by Cam Barber
Now, you might be wondering if this is, in fact, a motivating leadership message to his team! However, his team worked out that “This is shit” actually meant; “Why is this the best way to do it?”
This ultimately forced people to think through their projects and make sure it was the best option. It helped create a culture that was focused on making insanely great products.
Changing the framework of a discussion
Jobs also used messaging to dissolve problems. The ‘Antennagate‘ crisis happened soon after the launch of the iPhone 4 in July 2010.
The iPhone 4 was a great smartphone, but it used a design where the antenna was wrapped around the outside edge of the phone. If you held it in a certain way, a finger would bridge the gap between 2 antenna segments and the signal was weakened.
It became known as the ‘death grip’ and in some cases might even cause a dropped call. There was a huge media outcry with calls for a worldwide product recall.
Steve Jobs rushed back from his family Hawaiian vacation to address the negative perceptions. He held a media presentation that changed the framework of the discussion. He led with a message that surprised many people. Rather than apologising, he said, ‘Phones aren’t perfect’ and proceeded to explain why it’s not a big problem.
“We’re not perfect. Phones are not perfect. We all know that. But we want to make our customers happy.”
This is a great example of a leadership message. He decided that the way people were viewing the problem was wrong – and he gave them another view. That’s leadership.
Some people said it was more like bullshit than leadership. However people’s anger and frustration dissolved. And to top his message off, he said, “…but we want to make you happy so here’s a free plastic ‘bumper’ that solves the problem”. He offered that to anyone who wanted one. His message changed the conversation in 4 short sentences.
The most watched speech in the world
“Stay hungry. Stay Foolish.”
This message took on a life of its own after Steve Jobs made a low-key speech at Stanford University in 2005, that later went viral on the internet. Over 50,000,000 people have watched it. Most heard about it through word of mouth.
The full speech was later published in Fortune magazine. Now, I’ve been reading Fortune for over 20 years and never before or after, have they published a speech. This speech made an impact.
Why was this speech so good? It contains a life leadership message. It was written for a stadium full of 20-somethings who were graduating university and starting their working lives (it turns out that many millions more needed to hear this message too).
The speech covers the fascinating story of Steve Jobs’ life building Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios, as well as a discussion of the meaning of life and death. Everything he talks about in the speech reinforces, and leads to, his powerful take-home message.
The ‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish’ message is short and simple. However it encapsulates the ideas reflected throughout the speech. Here are some of the other points within the speech that support and reinforce his shorter message:
“The only way to do great work is love what you do. If you haven’t found it, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day like it’s your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and ever since then, for the last 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking.”
“Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
So…his message for your life is:
“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
(By the way, guess which headline the Fortune editors chose when they published the speech?)
David Morrison, Army Chief - Changing the culture
In 2013, the leader of the Australian Army had to deal with a crisis. In the midst of another sex scandal, around a ‘Jedi Council’ internet sex ring, a leadership speech delivered by Chief of the Army, Lieutenant-General David Morrison, was posted as a 3 minute video.
The speech is good. However, people forget most of what they hear no matter how good a speech is. It’s the catchy message that has the most impact. His leadership message:
“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”
This message has now worked it’s way into leadership conversations all around the world. Here are 3 reasons why it works so well:
1. It makes every listener responsible for leadership
This message forces people to see that their actions make a difference to the culture of the organisation. Morrison said:
“Every one of us is responsible for the culture and reputation of our army and the environment in which we work. If you become aware of any individual degrading another, then show moral courage and take a stand against it.” “If that does not suit you then get out.”
2. The message is unmistakeable
It’s the nature of the human mind that listeners will forget most of what the speaker says. That’s why message recall is so important. I spoke to dozens of people about this speech and asked them what they thought the key message was. They all nominated ‘The standard you walk past is the standard you accept’.
Admittedly, they couldn’t all repeat the message word for word, some people repeated it as: ‘If you walk past something, you’re accepting it’ or ‘You have to set the standard and not walk past it’ or ‘There was a great line from that speech! Something about standards… Help me remember, um…’ But when they were reminded of it, they showed instant recognition. Not 100% recollection perhaps, but recall on most leadership speeches is zero.
3. His delivery is aligned with the message
Delivery skills follow the clarity of your message. They flow naturally when the message is clear in your mind and therefore, clearly reflected in your words. Each speaker should be involved in crafting their own messages to help their natural delivery skills magic to work.
