Are authenticity and capitalism cousins?

Why is Apple changing the course of industries? Why would rational people tattoo a corporate, Harley-Davidson logo on their bodies? Why did quarter of a million people show up on august 28th, 1963 in Washington D.C. and follow Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a movement that changed a nation?

According to Simon Sinek, a British/American motivational speaker, marketing consultant and author of four books including the 2009 best seller Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009), there is »a formula that could produce repeatable and predictable results in places where such results might have been assumed to be a random occurrence or luck.« He applies his concept, the concept of Golden Circle to famous examples like those written above.
 

The Golden Circle finds order and predictability in human behavior. Put simply, it helps us understand why we do what we do. It provides compelling evidence of how much more we can achieve if we remind ourselves to start everything we do by first asking why. It is an alternative perspective to existing assumptions about why some leaders and organizations have achieved such a disproportionate degree of influence. It shows how these leaders were able to inspire action instead of manipulating people to act. (Sinek: 42) By any definition these few companies (Apple, Harley-Davidson, Virgin Records) don't function like corporate entities. They exist as social movements. (Sinek: 163)

The main difference between successful organizations and those that struggle or fail is their focus. Most are spending energy and resources on monitoring competition, manipulating with customers, business partners, saving on labor force etc., while those who thrive seem to focus on their mission.
 

Companies that fail to communicate a sense of WHY force us to make decisions with only empirical evidence. This is why those decisions take more time, feel difficult or leave us uncertain. Under these conditions manipulative strategies that exploit our desires, fears, doubts or fantasies work very well. We're forced to make these less-than-inspiring decisions for one simple reason—companies don't offer us anything else besides the facts and figures, features and benefits upon which to base our decisions. Companies don't tell us WHY. People don't buy WHAT you do; they buy WHY you do it.

A failure to communicate WHY creates nothing but stress or doubt. In contrast, many people who are drawn to buy Macintosh computers or Harley-Davidson motorcycles, for example, don't need to talk to anyone about which brand to choose. They feel the utmost confidence in their decision and the only question they ask is which Mac or which Harley. At that level, the rational features and benefits, facts and figures absolutely matter, but not to drive the decision to give money or loyalty to the company or brand. That decision is already made. The tangible features are simply to help direct the choice of product that best fits our needs. In these cases, the decisions happened in the perfect inside-out order. Those decisions started with WHY—the emotional component of the decision— and then the rational components allowed the buyer to verbalize or rationalize the reasons for their decision.

This is what we mean when we talk about winning hearts and minds. The heart represents the limbic, feeling part of the brain, and the mind is the rational, language center. Most companies are quite adept at winning minds; all that requires is a comparison of all the features and benefits. Winning hearts, however, takes more work. (Sinek: 64, 65)

Great leaders a.k.a. the visionaries are true champions of virtues like clarity, discipline and consistency. They are authentic, they trust their intuition, and others tend to naturally follow that behavior.
 

Great leaders and great organizations are good at seeing what most of us can't see. They are good at giving us things we would never think of asking for. When the computer revolution was afoot, computer users couldn't ask for a graphical user interface. But that's what Apple gave us. In the face of expanding competition in the airline industry, most air travelers would never have thought to ask for less instead of more. But that's what Southwest did. And in the face of hard times and overwhelming odds, few would have asked their country, what can I do for you over what can you do for me? The very cause upon which John F. Kennedy introduced his presidency.

Great leaders are those who trust their gut. They are those who understand the art before the science. They win hearts before minds. They are the ones who start with WHY. (Sinek: 65, 66)

Why do we want our Golden Circle balanced?

Authenticity means that everything you say and everything you do you actually believe. This goes for management as well as the employees. Only when that happens can the things you say and do be viewed as authentic. Apple believed that its original Apple computer and its Macintosh challenged the dominant IBM DOS platforms. Apple believes its iPod and iTunes products are challenging the status quo in the music industry. And we all understand WHY Apple does what it does. It is because of that mutual understanding that we view those Apple products as authentic. Dell introduced mp3 players and PDAs in an attempt to enter the small electronics business. We don't know what Dell's WHY is, we have no certainty about what the company believes or WHY it produced those products beyond self-gain and a desire to capitalize on a new market segment. Those products are not authentic. It's not that Dell couldn't enter other markets—it certainly has the knowledge and ability to make good products—but its ability to do so without a clear understanding of WHY is what makes it much harder and much more expensive. Just producing high-quality products and marketing them does not guarantee success. Authenticity cannot be achieved without clarity of WHY. And authenticity matters. (Sinek: 74, 75)

... and why is Dr. Richard Wolff, Professor of Economics at UMass, Amherst certain that capitalism is dying?

Writing this down was helpful for me and I hope you gained some new information from it. Feel free to comment, like, share.
 

What are your thoughts on Sinek's concept of the Golden Circle?