Start With Why Part 7

RAH!!!! With a roar, Steve Ballmer, the man who replaced Bill Gates as CEO of Microsoft, bursts onto the stage of the company's annual global summit meeting. Ballmer loves Microsoft-he says so in no uncertain words. He also knows how to pump up a crowd. His energy is almost folkloric. He pumps his fists and runs from one end of the stage to the other, he screams and he sweats. He is remarkable to watch and the crowd loves it. As Ballmer proves, without a doubt, energy can motivate a crowd. But can it inspire a population? What happens the next day or the next week when Ballmer's energy is not there to motivate his employees? Is energy enough to keep a company of about 80,000 people focused?

In contrast, Bill Gates is shy and awkward, a social misfit. He does not fit the stereotype of the leader of a multibillion-dollar corporation. He is not the most energetic public speaker. When Bill Gates speaks, however, people listen with bated breath. They hang on his every word. When Gates speaks, he doesn't rally a room, he inspires it. Those who hear him take what he says and carry his words with them for weeks, months or years. Gates doesn't have energy, but Bill Gates inspires.

Energy motivates but charisma inspires. Energy is easy to see, easy to measure and easy to copy. Charisma is hard to define, near impossible to measure and too elusive to copy. All great leaders have charisma because all great leaders have clarity of WHY; an undying belief in a purpose or cause bigger than themselves. It's not Bill Gates's pa.s.sion for computers that inspires us, it's his undying optimism that even the most complicated problems can be solved. He believes we can find ways to remove obstacles to ensure that everyone can live and work to their greatest potential. It is his optimism to which we are drawn.

Living through the computer revolution, he saw the computer as a perfect technology to help us all become more productive and achieve our greatest potential. That belief inspired his vision of a PC on every desk to come to life. Ironic considering Microsoft never even made PCs. It wasn't just WHAT computers did that Gates saw the impact for the new technology, it was WHY we needed them. Today, the work he does with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has nothing to do with software, but it is another way he has found to bring his WHY to life. He is looking for ways to solve problems. He still has an undying belief. And he still believes that if we can help people, this time those with less privilege, remove some seemingly simple obstacles, then they too will have an opportunity to be more productive and lift themselves up to achieve their great potential. For Gates, all that has changed is WHAT he is doing to bring his cause to life.

Charisma has nothing to do with energy; it comes from a clarity of WHY. It comes from absolute conviction in an ideal bigger than oneself. Energy, in contrast, comes from a good night's sleep or lots of caffeine. Energy can excite. But only charisma can inspire. Charisma commands loyalty. Energy does not.

Energy can always be injected into an organization to motivate people to do things. Bonuses, promotions, other carrots and even a few sticks can get people to work harder, for sure, but the gains are, like all manipulations, short-term. Over time, such tactics cost more money and increase stress for employee and employer alike, and eventually will become the main reason people show up for work every day. That's not loyalty. That's the employee version of repeat business. Loyalty among employees is when they turn down more money or benefits to continue working at the same company. Loyalty to a company trumps pay and benefits. And unless you're an astronaut, it's not the work we do that inspires us either. It's the cause we come to work for. We don't want to come to work to build a wall, we want to come to work to build a cathedral.

The Chosen Path.

Raised in Ohio, sixty miles from Dayton, Neil Armstrong grew up on a healthy diet of stories about the Wright brothers. From a very early age he dreamed of flying. He'd make model airplanes, read magazines about flying and stare at the heavens through a telescope mounted on the roof of his house. He even got his pilot's license before he got his driver's license. With a childhood pa.s.sion that became reality, Armstrong was destined to become an astronaut. For the rest of us, however, our careers paths are more like Jeff Sumpter's.

While Sumpter was in high school, his mother arranged for him to get a summer interns.h.i.+p at the bank where she worked. Four years after he finished high school he called the bank to see if he could do some part-time work, and they eventually offered him a full-time job. Whamo, Jeff 's got a career as a banker. In fact, after fifteen years in the industry he and a colleague by the name of Trey Maust went on to start their own bank, Lewis & Clark Bank in Portland, Oregon.

Sumpter is very good at what he does-he's been one of the top-performing loan officers throughout his career. He's well liked and well respected among his colleagues and clients. But even Jeff will admit that he doesn't have much of a pa.s.sion for banking, per se. Though he's not living out his childhood dream, he is pa.s.sionate for something. It's not WHAT he does that gets him out of bed every morning. It's WHY he does it.

