# Simon Sinek — the golden circle *Source: · markdown twin of the entry page.* *An influence on **Dinis Cruz** — one of 25 entries in his register.* - **tier** stated — on Dinis Cruz's list, thin or absent in the corpus, awaiting his briefing document - **kind** framework - **status** stub — blocks 1 and 3, plus the research plan — awaiting Dinis Cruz's briefing document - **briefing** requested Why → How → What. On Dinis Cruz's list, with no corpus trace — and with one piece of circumstantial evidence that is either supporting or embarrassing, depending on the answer. ## Block 1 — The anchor *Start With Why* — the book (2009) or the TED talk (2009) — Simon Sinek - anchor: **Anchor not confirmed** — the talk and the book land differently, and which one did the work matters. [N3](../../admin/comms.html#n3). *Linked, never rehosted.* ## Block 2 — In his own words The circumstantial evidence: **this site network is organised why-first.** Every site opens on the argument for its own existence before describing what it contains, and every commissioning brief in the network states a thesis before a scope. That is either the golden circle applied, or it is a house style that arrived some other way and now looks like it. Only Dinis Cruz can settle that, and the site should not settle it for him. It is a good illustration of the general problem this register has: **a pattern you can see is not evidence of the influence you expect to have caused it.** ## Block 3 — The principle **Purpose before mechanism: say why this exists before saying what it does, because the why is what people can act on.** ## Block 7 — The wider library - **How great leaders inspire action (TED, 2009)** — the talk; eighteen minutes and the whole idea - **Start With Why (2009)** — the book-length version - **The Infinite Game (2019)** — the later argument, and closer to what a long-lived open-source project actually faces ## Awaiting the briefing document Named by Dinis Cruz; nothing in the corpus names Sinek or the golden circle. The why-first structure of the network is a resemblance, not a citation, and this entry keeps the two apart. **Research plan.** Confirm the anchor in [N3](../../admin/comms.html#n3). Then check Dinis Cruz's conference decks and talks for explicit why-first framing — a deck that opens on purpose is weak evidence, a deck that *names the golden circle* is strong. **A boundary note**: the golden circle is a registered trademark in some uses. A redrawn figure for commentary is fine; it must never become this site's branding. [The infographic rules](../../admin/comms.html#q7). ## The corpus evidence None. This influence is on Dinis Cruz's own list and the corpus scan found nothing to attach to it — which is the definition of the STATED tier. --- CC BY 4.0 — Dinis Cruz, with AI co-authorship (Claude, Anthropic). The anchor work belongs to its author and is linked, not licensed here.