Start With Why. Especially Now AI Can Do the What.

At SHRM26 in June, Simon Sinek told a room full of HR leaders that AI will reshape work, but that “if you don't understand humans, you don't understand business.” Then a piece from his team turned up in my LinkedIn feed: “You Found Your WHY. Now What?” It's a practical guide to taking purpose off the wall and putting it to work, and one line stayed with me: “Your WHY isn't a trophy. It's a tool.”

Most of us know the Golden Circle. Sinek drew three rings, with Why at the centre, How around it and What on the outside, and argued that the leaders and organisations who inspire people work from the inside out. “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

I first came across Simon Sinek and his Why around 2009/10 (an early adopter, I like to think!), and it really hit home. I was working in local government at the time, and my “business language” was confusing people and not landing. I didn't want to drop it, though; if anything, the commercial language was the one that needed to be learnt. So I used Simon's video to help the groups I was working with understand strategy, the operating model and deliverables. In business language, the circle looks something like this:

Reading it again with AI in mind, I think the circle has quietly taken on a new meaning.

AI starts on the outside of the circle

AI is extraordinarily good at the What. Drafting the letter, summarising the case notes, answering the policy question, screening the CV, reconciling the payroll file. It's getting better at the How too: following the process, choosing the next step, routing the exception.

What it doesn't have is a Why. It doesn't know why we handle a bereaved employee differently from a routine leaver, why a good manager picks up the phone rather than sending an email, or why a particular check was put in place years ago. Those reasons sit with people. They very rarely make it onto the process map.

As I wrote in AI and HR: A Match Made in Heaven?, "There's a difference between intelligence and consciousness, and agentic AI has given us plenty of the first without any evidence of the second - whatever the scare stories in the media might suggest." Or, more simply: humans experience life; AI processes information about it.

And yet look at how most organisations are approaching AI. We start with the What: which tool, how many licences, how many agents, which tasks can go. Then we work out the How. The Why, if it appears at all, is a slide near the front of the business case.

That's the Golden Circle back to front. It's also the pattern I wrote about in Are We About to Repeat the Same Mistakes With AI?: implementing the technology without redesigning the work.

Run the Celery Test on your AI programme

Sinek has a lovely device for this, which the new piece brings back: the Celery Test. Everyone will give you advice on what to put in your trolley. If you know your Why, you know which of it belongs there and which to leave on the shelf, however good the offer.

Every vendor, conference and feed is offering us something for the AI trolley right now. So before the next pilot, it's worth asking:

• Does this bring our Why to life for employees, customers or citizens, or does it simply make the What cheaper?
• If it releases capacity, does that capacity go back into the thing we exist to do?
• What might we lose that people genuinely value? It's the question I asked in Video Killed the Radio Star, and the Why is often the answer.

That last one matters. In Before You Delete the Role I argued that roles hold far more than their job descriptions say. The informal work, the relationships, the judgement, the person pulling together all the strands of the workstreams, the "I'll just give her a call": that is often where the Why actually lives. Design it out by accident and you may find you've automated the task and removed the reason.

Your Why is portable. Your job title isn't.

There's a personal side to this too. Plenty of people are looking at AI and wondering what it means for their job. It's a fair question, and nobody should be glib about it.

But if a job is a bundle of tasks, a Why isn't. It's the thread that runs through every role you've had, and it travels with you. AI may take some of the tasks you do today. It can't take the reason you're good at them, or the reason people come to you.

AI may take some of the tasks you do today. It can't take the reason you're good at them, or the reason people come to you.

That opens up options, not just threats. Some people will find their Why is best served in a redesigned version of the role they already have. Others will take it into a new sector, or into a portfolio, fractional or interim career, where you're hired for the problem you solve rather than the job title you hold. Knowing your Why is what helps you tell an opportunity from a distraction. It's the Celery Test again, applied to a career.

Prove it, decision by decision

The line from Sinek's piece I'd most like leaders to take into their AI conversations is this: "Your WHY is something you prove, decision by decision."

Not with a purpose statement on the intranet. With what gets automated and what doesn't. With where the released capacity goes. As Sinek put it this summer, you get the behaviour you measure. If the AI scoreboard is licences and hours saved, that's the behaviour you'll get.

And with whether people are told honestly what is changing and why. In another recent piece another recent piece Sinek warns: "When we go silent, our team fills in the blank. And the story they write is almost never generous." There are few places that's truer than an AI programme nobody has explained.

I've always been honest with people throughout my years of transformation leadership. I know the arguments against it: legal risk, engagement, retention. That hasn't been my experience. If anything, it's been the opposite: honesty builds teamwork. I always tell people that we'll work through it together, learn and grow, and at the end of it we'll all be more experienced, more marketable and more skilled, whether we stay, whether we're allowed to stay, or whether we leave. There are times when legislation limits what you can say, but that's exactly why you build great, authentic and honest relationships as a leader.

There are times when legislation limits what you can say, but that's exactly why you build great, authentic and honest relationships as a leader.

The piece suggests a 30-day sprint: open meetings with your Why, run the Celery Test on live initiatives, and share stories of purpose in action. I'd add one for AI programmes. Before any use case goes to the steering group, ask someone to state its Why in a single sentence. If they can't, it isn't ready.

AI will keep getting better at the What and the How. That makes the Why more valuable, not less, for organisations and for each of us.

So if AI took the tasks off your desk tomorrow, what would be left, and is it the reason you do the job?

Related insight

Are We About to Repeat the Same Mistakes With AI?

Before You Delete the Role, Do You Understand What You Are Deleting?

AI and HR: A Match Made in Heaven?

Video Killed the Radio Star. AI Is Coming for the Job Description.

Sources

• Simon Sinek, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Portfolio, 2009)
• Simon Sinek, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, TEDx Puget Sound, 2009
• SHRM, “Simon Sinek challenges SHRM26 attendees to lead with purpose”, 17 Jun 2026
• Team Simon, “You Found Your WHY. Now What?”, simonsinek.com, 10 Oct 2025
• Team Simon, “You Get the Behavior You Measure”, simonsinek.com, 29 Jun 2026
• Team Simon, “The Leadership Blind Spot That Affects Team Trust”, simonsinek.com, 27 Jul 2026