Our career paths are largely incidental. I never planned to be doing what I'm doing now. As a kid I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, but in college I set my sights on becoming a criminal prosecutor. While I was in law school, however, I became disillusioned with the idea of being a lawyer. It just didn't feel right. I was at law school in England, where the law is one of the last truly "English" professions; not wearing a pinstriped suit to an interview could hurt my chances of getting a job. This was not my cup of tea.

I happened to be dating a young woman who was studying marketing at Syracuse University. She could see what inspired me and what frustrated me about the law and suggested I try my hand in the field. And whamo, I'd gotten myself a new career in marketing. But that's just one of the things I've done-it's not my pa.s.sion and it's not how I define my life. My cause-to inspire people to do the things that inspire them-is WHY I get out of bed every day. The excitement is trying to find new ways, different WHATs to bring my cause to life, of which this book is one.

Regardless of WHAT we do in our lives, our WHY-our driving purpose, cause or belief-never changes. If our Golden Circle is in balance, WHAT we do is simply the tangible way we find to breathe life into that cause. Developing software was merely one of the things Bill Gates did to bring his cause to life. An airline gave Herb Kelleher the perfect outlet to spread his belief in freedom. Putting a man on the moon was one goal John F. Kennedy used to rally people to bring to life his belief that service to the nation-and not being serviced by the nation-would lead America to advance and prosper. Apple gave Steve Jobs a way to challenge the status quo and do something big in the world. All the things these charismatic leaders did were the tangible ways they found to bring their WHYs to life. But none of them could have imagined WHAT they would be doing when they were young.

When a WHY is clear, those who share that belief will be drawn to it and maybe want to take part in bringing it to life. If that belief is amplified it can have the power to rally even more believers to raise their hands and declare, "I want to help." With a group of believers all rallying around a common purpose, cause or belief, amazing things can happen. But it takes more than inspiration to become great. Inspiration only starts the process; you need something more to drive a movement.

Amplify the Source of Inspiration

The Golden Circle is not just a communication tool; it also provides some insight into how great organizations are organized. As we start to add dimension to the concept of The Golden Circle, it is no longer helpful to look at it as a purely two-dimensional model. If it is to provide any real value in how to build a great organization in our very three-dimensional world, The Golden Circle needs to be three-dimensional. The good news is, it is. It is, in fact, a top-down view of a cone. Turn it on its side and you can see its full value.

The cone represents a company or an organization-an inherently hierarchical and organized system. Sitting at the top of the system, representing the WHY, is a leader; in the case of a company, that's usually the CEO (or at least we hope it is). The next level down, the HOW level, typically includes the senior executives who are inspired by the leader's vision and know HOW to bring it to life. Don't forget that a WHY is just a belief, HOWs are the actions we take to realize that belief and WHATs are the results of those actions. No matter how charismatic or inspiring the leader is, if there are not people in the organization inspired to bring that vision to reality, to build an infrastructure with systems and processes, then at best, inefficiency reigns, and at worst, failure results.

In this rendering the HOW level represents a person or a small group responsible for building the infrastructure that can make a WHY tangible. That may happen in marketing, operations, finance, human resources and all the other C-suite departments. Beneath that, at the WHAT level, is where the rubber meets the road. It is at this level that the majority of the employees sit and where all the tangible stuff actually happens.

I Have a Dream (and He's Got the Plan)

Dr. King said he had a dream, and he inspired people to make his dream their own. What Ralph Abernathy lent the movement was something else: he knew what it would take to realize that dream, and he showed people HOW to do it. He gave the dream structure. Dr. King spoke about the philosophical implications of the movement, while Abernathy, Dr. King's onetime mentor, longtime friend and financial secretary and treasurer of the Southern Christian Leaders.h.i.+p Conference, would help people understand the specific steps they needed to take. "Now," Abernathy would tell the audience following a rousing address by Dr. King, "let me tell you what that means for tomorrow morning."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the leader, but he didn't change America alone. Though Dr. King inspired the movement, to actually move people requires organizing. As is the case with almost all great leaders, there were others around Dr. King who knew better HOW to do that. For every great leader, for every WHY-type, there is an inspired HOW-type or group of HOW-types who take the intangible cause and build the infrastructure that can give it life. That infrastructure is what actually makes any measurable change or success possible.

