Authors: Peter Sander
That’s the difference. Inventions, on their own, may be creative, but still not move the needle. Successful companies
innovate
. They create products; they integrate technologies into things that people
want to buy
. Really good innovations aren’t just products; they are game-changing
solutions
to customer problems, like air conditioning, internal combustion engines, or even those colorful little candies that melt in your mouth, not in your hand—M&Ms.
I will define innovation in a way that probably would have made sense to Steve Jobs:
Innovation is an invention with a customer and a marketable vision in mind.
To qualify as an innovation, an invention must be marketable. It must be noticeable, and it must be noticed. It must have true
value
; that is, it must be worth more to customers than they have to pay for it. And, importantly, it must be profitable to the company. The vast majority of inventions fail these tests. A few pass it, but not by enough to really move the needle. Can you remember the “what’s new” about the latest PC or MP3 player or printer introduced by an Apple competitor?
And some innovations, like the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, have become synonymous with the term.
One can also look at the Japanese to understand the role that vision plays in innovation. As a rule, the Japanese understand customers, but they focus on mainstream customers, and they look for incremental improvements in the existing experience. They don’t connect the customer experience with a vision for how it could change, only how it could be better within the confines and channels of the current product. They do a very good job at that, perhaps better than anyone else in the world.
WBut, with a few exceptions like the Sony Walkman, they don’t define new product concepts or new markets. They stop short of being innovators. They fail to “think different”; their visions tend not to go very far ahead—like into the digital era with Walkman. Are they successful? Yes. But one can only imagine what they could do with a visionary leader like Steve Jobs in charge.
Just as most Apple products introduced since Steve Jobs’s 1997 return are considered to exemplify innovations, Steve Jobs himself was often considered to be synonymous with the term “visionary.” I’ll spend a few minutes on the term “visionary,” as that is one of the best ways to capture what a vision is, why it’s important, and how you can develop your vision skills as a leader—even if you aren’t a visionary yourself.
The term “visionary” is thrown around rather loosely at times. Occasionally it comes up in a negative sense; in fact, some dictionary definitions focus on the notion of a “dreamer,” someone who has visions or dreams that really aren’t practical, let alone marketable. Someone with good ideas who can’t get anything done.
I think we can discard that concept of a visionary, at least as it applies to Steve Jobs and Apple. Here are the best two definitions I found for the word “visionary.”
• A person of strong and creative imaginative power and, often, the ability to inspire others (
Webster’s New World College Dictionary
)
• A person with a clear, distinctive, and specific vision of the future, usually connected with advances in technology or social/political arrangements.
Okay, I got the second definition from Wikipedia. But whoever contributed that definition really captured the essence of what a visionary is and what he brings to the table, at least in today’s tech-influenced world. I might add that the visionary can also
communicate
the vision to others in a way that inspires them, which circles back to the Webster definition. As we will see, effective visions—visions that can be acted upon—are clear, distinctive, and specific, and in Steve Jobs’s world and in many commercial enterprises, they are connected with advances in technology.
We’ve identified six elements of the Steve Jobs Leadership Model: Customer, Vision, Culture, Product, Message, and Brand.
You can get close to your customers, although it may take a while for you to really get a sense of them. You can build an innovation culture, and you can lead the way in building exciting products. You can deliver the message (although that might take some public speaking or even theatrical training), and you can build your own personal brand and the brand of the enterprise.
But can you become a visionary? Can you learn to be a visionary? Or is it a natural, inborn skill and talent? Indeed, becoming a true visionary is a tall order. Visionaries in the past, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King to Steve Jobs, typically weren’t made; they were born with many of the innate thought patterns and skills that enabled them to see the future and communicate it to others.
But can you learn to think like a visionary—to see the world the way a visionary does? This might be possible, and the rest of this chapter engages with that idea. To start with, we need to identify some of the key parts of a vision.
I’ll adapt the definition of a vision from the Wikipedia definition of a visionary:
A vision is a clear, distinctive, and specific view of human activities in the future and how those activities might be changed or made better.
It’s worth a few minutes to explore this definition.
The genius of a good vision is that it is something distinctive and specific that is also clearly enough articulated that we can get behind it. It is something worth following.
For example, it might appear that slogans like “Achieve World Peace” or “Cure World Hunger” are visions. They are causes that we can all get behind, and they are clear—so far as they go. But are they distinctive and specific? Not really. If they offered a clue to how the world could really change to combat these problems and to become better, they might start to resemble a vision.
Steve Jobs’s vision of integrating an iPod Touch, a phone, and an Internet communications device into one single package was more than a slogan. We don’t have a specific vision statement to accompany the launch. But we can feel the vision of combining these devices, and adding the app store (which wasn’t even mentioned), in a way that would have a considerable impact on how people used mobile devices, not only as phones, but as Internet and entertainment devices. It is clear, it is distinctive, and it is specific.
The “distinctive and specific” part is where so many visions fail.
