Authors: Peter Sander
Steve described it this way to
BusinessWeek
in 2004 when he was asked why people wanted to work at Apple: “The reason is, is because you can’t do what you can do at Apple anywhere else. The engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics companies, they don’t understand the software parts of it. And so you really can’t make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now. Apple’s the only company that has everything under one roof.”
You can see a chicken-and-egg question in this. The chance to do something special lures in the best and most creative minds. And it takes the best, most creative minds in a supportive environment to do something special. Which came first? It started with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak; great minds were drawn their way, and a few great products were created. It has been an upward spiral ever since. Great minds spawn great visions, which in turn create great products; more great minds jump onboard, and the upward spiral proceeds.
Again, for
BusinessWeek
, when asked about what drives Apple employees, Steve commented: “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve
chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is.”
Of course, we see many great minds in today’s business world. But if they don’t have great visions, and if they approach things in a “what’s in it for me” manner, that will also trickle down to their teams. They will attract only people with a “what’s in it for me” mentality to the team. When “what’s in it for me” is the culture, people become disengaged from their work, and mediocrity—or worse—is the natural result.
Somewhere over the horizon beyond plain-vanilla motivation lies
inspiration
. Inspiration happens when people actually feel something, when they are
moved
by the potential result. You may be motivated to mow the lawn and trim the weeds, because if you don’t, they’ll take over your yard, and by the way, you’ll save $50 on a landscaping service. But you may also be
inspired
by the idea of having the nicest-looking yard on the block, or even more by a possible
Sunset
magazine article. Who knows?
A greater expectation, or a “noble purpose,” as author Carmine Gallo describes it, engenders greater commitment, harder work, and more creativity. People become more involved. Gallo goes on to note the Pygmalion effect, a psychological phenomenon where “the greater the expectation that is placed on people, the better they perform.” Have you felt this when people at work were really counting on you to pull something together? As a parent or in your romantic life? In sports? Talented people tend to rise to the occasion; the right mix of people with the right vision in mind typically rises to this. The result: not only do they meet tough expectations, but they typically beat them.
In today’s corporate world, what’s more likely to happen is a “negative Pygmalion”—if you don’t do X, here are the consequences. Yes, it’s a high expectation, but it doesn’t involve vision, brilliance, or game-changing results. It’s another form of failure referencing. You may be motivated, but you won’t be inspired.
Inspiration leads to the kinds of sacrifices and perseverance necessary to get things done; mere motivation does not. That kind of inspiration must come from the top.
So did Steve Jobs merely set the vision, lead a few meetings, set the ball rolling, and go hang out at a bunch of Wall Street analyst presentations or go home awaiting
the next Macworld or other product announcement forum? Not at all; he was deeply involved at almost every level with almost every critical project. And he was just as deeply involved in making his people feel important, eager to beat expectations, and ready to work on the next product. Perpetual inspiration was a key component of Steve’s leadership style.
Steve was an active practitioner of “managing by wandering around,” or MBWA, a phrase popularized by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard of HP. Steve attended checkpoint meetings, design reviews, and other meetings related to product development. Team members knew that at any time he might show up at their desks to find out what was happening. When
BusinessWeek
interviewed him in 2004, he estimated that he left half the day-to-day management to his executive team so that he could “spend half [his] time on the new stuff.”
Steve’s behavior in meetings and in these individual encounters was described by some as being petulant, harsh, and even boorish at times. He would ask a few tough questions and might get impatient, but according to most accounts, the tone settled into a normal conversation once he realized that what people were doing was on track with the vision and with the product development path.
By keeping his fingers on the pulse this way, he was doing three things. One, he was staying informed about the nuts and bolts of a project so that he could ask better questions and make more astute observations at the next meeting—or at the next desk. Two, he was rekindling the inspiration, reminding each employee how important
her
contribution was. Three, he was setting a good example, letting people know that just because he was a world-renowned billionaire, he was not above what they were doing. According to former VP and right-hand man Jay Elliot, “People become very connected to what they are doing—creating the product—because they know how connected their leader is.”
Steve told
BusinessWeek
in 2004: “We’ve got 25,000 people at Apple. About 10,000 of them are in the stores. And my job is to work with sort of the top 100 people, that’s what I do. That doesn’t mean they’re all vice presidents. Some of them are just key individual contributors. So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know—just explore things.”
For Steve Jobs, being everywhere and hands-on was about product and company, not about power. With Steve Jobs, hands-on could be an exhilarating experience.
From the early days, Steve Jobs learned to recognize and share success with his employees. Early accounts describe personal recognition of employees for every success delivered, including personally delivering bonuses, free products, and free medals and T-shirts commemorating a product launch to people’s desks. Travelers got to travel first class, and everyone got to share in a pleasant work environment with refrigerators stocked with drinks, usually Odwalla juices, a Jobs favorite.
