Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Paperback – December 27, 2011

As pointed out already, the message is indeed excellent and it got me interested when I first watched the TED talk.. I bought the book waiting for the author to have elaborated more on this interesting idea, with more examples and comprehensive discussion. However, the book is insanely redundant with the same 2-3 examples repeated over and over and over and over again.. The author was trying so hard to make a many-page book out of the message and it was excruciating to go through this repetition..

Save your money and (most importantly) your time and just watch the TED talk on YT..

I really had to struggle with what rating to give this. Simon Sinek's idea is astoundingly insightful, very helpful, and definitely worth the price of this book let alone the Kindle price. I'm inclined to think that the world would be considerably better off if more people lived by Sinek's simple idea.

On the other hand, the book is agonizing in its redundancy, often repeating the same examples many times over to make precisely the same point as the first time the example was used. I'm inclined to think that virtually everything Sinek wrote could have been stated in a 20-page article without leaving out anything important. I daresay it might be possible to do it in five pages. That's part of the beauty of the idea: it's incredibly simple while still being astoundingly powerful. But Sinek doesn't seem to have bothered taking the time to distill the idea down into its essence for straightforward presentation in this book. It reads a little bit like he took articles from his blog, stuck them in a large word-processing document, did some minor editing, and submitted the thing as-is for publication in order to create this book.

So, the idea is worth the cost of the book and the time to read it, but the book itself is, in my humble opinion, very poorly organized and needlessly long.

I would advise those who are interested in Sinek's ideas save themselves a great deal of time and a little expense by first watching his TED Talk:

[...]

This covers virtually all the core ideas involved. The one thing Sinek never does either in this presentation or in his book is spell out what "HOW" is. It's a bit confusing in large part because it's different for each of the two communication structures. In the "WHAT --> HOW" structure, "HOW" is "how we're different"; for instance, Dell has to argue that its computers are somehow better than (say) HP's and therefore specifies HOW they're better in order to compete against HP. On the other hand, in the "WHY --> HOW --> WHAT" structure, "HOW" is "how we enact our purpose (i.e. our 'WHY')".

As far as I can tell, if you're reasonably intelligent you can glean pretty much everything essential to Sinek's idea based on his TED Talk together with this understanding that "HOW" means something different in each of the two contexts he contrasts.

What you WON'T get from that is his rather in-depth, incredibly clear exposé of why the "WHAT --> HOW" communication pattern requires manipulating people to some degree or another and why that is by necessity unsustainable in the long run. That's not core to his point but it's certainly a nice supplement.

So in short, the book is a reasonable buy, certainly at the Kindle price, but do consider benefitting from Sinek's wisdom for free in 20 minutes first by watching his TED Talk. If you want more details, you can get the book, but understand that you're not likely to learn much more than what you could have figured out on your own between the talk and what I mention above.

Right of the bat this book went to “why didn’t I read this earlier?” –category, which I now actually created on Goodreads now for this kind of books that resonate very deep in me.

I’ve been familiar with Simon Sinek’s Ted Talks. This book dove much deeper than that, which was exactly what I was expecting. Whole book was captivating reading experience despite the fact that they were mostly running around a few certain examples of companies, and especially leaders around of those companies.

From the beginning thought, I liked mostly about the definitions.

“There are a few leaders who choose to inspire rather than manipulate in order to motivate people.”

I dislike the word motivation, because the motives behind the action are rather unknown. Simon Sinek wonderfully described why I disliked motivation that much: because it does not tell very well the intent behind and is it for the good. Simon Sinek also managed to capture the difference between inspirational leader and someone who just manipulates action.

Another thing is focus. Focus to the why and focus to what really matters.

“When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.”

This book points the way towards your why, so I recommend it with the full 5/5 stars.

Loved how Sinek challenged leaders to start by asking the right question. For many, this book will cause them to rethink how they present themselves, their products and their causes. I've recently gave my copy to a friend and we are discussing it as she goes along.

These principles have the power to reshape brands and businesses if they will take the time and effort to dig down and determine their why. I believe many companies would be benefited by simply understanding the difference between motivation and inspiration. When we can get people operating in their passion, we can truly do great things.

If you're willing to grow and wanting to move forward, this should be the next book on your list!

Want a read that keeps you interested, alert and on your toes on a constant basis?
If you're looking to keep flipping the page and not being able to stop reading, even if you're busy, this is the book for you.
The author has a gentle humor, he's smart and opens your mind on human psychology, not just marketing laws.
He also gives you an insight on the biological daily function(s) of the brain. Never did I realize how our minds work, when we're simply perusing our stores aisle, or shopping online.
I have it, and I love it, AND I would buy it again.
I already recommended this book to others as well.