A why has to be for others. It's something you give to the world. It's the reason your friends love you because this is the thing that you give them and it fulfills them. This is the reason your clients love you or your fans love you because you give them something. It's something to offer, that's what the why is.

Every single organization - or career, for that matter - exists on three levels: WHAT you do, HOW you do it and WHY you do it.

What I understand about this concept of why is that it functions exactly the same way as parenting or exercise or any of these things we claim to invest in.

If we care about the average working American, then Wal-Mart matters. A lot.

Any parent who tells their kids that they can't attend a school play or go to a soccer match because they have to work is kidding themselves. It's OK to miss a game or two or a performance here and there, but it's not all right to miss the majority of them.

It is like when a player has a slump, we do not trade them, we coach them. It is the same with our employees. The best leaders come to the aid of their people, whose performance is down. Not come down harder on them.

Stand for people. Not a product or service or metric or number. If we stand for real, living, breathing people, we will change the world.