Back in the Mac days, he allowed each designer to personally sign a placard that was reproduced and placed inside each Mac case (most buyers never saw it, but it meant a lot to the team). Celebrations were frequent and notable, not just at launch but at every milestone, with pizza parties in the office and “team-building” off-sites in the Carmel/Monterey, California area. Free products are still the norm, with every employee receiving an iPhone on that product’s launch. Employees have always received products either free or deeply discounted, which simultaneously boosts morale and gets the product out there for outsiders to see. In today’s world of gadgets, it’s surprising how rarely this happens.
Rewards are nice, but just as important is letting everyone know how important
his
contribution is. Steve
was a master at that craft. While he could “take away” pretty quickly if you weren’t with the program, he could also “give” with great generosity and praise. He was nothing if not empathetic. Messages were delivered in such a way as to both reward and recognize people and fire them up for the next accomplishment.
An interview with
Fortune
magazine in 1998 gave a nice summary of the Steve Jobs culture and how it differed from the rest: “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”
Here are a few strategies for building a Steve Jobs culture:
•
Create an exciting vision
. It is hard to create an innovation culture without one. Do something special.
•
Find pirates
. But not just any pirates—pirates with passion.
•
Seek diversity of experience
. Recognize that diversity expands the view of the human experience. Diversity expands the view of how it can be moved forward.
•
Look at the résumé; then look beyond the résumé
. Look at the meta-data. Look for signs of success and forward-thinking creativity.
•
Keep the organization simple
. Keep it as holistic as possible. No self-serving bureaucracies. The process should support innovation, not the other way around.
•
Let people take intelligent risks
. Success reference; don’t failure reference.
•
Avoid siloed organizations and avoid siloed thinking
.
•
Be the vision and be the product
. Live it every day.
•
Don’t be afraid to expect too much
. If the vision is right, it will energize people.
•
Stay close to your team
. Empathize. Mingle. Pat people on the back. Be honest. Keep it about the product and the customer, not about money and power.
•
Always set an excellent example
.
We used to dream about this stuff. Now we get to build it. It’s pretty great.
—Steve Jobs, Worldwide Developer
Conference, 2004
At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in 2010, Steve Jobs took the stage again:
We’re introducing iPhone 4—the fourth-generation iPhone. Now … this is really hot. And there are over 100 new features, and we don’t have time to cover them today, so I get to cover eight of them with you, eight new features of the iPhone 4. The first one: an all new design. Now … stop me if you’ve already seen this [laughter in reference to previous alleged design leaks] … believe me, you ain’t seen it. You’ve got to see this thing in person; it is one of the most beautiful designs you’ve ever seen. This is beyond a doubt the most precise thing, one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever made. Glass on the front and the rear and stainless steel running around, and the precision with which this is made is beyond any consumer product we’ve ever seen. It’s closest kin is like a beautiful old Leica camera. It’s unheard of in consumer products today … just gorgeous … and it’s really thin … this is the new iPhone 4 [applause].
Steve went on for another two minutes to describe the new features, including the two-part stainless steel case that doubles as a dual-purpose antenna “built into
the structure of the phone; it’s never been done before … it’s really cool engineering.” He finished, “I don’t think there’s another consumer product like this … when you hold this in your hands … it’s unbelievable.”
This presentation, like most of Steve’s presentations, clearly showed his deep involvement with and knowledge of the product. How many other CEOs have you seen publicly hold up or sit in or drive or experience one of their company’s products? I’m continually amazed that, with a few exceptions like Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca and Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, you almost never see a CEO in the same picture as one of the company’s products, let alone holding it and demonstrating it and telling everyone how it works as lovingly as Steve did.
Steve Jobs sent a clear and undeniable message: he cared.
In Steve Jobs’s world, Product is the culminating climax and Holy Grail of the leadership chain, which starts way back at Customer. We have two more chapters in this book, Message and Brand, which, of course, add icing to the cake. But make no mistake: Apple’s mission and Steve’s mission stand at the peak of the mountain when an excellent game-changing product—a
whole
product—finds
its way into the marketplace and into a customer’s hands.
What Would Steve Jobs Do?
is not a product design manual, so we won’t go into much detail about product design and the history of Apple product designs here. Instead, in this chapter, we will explore the importance of product and the role of product in the greater leadership process.
I have identified three standout characteristics of product, which are tied closely to Steve’s style of leadership. As a leader of your own organization, you can take cues from Steve’s attitude and his emphasis on these three attributes of a product. Beyond the products themselves, these attributes also define how Steve saw the world, and many of these principles were applied not only to products, but to the corporation as a whole: