Steve Jobs (9 page)

DEVELOP A MESSIANIC SENSE OF PURPOSE
33

Oprah Shares Jobs’s Secret to Success

Follow your passion. Do what you love, and the money will follow.

Most people don’t believe it, but it’
s true.12

OPRAH WINFREY

Gallup organization. After interviewing thousands of peak per-

formers, he arrived at what he considers the single best definition

of leadership: “Great leaders rally people to a better future,” he

writes in
The One Thing You Need to Know
.13

According to Buckingham, a leader carries a vivid image

in his or her head of what a future could be. “Leaders are fas-

cinated by the future. You are a leader if, and only if, you are

restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissat-

isfied with the status quo.” He explains, “As a leader, you are

never satisfied with the present, because in your head you can

see a better future, and the friction between ‘what is’ and ‘what

could be’ burns you, stirs you up, propels you forward. This is

leadership.
”14
Jobs’s vision must have certainly burned him, stirred him, and propelled him forward. Jobs once told John

Sculley he dreamed that every person in the world would own

an Apple computer. But Jobs did not stop there. He shared that

dream with all who would listen.

True evangelists are driven by a messianic zeal to create new

experiences. “It was characteristic of Steve to speak in both vivid

and sweeping language,” writes Sculley. “ ‘What we want to do,’

he [Steve Jobs] explained, ‘is to change the way people use com-

puters in the world. We’ve got some incredible ideas that will

revolutionize the way people use computers. Apple is going to

be the most important computer company in the world, far

more important than IBM.’
”15 J
obs was never motivated to build computers. Instead, he had a burning desire to create tools to

unleash human potential. Once you understand the difference,

you’ll understand what sparked his famous reality distortion

field.

34
CREATE THE STORY

An Incredible Journey

Apple was this incredible journey. I mean, we did some amazing

things there. The thing that bound us together at Apple was the

ability to make things that were going to change the world. That

was very important. We were all pretty young. The average age

in the company was mid to late twenties. Hardly anybody had

families at the beginning, and we all worked like maniacs, and the

greatest joy was that we felt we were fashioning collective works

of art much like twentieth-century physics. Something important

that would last, that people contributed to and then could give to

more people; the amplification factor was very lar
ge.16

STEVE JOBS

What Computers and Coffee

Have in Common

Lee Clow, chairman of TBWA/Chiat/Day, the agency behind

some of Apple’s most notable ad campaigns, once said of Jobs,

“From the time he was a kid, Steve thought his products could

change the world.
”17
That’s the key to understanding Jobs. His charisma is a result of a grand but strikingly simple vision—to

make the world a better place.

Jobs convinced his programmers that they were changing

the world together, making a moral choice against Microsoft

and making people’s lives better. For example, Jobs gave an

interview to
Rolling Stone
in 2003 in which he talked about the iPod. The MP3 player was not simply a music gadget, but much

more. According to Jobs, “Music is really being reinvented in

this digital age, and that is bringing it back into people’s lives.

It’s a wonderful thing. And in our own small way, that’s how

we’re going to make the world a better place.
”18
Where some people see an iPod as a music player, Jobs sees a world in which

people can easily access their favorite songs and carry the music

along with them wherever they go, enriching their lives.

DEVELOP A MESSIANIC SENSE OF PURPOSE
35

Jobs reminds me of another business leader whom I had the

pleasure of meeting, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Prior to our

interview, I read his book,
Pour Your Heart into It
. Schultz is passionate about what he does; in fact, the word
passion
appears on nearly every page. But it soon became clear that he is not as passionate about coffee as he is about the people, the baristas who

make the Starbucks experience what it is. You see, Schultz’s core

vision was not to make a great cup of coffee. It was much big-

ger. Schultz would create an experience; a third place between

work and home where people would feel comfortable gather-

ing. He would build a company that treats people with dignity

and respect. Those happy employees would, in turn, provide a

level of customer service that would be seen as a gold standard

in the industry. When I reviewed the transcripts from my time

with Schultz, I was struck by the fact that the word
coffee
rarely appeared. Schultz’s vision had little to do with coffee and everything to do with the experience Starbucks offers.

“Some managers are uncomfortable with expressing emo-

tion about their dreams, but it’s the passion and emotion that

will attract and motivate others,” write Collins and Porras
.19

Communicators such as Steve Jobs and Howard Schultz are

passionate about how their products improve the lives of their

customers. They’re not afraid to express it. Coffee, computers,

iPods—it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are moti-

vated by a vision to change the world, to “leave a dent in the universe.”

This book is filled with techniques to help you sell your ideas

more successfully, but no technique can make up for a lack of

passion for your service, product, company, or cause. The secret

is to identify what it is you’re truly passionate about. More often

than not, it’s not “the widget,” but how the widget will improve

the lives of your customers. Here is an excerpt from an interview

Jobs gave
Wired
magazine in 1996: “Design is a funny word.

Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if

you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac

wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily,

it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have

to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a

36
CREATE THE STORY

The Charismatic Leader

When I wasn’t sure what the word charisma meant, I met Steve

Jobs and then I knew.
20

FORMER APPLE CHIEF SCIENTIST LARRY TESLER

passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand some-

thing, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t

take the time to do that.
”21
Yes,
grok
is the word Jobs used. Just as Howard Schultz isn’t passionate about the product itself, coffee,

Jobs isn’t passionate about hardware. He’s passionate about how

design enables something to work more beautifully.

Think Different

Los Angeles ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day created an Apple televi-

sion and print advertising campaign that turned into one of the

most famous campaigns in corporate history. “Think Different”

debuted on September 28, 1997, and became an instant clas-

sic. As black-and-white images of famous iconoclasts filled the screen (Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Richard Branson,

John Lennon, Amelia Earhart, Muhammad Ali, Lucille Ball, Bob

Dylan, and others), actor Richard Dreyfuss voiced the narration:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-

makers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see

things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have

no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree

with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you

can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They

push the human race forward. And while some may see

them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people

who are crazy enough to think they can change the world

are the ones who do
.22

DEVELOP A MESSIANIC SENSE OF PURPOSE
37

The campaign won a ton of awards, became a cult favorite,

and lasted five years, which is an eternity in the life cycle of ad

campaigns. The campaign reinvigorated the public’s appetite for

all things Apple, including an interest in one of the most influ-

ential iconoclasts in the computer world, Steve Jobs himself.