How Steve Jobs REALLY helped Apple get back to basics

HINT: It involves talking to customers

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” is an often quoted piece of Steve Jobs wisdom I’ve hated for a long time. It has given license to so much misguided energy, and I’ve seen too many companies use it’s premise to avoid talking to customers many times in my career. I want to dispel the implication of this statement once and for all.

The sentence before the quote illuminates things further and changes the intent considerably (That full response is even longer and you can read the full interview here):

“…it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

The line “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups.” realigns this quote in a significant way. There are plenty of articles and on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, in using focus groups in product development.

Think Different

I really hate venerating Jobs any more than is necessary but this video of an internal meeting with Apple executives and managers, just a few weeks after his return to Apple, is something else. He reestablishes focus at Apple in 10 weeks and 16 minutes and introduces “Think Different” in what is still a fresh and iconic looking ad campaign.

In particular it is worth noting the number of times Jobs talks about customer feedback.

“We actually got rid of 70% of the stuff in the product roadmap. I couldn’t figure out the damn product line after a few weeks. I kept saying ‘What is this model? How does it fit? I started talking to customers, and they couldn’t figure it out either.”

And also:

We have not kept up with innovations in our distribution…we’ve got anywhere from 2–3 months of inventory in our manufacturing supplier pipeline and about an equal amount in our distribution channel pipeline. So we’re having to make guesses four, five, six months in advance of what the customer wants. And we’re not smart enough to do that; I don’t think Einstein’s smart enough to do that. So what we’re going to do is get really simple and start taking inventory out of those pipelines so we can let the customer tell us what they want and we can respond to it super fast.

Selling the idea

It’s interesting to watch how effective Jobs is at selling the idea to the team. As he talks through the changes and builds toward the big reveal he drops hint’s as to what is to come by calling out “Einstein”, and “we need to Think Different.”

Marketing is about values

His take on marketing and values (linked below), is also masterful in its focus and clarity.

It lays the groundwork for one of the greatest business comebacks in history and is a worth watching for anyone thinking about the subjects IMO.

The section where he says “This is a very complicated world. This is a very noisy world. And we’re not going to get a chance for people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.” is particularly significant. Save yourself the expense of a marketing degree and just internalize these concepts and you’ll do just fine…

A brand is not about the benefits of features

His subtle lampooning of agencies is pretty funny. He goes on to talk about finding and stating what Apple’s core value is, as one of the great brands in history. Again I’ll note that they went back to their customers to rediscover this core value.

“We started working eightweeks ago and the question we asked is, our customers want to know, ‘Who is Apple and what is it that we stand for? Where do we fit in this world?’ And what we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that really well…Apple at the core, it’s core value, is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe.”

Now say what you will about your belief in that statement. But you can’t deny how effective Jobs is at translating this to the company and rallying the troops around it. He goes on:

“The question is not ‘Can we turn around Apple?’…I think it’s ‘Can we make Apple really great again?’”

By most measures, the answer to this last question has to be ‘Yes’. They executed on this plan by talking to customers and listening to the market, tightening up the supply chain and increasing their ability to respond to customer demand and by communicating this plan with absolute clarity and conviction Steve Jobs and the Apple team turned around a company that was destined to fail.

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