The leader sits at the top of the cone-at the start, the point of WHY-while the HOW-types sit below and are responsible for actually making things happen. The leader imagines the destination and the HOW-types find the route to get there. A destination without a route leads to meandering and inefficiency, something a great many WHY-types will experience without the help of others to ground them. A route without a destination, however, may be efficient, but to what end? It's all fine and good to know how to drive, but it's more fulfilling when you have a place to go. For Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy was one of those he inspired and who knew HOW to make the cause actionable and tangible. "Dr. King's job was to interpret the ideology and theology of non-violence," said Abernathy. "My job was more simple and down-to-earth. I would tell [people], 'Don't ride those buses.'"

In every case of a great charismatic leader who ever achieved anything of significance, there was always a person or small group lurking in the shadows who knew HOW to take the vision and make it a reality. Dr. King had a dream. But no matter how inspiring a dream maybe, a dream that cannot come to life stays a dream. Dr. King dreamed of many of the same things as countless other African Americans who grew up in the precivil rights South. He spoke of many of the same themes. He felt the same outrage perpetrated by an unjust system. But it was King's unflappable optimism and his words that inspired a population.

Dr. King didn't change America by himself. He wasn't a legislator, for example, but legislation was created to give all people in the United States equal rights regardless of skin color. It wasn't Dr. King who changed America; it was the movement of millions of others whom he inspired that changed the course of history. But how do you organize millions of people? Forget millions, how do you organize hundreds or tens of people? The vision and charisma of the leader are enough to attract the innovators and the early adopters. Trusting their guts and their intuition, these people will make the greatest sacrifices to help see the vision become a reality. With each success, with every tangible demonstration that the vision can in fact become reality, the more practical-minded majority starts to take interest. What was previously just a dream soon becomes a provable and tangible reality. And when that happens, a tipping point can be reached and then things really get moving.

Those Who Know WHY Need Those Who Know HOW

The pessimists are usually right, to paraphrase Thomas Friedman, author of The World Is Flat, but it's the optimists who change the world. Bill Gates imagined a world in which the computer could help us all reach our greatest potential. And it happened. Now he imagines a world in which malaria does not exist. And it will happen. The Wright brothers imagined a world in which we'd all take to the skies as easily as we catch the bus. And it happened. WHY-TYPES have the power to change the course of industries or even the world . . . if only they knew HOW.

WHY-types are the visionaries, the ones with the overactive imaginations. They tend to be optimists who believe that all the things they imagine can actually be accomplished. HOW-types live more in the here and now. They are the realists and have a clearer sense of all things practical. WHY-types are focused on the things most people can't see, like the future. HOW-types are focused on things most people can see and tend to be better at building structures and processes and getting things done. One is not better than the other, they are just different ways people naturally see and experience the world. Gates is a WHY-type. So were the Wright brothers. And Steve Jobs. And Herb Kelleher. But they didn't do it alone. They couldn't. They needed those who knew HOW.

"If it hadn't been for my big brother, I'd have been in jail several times for checks bouncing," said Walt Disney, only half joking, to a Los Angeles audience in 1957. "I never knew what was in the bank. He kept me on the straight and narrow." Walt Disney was a WHY-TYPE, a dreamer whose dream came true thanks to the help of his more sensible older brother Roy, a HOW-type.

Walt Disney began his career creating cartoon drawings for advertis.e.m.e.nts, but moved quickly to making animated movies. It was 1923 and Hollywood was emerging as the heart of the movie business, and Walt wanted to be part of it. Roy, who was eight years older, had been working at a bank. Roy was always in awe of his brother's talent and imagination, but he also knew that Walt was p.r.o.ne to taking risks and to neglecting business affairs. Like all WHY guys, Walt was busy thinking about what the future looked like and often forget he was living in the present. "Walt Disney dreamed, drew and imagined, Roy stayed in the shadow, forming an empire," wrote Bob Thomas, a Disney biographer. "A brilliant financier and businessman, Roy helped turn Walt Disney's dreams into reality, building the company that bears his brother's name." It was Roy who founded the Buena Vista Distribution Company that made Disney films a central part of American childhood. It was Roy who created the merchandising business that transformed Disney characters into household names. And, like almost every HOW-type, Roy never wanted to be the front man, he preferred to stay in the background and focus on HOW to build his brother's vision.

