I Stalked Steve Jobs

02/02/21 • 8 min

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Crack The Behavior Code

I was a young CEO and I needed answers. Steve Jobs had them. There was only one thing to do.

So I sent a FedEx letter.

Then I sent another.

Then I started calling.

Then I sent another FedEx, and called some more. Finally, after 7 FedExs and 12 phone calls, Steve’s assistant said he wanted to talk with me.

“You keep sending FedExs and calling. So let’s end it. What do you want?” Steve said, with his characteristic charm.

“Five minutes of your time. I really admire your accomplishments and as a young CEO I have a few questions no one else can answer.”

“Bring a timer.”

“I will. Oh—and thanks.”

He had already hung up.

My surface agenda was to get 5 minutes of advice, watch how Steve’s mind worked, bask in his brilliance, then have a breakthrough.

My subterranean agenda was to find hope again. It was the early 1990’s and I’d left my engineering post at Microsoft. I was depressed and wanted to know why we weren’t really changing the world as fast and as well as we could. Windows hadn’t deeply changed people, hadn’t deeply helped. Wasn’t technology supposed to do that? All I saw were the limitations of software, hardware, peripherals. I’d left feeling frustrated after years of 12-14 hour days pounding code that refused to become bug free.

Remember those chunky white metal kitchen timers from your childhood? The ones with the dial and the ticka ticka ticka sound and the “bing!” ringer? Two weeks later, timer in hand, I shaked Steve’s hand and set the dial for 5 minutes. We’re at a dark conference table at NeXT. He is slouching at the head of the table, to my right. Ticka ticka ticka.

I won’t bore you with the questions I asked, they were mere prompts to get Steve talking. What I do want you to know is that during this conversation, which was almost 18 years ago, Steve shared his vision of the future.

And it was glorious. He described a world where our computers were so seamlessly integrated into our lives that everything we needed was easily accessible. He described the iPod, iPad, iPhone nearly 2 decades before they hit the market. I watched how his brain moved—without limitation—from what might enhance a customer’s life, to what that would mean to them and how they would benefit, to how this would change the world.

He didn’t question that whatever he envisioned could, and would, be created. He didn’t agonize over whether current limitations would hold him back.

I could feel my brain expanding, it felt so big around Steve, so open and limitless. I was tracking him, following his twists, turns, expansions. I felt so smart around him, and it was glorious and freeing and...

Ticka ticka ticka ding! My five minutes was up. I rose to leave, bowing a little as I backed away.

“I’m not done with you yet. Sit down.”

And zoom! We were back in brain expansion mode immediately, flying into the future, the wind blowing our hair, everything possible, everything important. And we needed to create it. It was our destiny.

Forty five minutes later Steve released me. Sitting in my overheated car in the sunny Redwood City parking lot, my head bursting with the remarkable, complex, complete vision of Steve Jobs in my head, I made a commitment.

I would no longer see barricades. Stumbling blocks would now be seen as stepping stones to something better, or something to crawl over or walk around. Previous limitations would now be a mere triviality, at worst a slight inconvenience. There were insanely great things to create and we were here to create them and that’s all there was to it. All thoughts to the contrary were irrelevant.

That’s how I still live today.

Want to meet your “Steve”?

3 Steps To Get A Meeting With Any VIP:

1) Find out what causes they care about. Write a 1⁄2 to 1 page genuine letter about their specific accomplishments you admire. Offer five hours donation of your time to their favorite non-profit for five minutes of their time (request a meeting in person versus via phone).

2) Send your letter via FedEx. Call to ensure it was received and bond with their Executive Assistant. Only call first thing in AM or last thing in PM. They’re more likely to answer then.

3) Repeat step 2 until you get a meeting. If for some reason this doesn’t work, give the letter to them by hand at an event they are speaking at. Then repeat step 2 until you get a meeting.

In 30 years in business the approach above has always worked for me. The key is the letter. Be authentic, heartfelt, compelling. Care. Make it a work of art.

Years later after my father had died from pancreatic cancer and my uncle Ed then had it, my mother asked me to call Steve’s office to compare his treatment to my uncle’s—perhaps we could improve Ed’s odds. The woman who answered in Steve’s office hesitated for a moment, looking up my name, I s...