In this speech, Morrison shows genuine emotion. We see his pain and we are sure he means what he says. His delivery is slow enough to emphasise what’s important. He seems like it’s his message, not something he said because his PR team told him he had to make a speech.
He comes across as a leader because he shows how he cares about his organisation. It’s a serious tone, but it is seen as a caring tone as well because he cares for the people in his team and wants them to thrive in his organisation.
CEO - The reason for the new plan
Change is always resisted. And most organisational initiatives fail to live up to their potential as a result. So, a good leader explains why things are changing.
The CEO of a large entertainment company asked my opinion on his new Company Values initiative being rolled out. I said, ‘The values look fine, but what’s your message?’
He said, “What do you mean? There’s no message. These are the values. My leadership team has agreed on them. We will explain them to our senior managers and they will pass them on to the rest of the team. Simple. Why are you always going on about the message, Cam?”
“Ok, how long has it been since the last ‘Company Values’ rollout? It might have been called a corporate purpose, vision, mission statement or corporate philosophy”, I asked.
“Oh, about 18 months.”
“What about the one before that?” I asked.
Pause… “About 2 years before that” he responded.
I a
sked if any of his direct reports had been in the company for 5 years or more, and had therefore experienced 2 similar rollouts.
His eyes widened as he said, “Yes, most of them”.
“So, is it possible that some of the smart ones will be thinking, ‘I wonder how long these ‘Values’ will last before the next rollout?’ Is it possible that a number of your broader team will smile and nod to your rollout, but think that the smart move would be not to invest too much effort into this version?”
His head dropped briefly, before he sat up tall and said, “You’re right. That’s exactly what they’ll be thinking!”.
Leaders are often so close to an issue, they fail to remember that staff have not experienced the full debate and may not be clear on the ‘reasons why’. There is usually a need for a message to position a new initiative.
The ‘values’ versus the ‘values message’
A new initiative is a bit like a new house that staff are told they must now live in, while the message addresses (no pun intended) why they need a new house. The message deals with the natural resistance to the effort and uncertainty of the move.
So, before our conversation, the message to launch the new ‘Values’ was essentially:
‘We are all going to work with these 6 values from now on. Here they are… (the 6 values were listed and examples provided).’
After we identified the unanswered questions in the minds of the audience and recognised the resistance they would create, we came up with this message:
‘Here are the new values. You might be wondering what happened to the last set of values. Good question. They were okay, however the organisation is changing for the better and these new values underpin the change. Living these values is a better way to work because we’ll all have more freedom to try things – that is, you’ll have more support, which should make work more enjoyable and satisfying.’
This message guides the presentations and other conversations needed to ensure the change initiative ‘sticks’. And it provides clear direction for anyone attempting to talk about the issue.
The weakest link
The message supporting an initiative is often the weakest link in the chain when attempting culture change or behaviour change. Getting this message right breaks down obstacles to acceptance and creates momentum.
MESSAGING GETS YOUR IDEAS HEARD
Anita Roddick - Media exposure for free
Great entrepreneurs are usually great at crafting vivid messages. Messages that live in our minds and are passed onto others.
Founder of The Body Shop, Anita Roddick, is a prime example of achieving prolific success through communication skills. Anita founded the Body Shop brand with just 1 store in 1976 and grew it to 2,000 stores. For most of their high growth years, The Body Shop didn’t spend a single cent on advertising.
Yes, you read that correctly!
Anita saw opportunities to promote her messages everywhere – including staff T-shirts, shop windows, walls and even delivery trucks.
She grew The Body Shop by rejecting conventional marketing. She crafted memorable slogans and made bold public pronouncements that manifested a brand identity.
The last time I saw her speak at a leadership event in Sydney (along with Jack Welch, Bill Clinton and Tom Peters), she was introduced by best-selling author Marcus Buckingham with, “I don’t think there’s any more extraordinary human being on earth than Anita Roddick. You know when they use the term ‘walk the talk’? She invented the term walk the talk”.
How to get Massive Media Exposure without Advertising
Anita Roddick had an amazing ability get her ideas heard. Even her consumers became marketers as they shared ideas and leaflets. She liked to be provocative and took strong positions on issues. For example:
“Educate rather than create hype.”
The Body Shop got a lot of publicity through their social activism. They stood for something – and got press attention as a result. For example, Anita Roddick was a vocal opponent of animal testing, and that crusade became one of her biggest calling cards.
As a result of her unconventional stand on world issues, The Body Shop got an enormous amount of attention from the press.