Most people in the world are HOW-types. Most people are quite functional in the real world and can do their jobs and do very well. Some may be very successful and even make millions of dollars, but they will never build billion-dollar businesses or change the world. HOW-types don't need WHY-types to do well. But WHY-guys, for all their vision and imagination, often get the short end of the stick. Without someone inspired by their vision and the knowledge to make it a reality, most WHY-types end up as starving visionaries, people with all the answers but never accomplis.h.i.+ng much themselves.

Although so many of them fancy themselves visionaries, in reality most successful entrepreneurs are HOW-types. Ask an entrepreneur what they love about being an entrepreneur and most will tell you they love to build things. That they talk about building is a sure clue that they know HOW to get things done. A business is a structure-systems and processes that need to be a.s.sembled. It is the HOW-types who are more adept at building those processes and systems. But most companies, no matter how well built, do not become billion-dollar businesses or change the course of industries. To reach the billion-dollar status, to alter the course of an industry, requires a very special and rare partners.h.i.+p between one who knows WHY and those who know HOW.

In nearly every case of a person or an organization that has gone on to inspire people and do great things, there exists this special partners.h.i.+p between WHY and HOW. Bill Gates, for example, may have been the visionary who imagined a world with a PC on every desk, but Paul Allen built the company. Herb Kelleher was able to personify and preach the cause of freedom, but it was Rollin King who came up with the idea for Southwest Airlines. Steve Jobs is the rebel's evangelist, but Steve Wozniak is the engineer who made the Apple work. Jobs had the vision, Woz had the goods. It is the partners.h.i.+p of a vision of the future and the talent to get it done that makes an organization great.

This relations.h.i.+p starts to clarify the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement in an organization. The vision is the public statement of the founder's intent, WHY the company exists. It is literally the vision of a future that does not yet exist. The mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principles-HOW the company intends to create that future. When both of those things are stated clearly, the WHY-type and the HOW-type are both certain about their roles in the partners.h.i.+p. Both are working together with clarity of purpose and a plan to get there. For it to work, however, it requires more than a set of skills, it requires trust.

As discussed at length in part 3, trusting relations.h.i.+ps are invaluable for us to feel safe. Our ability to trust people or organizations allows us to take risks and feel supported in our efforts. And perhaps the most trusting relations.h.i.+p that exists is between the visionary and the builder, the WHY-guy and the HOW-guy. In organizations able to inspire, the best chief executives are WHY-TYPES-PEOPLE who wake up every day to lead a cause and not just run a company. In these organizations, the best chief financial officers and chief operating officers are high-performing HOW-types, those with the strength of ego to admit they are not visionaries themselves but are inspired by the leader's vision and know how to build the structure that can bring it to life. The best HOW-types generally do not want to be out front preaching the vision; they prefer to work behind the scenes to build the systems that can make the vision a reality. It takes the combined skill and effort of both for great things to happen.

It's not an accident that these unions of WHY and HOW so often come from families or old friends.h.i.+ps. A shared upbringing and life experience increases the probability of a shared set of values and beliefs. In the case of family or childhood friends, upbringing and common experiences are nearly exactly the same. That's not to say you can't find a good partner somewhere else. It's just that growing up with somebody and having a common life experience increases the likelihood of a shared common worldview.

Walt Disney and Roy Disney were brothers. Bill Gates and Paul Allen went to high school together in Seattle. Herb Kelleher was Rollin King's divorce attorney and old friend. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy both preached in Birmingham, long before the civil rights movement took form. And Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were best friends in high school. The list goes on.

To Run or To Lead

For all the talented HOW-types running today's organizations, they can achieve success that will last their lifetimes, but they will spend their lifetimes running their companies. There are many ways to be successful and drive profits. Any number of manipulations, only some of which I've touched upon in this book, work quite well. Even the ability to create a tipping point is possible without creating lasting change. It's called a fad. But great organizations function exactly like any social movement. They inspire people to talk about a product or idea, include that product in the context of their lifestyle, share the idea or even find ways to advance the prosperity of the organization itself. Great organizations not only excite the human spirit, they inspire people to take part in helping to advance the cause without needing to pay them or incentivize them in any particular way. No cash-back incentives or mail-in rebates required. People feel compelled to spread the word, not because they have to, but because they want to. They willingly take up arms to share the message that inspires them.