I was a young CEO and I needed answers. Steve Jobs had them. There was only one thing to do.

So I sent a FedEx letter.

Then I sent another.

Then I started calling.

Then I sent another FedEx, and called some more. Finally, after 7 FedExs and 12 phone calls, Steve’s assistant said he wanted to talk with me.

“You keep sending FedExs and calling. So let’s end it. What do you want?” Steve said, with his characteristic charm.

“Five minutes of your time. I really admire your accomplishments and as a young CEO I have a few questions no one else can answer.”

“Bring a timer.”

“I will. Oh—and thanks.”

He had already hung up.

My surface agenda was to get 5 minutes of advice, watch how Steve’s mind worked, bask in his brilliance, then have a breakthrough.

He didn’t question that whatever he envisioned could, and would, be created. He didn’t agonize over whether current limitations would hold him back.

Ticka ticka ticka ding! My five minutes was up. I rose to leave, bowing a little as I backed away.

“I’m not done with you yet. Sit down.”

That’s how I still live today.

Want to meet your “Steve”?

3 Steps To Get A Meeting With Any VIP:

2) Send your letter via FedEx. Call to ensure it was received and bond with their Executive Assistant. Only call first thing in AM or last thing in PM. They’re more likely to answer then.

3) Repeat step 2 until you get a meeting. If for some reason this doesn’t work, give the letter to them by hand at an event they are speaking at. Then repeat step 2 until you get a meeting.

In 30 years in business the approach above has always worked for me. The key is the letter. Be authentic, heartfelt, compelling. Care. Make it a work of art.

Previous Episode

Why Change Initiatives Fail and How to Fix Them

Why do so many change initiatives fail?

In my coaching practice, I constantly help clients navigate change. And to navigate change successfully, we need to understand all the levels in which changes occur in humans. Otherwise, your change efforts will either fail, or be superficial—and you’ll miss the awesome transformative experience you were aiming for.

The 6 Levels Where Change Happens In Humans

Let’s start by exploring the different levels where change happens and how you can maximize your change success and agility. This will help you understand what’s really at stake in change scenarios, and why you may not be getting change as fast as you’d like.

The first outside level is Environment; the physical space, the emotional environment. Environment changes can be permanent: you can change offices, move offices or temporary chnages: you can take a walk, change rooms, turn the lights on or off.

Have you ever experienced a big change: new home, new office, new organization chart...but it didn’t change anything?

For many years, one of my friends kept moving. He’d wake up in a new city, with a new job and yet everything would still be the same, because he didn’t change himself, how he was being in life. In my leadership and culture coaching work, I often am brought in after re-organizations that didn’t fundamentally change anything... because the organization only changed at one level.

Environment is the easiest level of change—that’s why it’s so tempting--but it doesn’t complete the story. If you are not conscious of the other levels, environmental change is not going to give you the organization or the team of your dreams.

The next level is Behavior – maybe as a New Year’s resolution you decide to go to the gym. How long does that last? Maybe you stop eating dessert for a few weeks. That’s a behavior change. Then... a few weeks later, that tiramisu or cheesecake looks really good.... And there you go.

Let’s say you want meetings to be run differently, or workflow to happen differently, and you make a big push, and send out a bunch of emails...and people temporarily adopt a new approach. Within a short time, though, they start slipping back to the old way of doing things because it’s safer, more familiar, that way. So we need to go deeper into the levels of change.

The next level is Capability – groups of behaviors. Standing is one behavior, speaking is one behavior, standing and speaking in front of a room full of people is public speaking, which is a capability. We often train our team to acquire new capabilities, but without attention to the next two levels, these changes don’t stick, or they don’t help us to change the culture, the way we are being together. We must go deeper still.

The next level is Belief – Rules, rights and wrongs, shoulds and shouldn’ts, goods and bads, cans and can’ts about the world or other people. For an organization, this means our standards, the things we hold as normal. Is it normal in your company to gossip, to complain, to engage in any kind of negativity? When we believe that our safety depends on connecting with people in these kinds of negative ways, then no matter how many communication classes we go to, no matter how many different org charts or desk configurations we try out, ultimately we’re still going to spiral into negativity. Which leads us to...

