Galvanizing Your Team Around A New Vision: A Steve Jobs Lesson
This article addresses the first 2 minutes of the video. It is based on a paper I turned in as part of a program administered by the University of Michigan.
In the first 2 minutes of this clip showing the introduction of Steve Jobs’ speech approximately 2 months after he rejoined Apple, it is apparent that right off the bat, he wanted to make it clear that he had a different vision for the company than the one(s) that had guided it in recent times.
In language that was as straightforward as possible, he made it clear that he did not agree with the company’s current ideology, and expressed that he was going to change the direction in which the company was headed by cutting away all the noise and distractions in the product offerings of the company. Having himself founded the company, here was someone who clearly believed that the vision that started the company several years ago was still valid today. Returning to basics, reclaiming leadership in the areas that the company had first earned its stripes and rediscovering their purpose as a consumer-driven company were at the heart of this introduction.
Jobs also knew that there would be people in the audience who would be affected by this new insistence on, or redirection of, focus; so in order not to lose those people right from the start, he made sure to mention that he had spoken to, and shared his vision with, the relevant project leaders, and that they had themselves bought into his drive and were positively anticipating the start of this new direction in which the company would go. I think this was an absolutely genius thing to do.
Again, we must not forget that here was a man who had only recently rejoined the company; so a lot of the people in the audience must have been in the organization (continuously) for longer than Jobs, and they must have been used to doing things a certain way. They were therefore bound to view this “outsider” with at least a little wariness. They would however be more likely to trust the project leaders that they had worked with for a longer period of time. By mentioning that these project leaders were on board, Jobs, in one move made sure that he had more attention, cooperation and enthusiasm from the audience than he could have hoped to receive from a group of people uncertain of how to feel about this outsider coming to change their “way of life”.
If there were as many unnecessary projects as he made it seem in the speech, that probably explains why he took 8 to 10 weeks to make his inaugural address to the company he’d just taken over. I imagine it could take that long to convince an army of project leaders to get aboard a new vision. But it is clear why it had to be done, because by making sure they were on board, he could boldly tell the rest of his employees that their leaders (people they were more likely to trust) were with him, implying that they themselves had nothing to fear, and thus ensure that he could quite easily galvanize them around his vision.
In 8 to 10 weeks, and then in 2 minutes, Steve Jobs accomplished something that too many leaders are unable to do the entire time they are in positions of leadership: He effectively communicated a vision centered on change without disenfranchising an audience used to doing things the old way.