Build a Megaphone That Works

After a three-month selection process, BCI finally chose a new ad agency to help develop a campaign to launch their new product line. Big Company Incorporated is a well-known brand operating in a fairly cluttered market s.p.a.ce. As a manufacturer, their products are sold via a third-party sales force, often on the shelves of big-box retailers, so they don't have direct control over the sales process. The best they can do is to try to influence the sale from a distance-with marketing. BCI is a good company with a strong culture. The employees respect the management, and in general the company does good work. But over the years the compet.i.tion has grown fairly stiff. And although BCI has a good product and compet.i.tive pricing, it is still tough to maintain strong growth year over year. This year, BCI management is particularly excited because the company is launching a new product they really think will make BCI stand out. To help promote it, BCI's agency has launched a major new ad campaign.

"From the leading maker," says the new ad, "comes the newest, most innovative product you've ever seen." The ad goes on to talk about all the new features and benefits, and includes something about the "quality you've come to expect from BCI," something the BCI executives felt quite strongly about including. BCI executives have worked hard to build their company's reputation and they want to leverage it. They are very excited about their new campaign and are really banking on the success of this product to help drive sales in general. They know they do good work, and they want to get the message out. They need it to be loud. And with a budget of millions of dollars to advertise their new product, in that respect, BCI succeeds.

But there is a problem.

BCI and their agency did a good job of telling people about their new product. The work was quite creative. They were able to explain what was new and special about their latest innovation, and focus groups agreed that the new product was much better than that of the compet.i.tion. The millions of dollars in media ensured that lots of people would see their advertising and see it often. Their reach and frequency, the measurement commonly used by ad agencies to gauge the number of people exposed to the advertising, was very good. There is no doubt that their message was loud. The problem was, it wasn't clear. It was all WHATs and HOW and no WHY. Even though people learned what the product did, no one knew what BCI believed. The good news is, it's not a complete loss; the products will sell as long as the ads are on the air and the promotions remain compet.i.tive. It's an effective strategy, but an expensive way to make money.

What if Martin Luther King had delivered a comprehensive twelve-point plan about achieving civil rights in America, a plan more comprehensive than any other plan for civil rights ever offered? Booming through the speakers that summer's day in 1963, his message would have been loud. Microphones, like advertising and PR, are fantastic for making sure a message is heard. Like BCI, King's message would still have reached thousands of people. But his belief would not have been clear.

Volume is reasonably easy to achieve. All it takes is money or stunts. Money can pay to keep a message front and center. And publicity stunts are good at getting on the news. But neither plants seeds of loyalty. Many reading this may remember that Oprah Winfrey once gave away a free car to every member of her studio audience. It happened several years ago, in 2004, and still people refer to the stunt. But how many can recall the model of car she gave away? That's the problem. It was Pontiac that donated $7 million worth of cars, 276 of their new G6 model, to be exact. And it was Pontiac that saw the stunt as a way to market their new car. Yet although the stunt worked well to reinforce Oprah's generous nature, something with which we are all familiar, few remember that Pontiac was a part of the event. Worse, the stunt didn't do anything to reinforce some purpose, cause or belief that Pontiac represents. We had no idea what Pontiac's WHY was before the stunt, so it's hard for the publicity stunt to do much more than, well, be a stunt to get some publicity. With no sense of WHY, there is nothing else it's doing.

For a message to have real impact, to affect behavior and seed loyalty, it needs more than publicity. It needs to publicize some higher purpose, cause or belief to which those with similar values and beliefs can relate. Only then can the message create any lasting ma.s.s-market success. For a stunt to appeal to the left side of the curve of the Law of Diffusion, WHY the stunt is being performed, beyond the desire to generate press, must be clear. Though there may be short-term benefits without clarity, loud is nothing more than excessive volume. Or in business vernacular: clutter. And companies wonder why differentiation is such a challenge these days. Have you heard the volume coming from some of them?

In contrast, what would have been the impact of Dr. King's speech had he not had a microphone and loudspeakers? His vision would have been no less clear. His words would have been no less inspiring. He knew what he believed and he spoke with pa.s.sion and charisma about that belief. But only the few people with front-row seats would have been inspired by those words. A leader with a cause, whether it be an individual or an organization, must have a megaphone through which to deliver his message. And it must be clear and loud to work. Clarity of purpose, cause or belief is important, but it is equally important that people hear you. For a WHY to have the power to move people it must not only be clear, it must be amplified to reach enough people to tip the scale.