The next level, which is Identity – For a person these are just like beliefs—except they are about oneself. “I AM _blank_” (a good person, hard-working....). For an organization, these are the values that really exist...which may or may not be the values posted on the wall.

And finally, we reach the Core -- This is the nucleus of change. The heart and soul level of what you exist to accomplish, your purpose, it stems from your mission and your values but it’s really about how people engage together on that mission.

How To Succeed At Organizational Change

One of our clients had struggled with

Next Episode

Why Your Team Doesn't Care

Why Your Team Doesn’t Care: The 4 Ways You’re Crushing Your Culture

Are your team members highly accountable?

Do they have a “Thank God It’s Monday” attitude?

Do they take tons of initiative?

If not, you’ve likely got Crushed Culture.

It’s a disease. And it’s going to become an epidemic if we don’t do something about it. Evidence: three companies I used to love now have Crushed Culture: Lenscrafters, Hilton hotels, and even at times (gasp) JetBlue.

It’s spreading.

According to the recent Gallup poll on employee engagement:

“Seventy-one percent of American workers are ‘not engaged’ or ‘actively disengaged’ in their work, meaning they are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and are less likely to be productive. This trend remained relatively stable throughout 2011.”

What? This trend has remained relatively stable. Wow.

Does this concern you?

A lot?

And don’t think Crushed Culture symptoms are in the rank and file alone.

“Our team is full of order takers.”

“Why do we have so little accountability around here?”

“We’re going through a lot of change. Why don’t our people embrace it?”

These are but a few of the most common complaints and concerns I often hear from the C Suite. And I’ve been listening for a long time—almost 30 years. Employee disengagement, or Crushed Culture, has spread to the C Suite too.

Four Steps to Cure Crushed Culture:

Step 1: Emotional Equity is greater than Financial Equity. We all know what financial equity is—money—stock, comp packages, golden handcuffs. All the things we think will make people loyal to a company and keep them engaged. But this no longer works, as Gallup proves, and especially with Millennials. Nope, they, like the rest of us, want to feel like we’re part of something bigger, like we’re on a glorious mission, like our work matters, like we’ll leave the world just a little better than we found it, and we want to achieve that (in part) during our work hours.

Here’s the formula:

Put energy into someone by explaining why your company is doing what it is doing, what your mission, vision, and values really mean, mentor them, talk challenges out with them, pay attention to them and you’ll start to build emotional equity. That equity will now give you access to their heart, mind, Rolodex, idle thought cycles. Now they’re thinking about how to help the company innovate better, solve a specific problem, etc. as they shower and commute and whatever. That access to a person’s additional resources will enable you to influence outcomes more effectively. Now you have a shared cause, you’re on the same team, you’re safe and you belong together. It’s emotional.

Step 2: Stop The Whining. The C suite, management, staff, everyone needs to get off what I call the Tension Triangle. This is where people bounce from victim to rescuer to persecutor. Stephen Karpman, MD, first created this as the Dreaded Drama Triangle or DDT. The DDT is comprised of three roles: Victim (the role where someone is “doing” something to them), Rescuer (who tries to remove the Victim’s suffering, often without being asked), and Persecutor (which the Victim blames for their suffering, yet the Persecutor is often feeling victimized too). David Emerald has extended this triangle, and I have extended it further. The net-net is Victims are complaining because they want something—so we help them shift to be an Outcome Creator. The Rescuer is just trying to end the suffering, so we help them become an Insight Creator by asking the right questions so the Victim can get what they need by themselves. The Persecutor is usually frustrated by trying to make things happen, so we help them become an Action Creator. Once everyone is trained in shifting their most prevalent role to a healthy alternative, the whining ends. Now that’s empowerment.

Victim becomes Outcome Creator

Rescuer becomes Insight Creator

Persecutor becomes Action Creator

Step 3: Invest ONLY for ROI. Training your team is expensive. So only do what matters. Every person in your company needs to be trained in Problem to Outcome (to stop the Whining), Leadership Effectiveness (so they become leaders in their own right), Influencing Outcomes and Others, Accountability, Communication, and Execution. All these be neuroscience-based ...