very activist, lonely, conflict avoidant... many young kids would rather quit than have a difficult conversation, ghost someone rather than break up with them... they just missed a basic skill-set, how to have a difficult conversation”
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“I honestly believe it would do less long-term damage to a kid to put them up for adoption that to hand them a device every single time we don't want to deal with them... don't end up doing serious damage to them as adults.”
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“In a decade marked by an unpopular war and the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon seemed to offer a foreboding look at the generation he served. His own selfish ambitions drove decisions that were at best unethical and at worst illegal.”
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“In weak organizations, without oversight, too many people will break the rules for personal gain. That's what makes the organizations weak. In strong organization, people will break the rules because it is the right thing to do for others.”
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“Integrity is when our words and deeds are consistent with our intentions... it is also about being honest when we disagree or, when we make mistakes or missteps.”
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“It is not the demands of the job that cause the most stress, but the degree of control workers feel they have throughout their day… less control, more stress… Leaders have overall lower stress levels than those who work for them.”
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“It is the leaders of companies that see profit as fuel for their culture that will outlast their dopamine-addicted, cortisol-soaked competitors.”
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“It is the struggle it takes to make it work that helps give that thing its value... we have warmer feelings for the projects we worked on where everything seemed to go wrong.”
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“It's all about balance... the visionary and the operator inside a company, Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the Soviets and Uncle Sam in geopolitics, even Mom and Dan at home... one point of view or a single, uncontested power is rarely a good thing.”
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“It's not how smart the people in the organization are; it's how well they work together that is the true indicator of future success or the ability to manage through struggle.”
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“Just as a parent can't buy the love of their children with gifts, a company can't buy the loyalty of their employees with salaries and bonuses... We will judge a boss who spends time after hours to help us as more valuable than a boss who simply gives us a bonus”
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“many suffer from an addiction to their phone and social media... most of us could do with some sort of digital addiction treatment”
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“mistakes are not something to be feared... When our leaders reveal their gaps in knowledge and missteps, not only are we more willing to help, but we too are more willing to share when we make mistakes [before] they become too big to contain.”
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“Money is an abstraction of tangible resources or human effort... an abstraction, it has no 'real' value to our primitive brains.”
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“Our jobs are literally killing us… seven times more people die each year from heart disease and cancer than all the people murdered in a decade.”
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“our need for hierarchies is linked to food and protection… the ones who were lucky enough to be built like linebackers would get to eat first… So to solve the problem, we evolved into hierarchical animals.”
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“over 90% of all new businesses fail in the first 3 years... The foolishness of thinking that you're a part of the small minority of those who actually will make it past 3 years and defy the odds is part of what makes entrepreneurs who they are, driven by passion and completely irrational.”
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“people go to work for Walmart because they want a job, people go to work at Costo because they want a future and a sense of belonging to a team.”
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“Responsibility is not doing as we are told, that's obedience Responsibility is doing what is right.”
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“Short or long term, the clearer we can see what we are setting out to achieve, the more likely we are to achieve it.”
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“the best visions offer us something that, for all practical purposes, we will never actually reach, but for which we would gladly die trying.”
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“The big Boomer generation has, by accident, created a world quite out of balance. And imbalance, as history has proven over and over, will self-correct suddenly and aggressively unless we are smart enough to correct it ourselves slowly and methodically.”
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“The goal of a leader is to give no orders... Responsibility is not doing what we are told, that's obedience. Responsibility is doing what is right.”
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“The more energy is transferred from the top of the organization to those who are actually doing the job, those who know more about what's going on on a daily basis, the more powerful the organization and the more powerful the leader.”
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“the more financial analysts who cover a company, the less innovative the company.”
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“the more things we do that amplify the abstraction, the harder it becomes to see each other as human... We no longer see each other as people; we are now customers, shareholders, employees, avatars, online profiles, screen names, email addresses and expenses to be tracked.”
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“the more we have, the bigger our fences, the more sophisticated our security to keep people away and the less we want to share.”
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“The more we try to make ourselves feel better, the worse we seem to feel.”
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“the parents of the Millennial Generation may have erred on the side of over-coddling their kids and accidentally tipped the delicate balance... when it comes to protecting our kids, sometimes less is more.”
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“the rulebook, no matter how comprehensive, cannot consider every eventuality... This is the reason we find bureaucrats infuriating. They simply default to the rules with no consideration for the people those rules were designed to help.”
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“There is no biological incentive to do nothing… it feels good to put in a lot of effort to accomplish something.”
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“too many leaders of companies... justify their actions as within the law while ignoring the intention of the laws they aim to uphold.”
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“treating people well in any economy is more cost effective than not… The best companies almost always make it through hard times because the people rally to make sure they do.”
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“Trust is not simply a matter of shared opinions. Trust is a biological reaction to the belief that someone has our well-being at heart… they only become leaders when they accept the responsibility to protect those in their care.”
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“We have an absolute need to form bonds of trust. Our survival depends on it.”
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“What makes a good leader is that they eschew the spotlight… if they really cared, they wouldn’t need to publicize every time they did something.”
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“When a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems and see to it that that leader's vision come to life”
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“When the Boomers were young, it was they who forced civil rights on an older generation bent on maintaining an unhealthy and unjust status quo... As the disproportionately large generation of Boomers started aging, they changed course. And that's when our modern-era problems started to arise.”
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“Whereas the Greatest Generation was defined by the need to serve others, the Boomer Generation started on a path of taking for themselves.”
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“work-life balance… has nothing to do with the hours we work or the stress we suffer. It has to do with where we feel safe.”
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