It's no coincidence that the three-dimensional Golden Circle is a cone. It is, in practice, a megaphone. An organization effectively becomes the vessel through which a person with a clear purpose, cause or belief can speak to the outside world. But for a megaphone to work, clarity must come first. Without a clear message, what will you amplify?

Say It Only If You Believe It

Dr. King used his megaphone to rally throngs of people to follow him in pursuit of social justice. The Wright brothers used their megaphone to rally their local community to help them build the technology that could change the world. Thousands of people heard John F. Kennedy's belief in service and rallied to put a man on the moon in less than a decade. The ability to excite and inspire people to go out of their way to contribute to something bigger than themselves is not unique to social causes. Any organization is capable of building a megaphone that can achieve a huge impact. In fact, it is one of the defining factors that makes an organization great. Great organizations don't just drive profits, they lead people, and they change the course of industries and sometimes our lives in the process.

A clear sense of WHY sets expectations. When we don't know an organization's WHY, we don't know what to expect, so we expect the minimum-price, quality, service, features-the commodity stuff. But when we do have a sense for the WHY, we expect more. For those not comfortable being held to a higher standard, I strongly advise against trying to learn your WHY or keeping your Golden Circle in balance. Higher standards are hard to maintain. It requires the discipline to constantly talk about and remind everyone WHY the organization exists in the first place. It requires that everyone in the organization be held accountable to HOW you do things-to your values and guiding principles. And it takes time and effort to ensure that everything you say and do is consistent with your WHY. But for those willing to put in the effort, there are some great advantages.

Richard Branson first built Virgin Records into a multibillion-dollar retail music brand. Then he started a successful record label. Later he started an airline that is today considered one of the premier airlines in the world. He then started a soda brand, wedding-planning company, insurance company and mobile phone service. And the list goes on. Likewise, Apple sells us computers, mobile phones, DVRs and mp3 players, and has replicated their capacity for innovation again and again. The ability of some companies not to just succeed but to repeat their success is due to the loyal followings they command, the throngs of people who root for their success. In the business world, they say Apple is a lifestyle brand. They underestimate Apple's power. Gucci is a lifestyle brand-Apple changes the course of industries. By any definition these few companies don't function like corporate ent.i.ties. They exist as social movements.

Repeating Greatness

Ron Bruder is not a household name, but he is a great leader. In 1985, he stood at a crosswalk with his two daughters waiting for the light to change so they could cross the street. A perfect opportunity, he thought, to teach the young girls a valuable life lesson. He pointed across the street to the red glow of the "Do Not Walk" signal and asked them what they thought that sign meant. "It means we have to stand here," they replied. "Are you sure?" he asked rhetorically. "How do you know it's not telling us to run?"

Soft-spoken and almost always wearing a well-tailored three-piece suit when he comes to work, Bruder looks like you would imagine a conservative executive to look like. But don't a.s.sume you know how things work simply based on what you see. Bruder is anything but a stereotype. Though he has enjoyed the trappings of success, he is not motivated by them. They have always been the unintended by-product of his work. Bruder is driven by a clear sense of WHY. He sees a world in which people accept the lives they live and do the things they do not because they have to, but because no one ever showed them an alternative. This is the lesson he was teaching his daughters that day at the crosswalk-there is always another perspective to be considered. That Bruder always starts with WHY has enabled him to achieve great things for himself. But more significantly, it is his ability to share his WHY through the things he does that inspires those around him to do great things for themselves.

Like most of us, the career path Bruder has followed is incidental. But WHY he does things has never changed. Everything Bruder has ever done starts with his WHY, his unyielding belief that if you can simply show someone that an alternative route is possible, it can open the possibility that such a route can be followed. Though the work he is doing today is world-altering, Bruder hasn't always been in the world peace business. Like many inspiring leaders, he has changed the course of an industry. But Ron Bruder is no one-hit wonder. He has been able to repeat his success and change the course of multiple industries, multiple times.

