Steve Jobs: Master Manipulator
Guy points out this video of Steve Jobs speaking to the Cupertino City Council. Guy comments that this is a great informal presentation, but it seemed very awkward to me (especially the conversation at the end). However, in spite of that or maybe because of it, I do think it was a brilliant example of how to influence people.
If you’ve read Cialdini’s book titled Influence: Science and Practice
Cialdini outlines several influence strategies but I’ll just mention two. “Reciprocity” is the you-rub-my-back-I’ll-rub-yours give and take principle that we often react automatically to. When someone gives us something, we feel compelled to return the favor. “Consistency” is the drive for us to stay self-consistent. For example, if someone can get you to state that you’re charitable, you’ll most likely give more charity in the future. The book goes into much more detail, of course.
I think Jobs does a great job exploiting these two influence principles and it really wouldn’t have mattered how poorly he spoke. First, he doesn’t ask for anything — he just wanted the council to hear the good news. I think the council was actually taken aback a bit. Here’s a busy, important, famous CEO just popping by to give them an update. Wow! The council members seemed surprised and went out of their way to tell Jobs how happy they were that Apple was staying in Cupertino. At the very end, the Vice Mayor told him that an Apple employee should visit with one of their planning committees. There’s reciprocity at work.
The more subtle win, I think, was the fact many of the councilors said how happy they were that Apple was staying in Cupertino (and they all applauded at the end). These comments were driven by the reciprocity principle, too, but they feed into the consistency principle. Now that it’s on public record that they value Apple, their future decisions will be based on that. They will be driven to stay consistent with that outlook. For example, they may vote to give Apple tax breaks because of these simple statements.
Brilliant.
May 7th, 2006 at 8:58 am
It was a great presentation because of the result. “Awkward” isn’t the test. It was effective, IMHO.
Thanks,
Guy
May 7th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Very true, Guy. When I think “great” presentation, I think smooth and convincing. Of course, the smooth part isn’t important if the convincing is done.
That’s why I wrote “in spite of” the presentation itself it was a great example of influence. As I watched his performance, it felt “off” to me and if I were a councilor, maybe I would have picked up on that and his influence attempt would have failed. A smoother presentation might have increased the odds of his strategy working, but in this case it didn’t seem to matter.
Thanks for the link!
May 7th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Perhaps, Steve was fatigued - after all, it was
the evening. More likely, he was intentionally
speaking in a colloquially slower tempo and manner,
steering away from his usual sharper mode of presentation,
and deployment of his notorious RDF. Steve presented
himself as a non pretentious, down to earth businessman
who genuinely seemed to wish to maintain good relations
with the town he grew up in. The council was moved by both
his demeanor and his reputation of producing extraordinarily
innovative and life enhancing tools.
May 7th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
I agree that Steve appears to be “intentionally speaking in a colloquial” manner. It’s always important to match your presentation style to your audience as well as to your objective. This is especially so when attempting a reciprocity influence strategy. By presenting in a folksy “neighbor to neighbor” manner he was able to more effectively engage the council members than if he had made a “flash, bang” shock and awe pitch. Well done Steve!
(And thanks Jay and Guy for bringing this to our attention - great blogs from each of you!)
May 7th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
>If you’ve read Cialdini’s book titled Influence: Science and Practice, you’ll be able to pick out what he did. Jobs
Yes, I thought the same thing as I watched it, Jay. I just started reading Cialdini’s book a few days before I saw this talk by Steve. Excellent book and excellent example here. Thanks for the great post.
Garr
May 7th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Thanks for the comments.
I think DMann and BD are onto something. I dismissed the awkwardness as Jobs being un- or underprepared; however, maybe it was part of the act.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I don’t think Steve Jobs planned out how he’d influence the city down to all these details. I understand he’s quite the salesman, so I suspect many of these “tricks” come naturally to him. I do think that the visit was planned with more in mind than a simple news update.
Keep the comments coming. I also thought the Influence book was amazing and this topic and example are fascinating.
May 8th, 2006 at 5:34 am
Great post, Jay.
I originally came upon the video through Garr’s site, presentationzen.com (Garr, I’m big fan, BTW), and from that angle, as a presentation, it was less significant than I expected. I guess I fell into a trap: “Jobs is a great presenter => therefore his every presentation must be awesome”… and needed to correct my view with “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”, though it was far from “awkward”… But I digress…
Something totally different made a bigger impression on me.
Jobs is a visioner, and master planner. The land’s been acquired. He foresees what’s lying a few years ahead. Probably not much trouble (it’s Apple, after all, the largest employer in town), but there could be slight beraucratic delays, zoning restrictions, design constraints (there are those too, as I learned), timing issues, etc… So he’s pre-empting these obstacles, and is setting up the playing field. “Asking” will come later.
The “awkward”, almost shy, casual manner (”I’m just one of you guys”), juxtaposed with “Apple is the biggest employer in town”, is, I think, VERY much planned. Brilliant.
BTW, have you read “iCon”, the unautorized bio of Jobs? Great book.
May 8th, 2006 at 5:37 am
typo corrected: bureaucratic…
May 8th, 2006 at 5:45 am
P.S. I think a classic example of the “Reciprocity” principle was captured in the Godfather quote: “One day, and that day may never come…”
May 8th, 2006 at 11:23 am
I agree that this presentation was probably very well planned and even scripted. Steve is a *very* busy man, so his visit was hardly an in promptu visit to chat with the council. As a major CEO, any public presentation he makes is likely to be carefully crafted in advance to ensure just the right set of messages are conveyed. He did bring some papers to the lectern and appeared to be looking down at them at times.
