Thank God Steve Jobs Never Wrote Code



Copyright: avisdemiranda / 123RF Stock Photo

I was asked to speak at a company meeting this past week, and I am always interested in what the CEOs, CFOs, and COOs are trying to convey to their people.  What is their message? First of all, there are a lot of clichés and war room messages.  "Circle The Wagons", "Stand And Deliver", "Take Ownership", and "Be The Best" are just a few of the many themes I've heard from these meetings.  It seems odd to me that many of these themes are based on movies or phrases from the current lexicon or business jargon.  It's never something visionary or different, just an old term rephrased or changed to suit the needs of the company executive.  I never feel like the company officers are really invested in the term or the theme, because they're not.  The terms are stale, the executives are stale, and they create no motivation for the people in the room. Basically, a lot of these meetings are down right BORING.

Unfortunately, a lot of companies are led by "bean counters", or "numbers guys", who care only about the company financials and not the company vision.  They are simply trying to survive but not create something great.  In this particular meeting the company message was "Grow It And Own It", which meant the sales people needed to expand the business which would give them an opportunity to acquire more ownership in the company with stock options or grants.  The CEOs vision was to grow the company 30% in the next year.  30%! Granted the company was the smallest in its market but it still had revenues near $100 million.  Moreover, the overall market was only growing at a rate of 4%! WTF?  I was listening to the CEO speak and I remembered him telling me about his history with the company. He had started as an engineer in the company and worked his way up through the ranks.  However in this instant, he was still thinking like an engineer!  He had no idea how he was going to grow 30%, he just knew that in order to reach his goal, the company had to grow 30%, even with a market growth of just 4%.  I'm not an engineer, but I was curious as to how he was planning on making this plan work, because statistically it didn't add up.

The room was filled with about 10 sales managers and 50 reps all trying to figure out how they were going to grow at a rate of 30%, and they were looking to him for the answers.  There was palpable tension in the air when he revealed they were going to bring a new product to the market.  People were stirring in their seats and getting excited about the big reveal, and I thought back to when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone to the world.

The year was 2007, and the cell phone market was booming.  Ericcson, Motorola, and Nokia all were big players in that space and it appeared no one was going to overtake them any time soon.  Cell phones were clunky and cumbersome and people wore them with clips on their belts.  You had to flip them open and pull up the antennae in order to get a good signal and none of them allowed you access to the Internet, or if they did it was limited access. You couldn't access an app because there was no such thing as an app! It's hard to believe this was just 8 years ago.

So what did Steve Jobs and Apple do?  They took a market that was closed and opened up a whole new market space.  It was new and exciting and people told him that he was crazy for entering into the cell phone business.  Apple was a computer company not a cell phone company.  Yet he had been successful with the iPod, why not change the cell phone industry.  Steve Jobs was not a coder, he was visionary.  He wasn't an engineer he was a conductor, orchestrating changes on a global scale.

So when this CEO was about to show this revolutionary new product, even I got excited.  As he went through his presentation he talked about how it would change the industry. All the reps were on the edge of their seats.  I could see the anticipation building as the CEO talked about all the qualities this product would bring and the benefit it would provide to customers. Some of the sales reps seemed to actually be salivating, like dogs waiting to be fed.  And when a picture of the product finally flashed on the giant screen, I thought they would all leap out of their seats and shout "hurray", but instead they slumped.  It turns out that the revolutionary new product wasn't new at all, nor was it revolutionary. It was a product that had been on the market for 5 years already that the company had purchased along with all the patents and IP that came with the product.  The CEO was planning on re branding it and selling it in other markets.  Collectively the entire room heaved a sigh and the energy and excitement was gone.  I could here the managers and reps frustration.

"If they couldn't sell it, how the hell are we gonna sell it?"

"I swear I thought he was going to introduce the new iPhone and instead he gave us a flip phone."

"Great! A new product to sell that doesn't do anything new or different."

" How is this going to revolutionize the industry?  It's an old product."


I don't think this was the reaction the CEO was hoping to get.  I think he was hoping they would stand and applaud, but they remained in their seats, heads down, contemplating their future and the future of the company.  As he stood there on the stage, a man alone, I felt sorry for him.  He was an engineer, not a visionary.  He was deep in a forest of formulas and codes and he couldn't get himself out.  He couldn't see beyond his computer screen to the bigger picture; changing lives, changing markets, or changing the world.  He didn't need to think outside the box, he needed to stand outside the box.  This is how you change the world.

Thank god Steve Jobs never wrote code.