Lessons from writing Apple’s Credo, #1: fall in love
Credos and cynicism don’t mix.
I’d been at Apple 11 years when the opportunity to write Apple’s new credo arose. (To hear the backstory, watch this TikTok.) In corporate shorthand, let’s say I’d seen my share of ups and downs. And to be honest, I was pretty down when the project started.
Jaded. Burned out. Cynical.
But if I’d stayed that way, Apple’s Credo in its current form wouldn’t exist.
Before I could write a single word, I had to fall in love with Apple again. So I started watching and reading every interview of Steve Jobs I could find. I absorbed firsthand accounts of lives profoundly changed by Apple technology. I immersed myself in historic moments that revealed core truths about Apple, its people, and their values. I even mined my own history to find profound gratitude for the role Apple played in my life…
My dad quitting his job working nights at the post office, putting his savings into an Apple computer, starting a business, and never looking back. 💗
Getting my first college job at the Apple computer lab on campus and finding a lifelong friend. (Hi, Atena! 👋)
Landing a job at the local Apple store and finding financial stability and security for the first time in my life. 🙏
I didn’t know it at the time, but what I’d stumbled into was an exercise in empathy. Empathy for all the lives Apple touches. Empathy for the hopes and sacrifices, dreams and disappointments, exertions and aspirations of the people who work there. Empathy for what it takes to do good work on hard days. Empathy for how wildly human and frail and powerful — all at the same time — any audacious endeavor is.
If you’re trying to write a credo statement of your own and find yourself getting stuck, here’s a tip: identify where you’re holding onto cynicism.
Don’t fully believe in what you’re writing? (Or what you think you’re supposed to write?) Ask yourself if a cynical belief feels more true. And if you want to change that, see if you can find three reasons why the opposite of that belief might be as true or truer than your cynical one.
(For this exercise to work, these opposites have to be real and true for you — not your mom or your boss or your neighbor.)
Our minds crave proof. And once they’re taught what to look for, we’re really good at finding it. 😉
The takeaway for this lesson? Seek empathy. Suspend cynicism. Fall in love.
Also in the Apple Credo series:
I wrote Apple’s Credo 6 years ago, here’s why it’s still relevant
Anita Stubenrauch is an ex-Apple creative and the founder of Cause:Effect Creative, an agency that helps brands express visionary ideas with poetic power, and the host of the Hyperactive Imagination podcast, a high-voltage channel for creativity. Want to pick Anita’s brain? Check out her consulting offers on Volley.