Taking a look again at the “Achieve World Peace” panaceas, the “changed or made better” part, ironically, is another place where they tend to fall apart. They don’t have a clear, distinctive, and specific way to change the world or make it better. Jobs’s vision for the iPhone obviously considered the economies and “coolness” of a single device, and if those economies didn’t change the customer’s world, the 500,000 apps available to run on the iPhone probably would.
Even the elegantly simple form factor and display screen were bound to make the smartphone user’s world better. As Steve himself said, before the iPhone, “smart-phones weren’t very smart.”
The best visions are simple, and can be articulated in at most a sentence or two. Many of you are familiar with the “elevator speech,” where you describe yourself, a product, or a project that you’re working on clearly and succinctly in the time it takes to ride an elevator to a nearby floor.
An elevator speech may even be too long for a vision. Some people advocate articulating a vision in 10 words or fewer.
How about:
An elegantly simple, smart iPod Touch, phone, and Internet connectivity in a single device.
That’s 14 words. How about:
An iPod Touch, phone, and Internet connectivity in a single device.
That’s 11 words, close enough … and almost exactly what Steve said at Macworld 2007.
Or, paraphrasing another Jobs quote:
Take state-of-the-art technology and make it easy for people.
As a customer, or as an employee, can you see how you could get your arms around such a core vision? Can you see how it would guide and direct your thoughts and actions as a member of this team?
Sometimes you can find a company’s vision right out in front in a corporate or product tagline. Used-car
retailer CarMax uses “The Way Car Buying Ought to Be.” Those seven words say a lot. They’re clear, distinctive, and specific, and they suggest at least indirectly how the world is going to change. They tell both the customer and the employees what the company is all about, even though they don’t go very far into the “how” of that promise.
A local employee benefits and insurance agency in my area uses “Employee Benefits. Made Simple. Done Right.” That also goes a long way; again, both the customers and the employees have an idea of what the agency is all about. Anything that doesn’t make employee benefits simpler or done right shouldn’t be attempted.
DWhile it isn’t very specific, Apple’s “Think Different” tagline says as much about the company and its direction as any 2 (or probably 10) other words possibly could.
As most of you in the corporate world know, large organizations can get bogged down in layers of strategic planning (mission, goal, objectives, strategies, tactics), all laced with the latest jargon. These often-lengthy
documents cover everything about who you are, what you do, and whom you do it for. Mission statements have their role, although they have a way of not getting much attention once they’ve been crafted, distributed, and filed in every employee’s file cabinet.
As Carmine Gallo points out in his book
The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs
, “A mission statement describes what you make; a vision describes how you’re going to make the world a better place.”
As a follower, which would you rally around: a leader with a clear ten-word vision of how to make the world a better place, or a leader with a six-bullet-point mission statement?
A visionary has passion, but vision and passion aren’t the same thing. A passionate leader without a clear vision won’t succeed; likewise, neither will a visionary leader without passion.
Passionate leaders without a vision will often confuse the troops or put a higher level of energy and stress on the organization. That organization will flounder around with frequent starts and stops and strategy changes, and will eventually burn out. Visionary leaders without passion will have a hard time keeping their troops engaged,
and some may question the veracity or credibility of the vision in the first place if the leader doesn’t seem to be excited about it.
Vision and passion go together. A leader who has a good vision and is passionate about it will get further with subordinates. Abraham Lincoln showed that with his unwavering focus on preserving the Union and his undivided passion for doing so. Steve Jobs exuded passion to the absolute max in his creation of a team, in his messages to the team, in his attention to the details of the project, and in his theatrical product launches. Nobody could question his passion, and thus, nobody could question his vision. The passion made the vision stronger.
As a leader, you need to realize that passion and vision must be in balance; too much passion without enough vision is confusing and stressful; too much vision without passion can be bland and alienating.
More often than not, a vision is a synthesis of ideas or products or technologies around a specific customer need or idea. For those of us who don’t develop visions naturally, or at least as naturally as Steve Jobs did, here are a few patterns you can follow to build or enhance a vision:
•
Visions combine things
. Ideas, products, and technologies are “mushed” together to arrive at an epiphany solution. The iPod Touch, a phone, and an Internet communications device became the iPhone. Earlier on, a small disk drive, a new battery, FireWire, and iTunes turned into the iPod. Still earlier, a graphical user interface, a one-piece cabinet, and a 3.5-inch floppy drive became the Macintosh.
•
Visions connect things
. Visionaries can apply or “cross” existing concepts or technologies across new platforms. The modern “big-box” retail format was crossed with the traditional lumberyard to come up with Home Depot, and was crossed with the used-car business to create CarMax. The love of coffee and an Italian ambience were crossed with the decline of alcohol and the corner bar to create the Starbucks coffee vision. The iPad could be loosely described as a cross between a PC and an iPhone.
•
Visions apply the new to the old
. This is similar to the connect idea, except that it specifically involves new technologies. Digital technology and miniaturization can be applied to modernize a traditional music (or book) library. Microwave technology, developed for defense applications, can be used to cook food (that originally seemed to be a bigger
vision than it actually turned out to be, because microwaves don’t cook all foods well). Many a vision for how to apply the Internet to almost anything came forth during the dot-com boom—but just because someone has a vision doesn’t mean it’s right!