‘Ruby’ Barbie Doll
Another memorable example was their unconventional take on their Barbie doll dubbed ‘Ruby’. The campaign featured a doll with a large, curvy figure with the slogan;
“There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do.”
The image was posted on Body Shop windows across the world and challenged people to think differently about existing stereotypes of beauty.
Anita’s Ruby campaign in 1997 kick-started a worldwide debate on body image and self-esteem. People discussed it and the media talked about it.
This is the holy grail of communication: transferable messages!
It’s amazing to think that Anita Roddick was nominated for UK Marketing Hall of Fame, even though The Body Shop didn’t run advertising campaigns.
Anita Roddick’s business vision was founded on being different. Business was a means to drive social and environmental change, as well as make a dollar. Her messaging created financial success as well. The Body Shop was sold to L’Oréal for almost $1 billion in 2006 and Anita pocketed $200 million. Her message about business was:
“Find new ways to push the limits of business and make it a force for
positive change.”
She said, “Knowledge, unless it goes through the heart, is dangerous”. It was through her genius as a communicator that Anita Roddick was able to inspire people, create change and give people things to believe in.
Her ‘key to leadership’, however, is my favourite. She said:
“Leadership is communication.”
She said that the most important tool you’ve got as a leader is communication.
“Make it bold and enlivening and passionate – if you can’t communicate, you’re just not there.”
Another technique she used was repetition. That’s right, repetition.
You’ve got to keep talking, and keep on communicating your message over and over – and over! I remember her take home message from that leadership session in Sydney:
“When you are exhausted from repeating yourself, and you think everybody else is exhausted from hearing – repeat it again! You’re probably just starting to get your message across”.
If you read her great autobiography ‘Business as Unusual’, you’ll notice that nearly every page has a message in bold, double sized text to illuminate the big ideas from the detail.
Allan Carr - The EasyWay to stop smoking
In a world of gum, patches and other ingenious nicotine delivery methods, ‘The EasyWay to stop smoking’ is considered the most successful method to quit. It’s amazing. And it’s built simply on a vivid message and supporting explanations, via his book or seminars. The EasyWay book has sold 13 million copies and has many raving fans, including:
“It was such a revelation that instantly I was freed from my addiction.” - Sir Anthony Hopkins
“Everybody who reads the book quits.” - Ellen DeGeneres
“At the end of the book you take your last smoke and you’re done. I haven’t smoked since.” - Ashton Kutcher
“His method removes your dependence while you smoke. It worked for me.” - Sir Richard Branson
Allen Carr quit smoking after 33 years as a 100-a-day chain smoker. He claims that 2 key pieces of information crystallised in his mind just how easy it was to stop.
First, a hypnotherapist told him smoking was ‘just nicotine addiction’ which Allen had never perceived before. Second, his son John lent him a medical handbook which explained that the physical withdrawal from nicotine is just like an ‘empty, insecure feeling’.
From there, he isolated a message:
“Smoking doesn’t relax you, smoking creates an ongoing agitation that can only be relieved by having a cigarette.”
The smok
er had an existing belief: smoking is relaxing. And they needed to relax in this stressful world, so giving up smoking was just too difficult. So, the message the smoker had in their mind as they lifted their arm and placed the cigarette between their lips, was:
“Smoking a cigarette will relax me.”
If you’re going to change the way people think, you have to understand the beliefs or messages they already carry in their mind. Allen Carr understood this and developed a method that was able to replace the existing message in the mind of the smoker.
In fact, as you read his book, or progress through his seminar, you are asked to periodically have a cigarette. So the new ideas are linked with the current behaviour. At the end of the book or session, you take your final smoke, but it’s now associated with a new message. As you lift your arm and place the cigarette between your lips, the message now is:
“Smoking a cigarette will create agitation.”
Of course, he needed more than just a message. He needed explanations, analogies, stories and examples. So he wrote a book and developed a 3-hour session which reinforced his message. These sessions are delivered by 100s of psychologists around the world to guide people out of the maze of smoking addiction.
Within his book and his courses, he dispels myths and uses the following explanations for his message:
Myth 1. Smokers need willpower to quit: He explains that, contrary to their perception, smokers do not receive a boost from smoking: it only relieves the withdrawal symptoms from the previous cigarette, which in turn creates more withdrawal symptoms once it is finished. He explains that the ‘relief’ smokers feel on lighting a cigarette, the feeling of being ‘back to normal’, is the feeling experienced by non-smokers all the time.