Of course he is also a natural evangelist, so his presentation style is probably an on-the-fly adaption to his audience rather than an act carefully rehersed back at the office.
With regard to “Apple is the biggest employer in town”, I noticed a possible Freudian slip on the part of two of the councilmembers. The councilmember that introduced Steve first refered to him as “Mr. Jobs”, but swallowed the “s”. The second time that member refered to him she seemed to omit the “s” altogether, introducing him as “Mr. Job”. Toward the end another councilmember refered to him as “Mr. Job” no “s”. The missing “s” may simply represent a language or cultural characteristic, or may reflect the poor sound support on my laptop, or even compression losses. However, it is more bemusing to think of them as Freudian slips in support of Steve as the largest employer.
May 8th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
BD: I didn’t pick up on the “Mr. Job” thing. Very amusing.
Nomad: He’s definitely thinking long term like you say. I am only trying to point out the techniques he’s using (as I understand them). I only point out two, but you also point out other influencing techniques which are also quite effective.
The Godfather quote is indeed reciprocity, but it’s explicit. Cialdini’s book points out that there are internal drives (learned early as we are socialized) that cause you to reciprocate even if it’s not explicitly asked of you. And if you’re not aware of them, you’ll respond automatically. Quick example from the book — a psychology experiment showed that people were more likely to buy raffle tickets from a stranger who bought them a Coke earlier on (even people who didn’t like him). There are also more subtle examples.
May 8th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Oh yeah — I haven’t read iCon. The reviews on Amazon are definitely mixed (although I hate people that write reviews admitting they haven’t read the book!). I’ll add it to my reading list.
May 9th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Here’s a juxtaposition for you: Cialdini on Powerpoint entrapment From Ian Parker’s article “Absolute Powerpoint”:
“Last year, three researchers at Arizona State University, including Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology and the author of “Influence: Science and Practice,” conducted an experiment in which they presented three groups of volunteers with information about Andrew, a fictional high-school student under consideration for a university football scholarship. One group was given Andrew’s football statistics typed on a piece of paper. The second group was shown bar graphs. Those in the third group were given a PowerPoint presentation, in which animated bar graphs grew before their eyes.
Given Andrew’s record, what kind of prospect was he? According to Cialdini, when Andrew was PowerPointed, viewers saw him as a greater potential asset to the football team. The first group rated Andrew four and a half on a scale of one to seven; the second rated him five; and the PowerPoint group rated him six. PowerPoint gave him power. The experiment was repeated, with three groups of sports fans that were accustomed to digesting sports statistics; this time, the first two groups gave Andrew the same rating. But the group that saw the PowerPoint presentation still couldn’t resist it. Again, Andrew got a six. PowerPoint seems to be a way for organizations to turn expensive, expert decision-makers into novice decision-makers. “It’s frightening,” Cialdini says. He always preferred to use slides when he spoke to business groups, but one high-tech company recently hinted that his authority suffered as a result. “They said, ‘You know what, Bob? You’ve got to get into PowerPoint, otherwise people aren’t going to respond.’ So I made the transfer.”
Sad, but apparently true. The Master Influencer influenced. By Powerpoint. Yeech.
May 9th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
The video was great - you guys analyze a lot into this. For example - asian americans don’t always say the s on the end of words as loudly as native speakers - but so what really. The Johns Hopkins University is nearby, I did postdoctoral work there and I cringe when people say John Hopkins. What about nuc-u-lur versus nuclear?
But I am heavily influenced by what I actually have seen come out of Jobs initiatives too. I have an iMac and I have read iCon (which is a bit redundant - since the authors did not have enough material I think - but good information nonetheless). I too am a vegetarian and believe in many of the things Jobs says and stands for. I started out being pissed by his cocky nature about 24-25 years ago - but I have learned my error in that. He is a visionary guy - period. I don’t know that I’d survive working close to him though.
May 9th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Les: Interesting. “Authority” is one of the influence principles Cialdini cites in his book, so he made the right move.
Maybe he’s made the move to Keynote by now. That article was written in 2001 so I wonder if PowerPoint would still have that effect.
Here’s a link to the Ian Parker article for anyone interested.
John: I agree it’s a bit of a stretch to read too much into the “Job” thing. However, the influence strategies are real and if you are aware of them you’ll be better off.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:38 am
>>Jobs didn’t ask for anything, but the council gave him a lot.
Jay, don’t you think this was intentional? If Jobs would have asked for something, anything, the council immediately would have wanted to privately discuss the issue. This way, they were able to give him, and Apple, praise because he didn’t ask for anything.
Sometimes you get more when you want less.
Brandon Hopkins
May 13th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
It absolutely was intentional. I thought that was the whole point of my post.
November 18th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
I received an interesting innoculation against the reciprocity principle many years ago. I was walking home from the bus stop when someone tried to give me a flower claiming that she was honouring “Be nice to people day”. I was suspicious but what reason do you give for refusing a gift. But, as soon as I’d taken the flower she asked for a donation, ostensibly to help poor people. Now, I knew nothing about her charity so I volunteered to write a cheque to my favourite charity as soon as I got home. She wouldn’t accept that and eventually asked for her flower back!!
This experience made me very aware of how strong the reciprocity principle is AND that people can very cynically take advantage of it. Consequently I’m much more able to resist it.
November 18th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
Ah, yes. That’s one of the examples from the book. The Hare Krishnas used the same technique. They even fished the flowers out of the garbage!
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:56 pm
[...] As Guy Kawaski pointed out there is a better explanation of why this appearance was so effective by Jay Zipursky. [...]