A senior executive at a large food conglomerate that sold vegetables, canned goods and meats decided to buy a travel agency for his nephew. He asked Bruder, as the chief financial officer of the company at the time, to take a look at the financials of the agency before he went through with the purchase. Seeing an opportunity others didn't, Bruder decided to join the small travel agency to help lead it. Once there, he saw how all the other travel agencies worked and took an alternative course. Greenwell became the first travel agency on the eastern seaboard to take advantage of new technologies and fully computerize their operations. Not only did they become one of the most successful companies in the region, but after only a year, their business model became a standard for the whole industry. Then Bruder did it again.

A former client of Bruder's, Sam Rosengarten, was in some dirty businesses-coal, oil and gas; all industries that created brownfields, land that had been contaminated by their operations. Little could be done with brownfields. They were too polluted to develop, and the liability to clean them up was so high that the insurance premiums alone made it too prohibitive to even try. But Bruder doesn't see challenges the same way as everyone else. Most avoided brownfields because they could only see the cost to clean them up. Bruder focused instead on the actual cleaning. His alternative perspective revealed the perfect solution.

Bruder had already formed his real estate development company, Brookhill, and with eighteen employees, he was doing quite well. Knowing what he needed to do to seize the opportunity, he approached Dames & Moore, one of the largest environmental engineering companies in the world, and shared his new perspective with them. They loved his idea and formed a partners.h.i.+p to pursue it. With an engineering company with 18,000 people on board, the perceived risk was greatly minimized and the insurance companies were happy to offer affordable insurance. With affordable insurance in place, Credit Suisse First Boston offered financing that gave Brookhill the ability to buy, remediate, redevelop and sell almost $200 million worth of former environmentally contaminated properties. Brookhill, so called because Bruder comes from Brooklyn and, as he puts it, "it's a long, uphill climb to get out of Brooklyn," was the pioneer of the brownfield redevelopment industry. An industry that thrives to this day. Bruder's WHY not only steered a path that was good for business, but in the process also helped clean up the environment.

It doesn't matter WHAT Ron Bruder does. The industries and the challenges are incidental. What never changes is WHY he does things. Bruder knows that, no matter how good an opportunity looks on paper, no matter how smart he is and no matter his track record, he would never be able to achieve anything unless there were others to help him. He knows that success is a team sport. He has a remarkable ability to attract those who believe what he believes. Talented people are drawn to him with one request: "How can I help?" Having defied accepted perspectives and revolutionized more than one industry, Bruder has now set his sights on a bigger challenge: world peace. He founded the Education for Employment Foundation, the megaphone that would help him do it.

The EFE Foundation is making significant headway in helping young men and women in the Middle East to significantly alter the course of their lives and indeed the course of the region. Just has he taught his daughters at the crosswalk that there is always an alternative route, he brings an alternative perspective to the problems in Middle East. Like of all Bruder's past successes, the EFE Foundation will drive businesses and do tremendous amounts of good in the process. Bruder doesn't run companies, he leads movements.

All Movements Are Personal

It started on September 11, 2001. Like so many of us, Bruder turned his attention to the Middle East after the attacks to ask why something like that could happen. He understood that if such an event could happen once, it could happen again, and for the lives of his own daughters he wanted to find a way to prevent that.

In the course of trying to figure out what he could do, he made a remarkable discovery that went much deeper than protecting his daughters or even the prevention of terrorism in the United States. In America, he realized, the vast majority of young people wake up in the morning with a feeling that there is opportunity for them in the future. Regardless of the economy, most young boys and girls who grow up in the United States have an inherent sense of optimism that they can achieve something if they want to-to live the American Dream. A young boy growing up in Gaza or a young girl living in Yemen does not wake up every day with the same feeling. Even if they have the desire, the same optimism is not there. It is too easy to point and say that the culture is different. That is not actionable. The real reason is that there is a distinct lack of inst.i.tutions to give young people in the region a sense of optimism for their future. A college education in Jordan, for example, may offer some social status, but it doesn't necessarily prepare a young adult for what lies ahead. The education system, in cases like this, perpetuates a systemic cultural pessimism.

Bruder realized the problems we face with terrorism in the West have less to do with what young boys and girls in the Middle East think about America and more to do with what they think about themselves and their own vision of the future. Through the EFE Foundation, Bruder is setting up programs across the Middle East to teach young adults the hard and soft skills that will help them feel like they have opportunity in life. To feel like they can be in control of their own destinies. Bruder is using the EFE Foundation to share his WHY on a global scale-to teach people that there is always an alternative to the path they think they are on.