Steve Jobs and that extra effort that makes the difference

Wired’s Gadget Lab blog recently ran a piece about how Steve Jobs has been emailing customers to answer their questions directly. An interesting question stemming from the article is how Steve Jobs interprets his role as the CEO. What is the role of the CEO?

From all research Nada and I have undertaken, what the role and spread of the responsibilities of the CEO and chairman is is one of the two most difficult questions we’ve had to answer. Unlike most of the literature, we have found that the CEO and chairman roles are what each of the role incumbents make those roles. There seem to be two critical driving factors in the thinking behind those roles: the first is the business proposition, what the business that the CEO leads is all about. Is the business about product innovation? Is the business about being customer-centric? Is the business about being disciplined on cost? Those three elements as examples are concerns for any business. The second critical factor is: which is your company’s primary principle, and which other ones are just operational skills that you have to practice?

In a business that is more at the mature end of market, and really controlling costs is the prime factor, how can a CEO effectively interact with the customer community when in fact that CEO is leading strategies and policies that will reduce costs within the organisation and possibly damage or undermine customer relations, customer service, and being customer-centric? So it’s no surprise in the cost-discipline type of business, that most are hierarchical, with the CEO and the top team tending to be smaller. They’re highly focused on making management very aware of how to deal with their costs and how to reduce their costs year by year, and trying to keep same levels of service year by year (or slightly less service year by year but not by much)–all this comes down to the skill of management. So the CEO under those circumstances is probably more aloof, and that’s not just part of his or her personality, it’s a business requirement.

If Steve Jobs and Apple really have a customer-centric focus to their business, and that is coupled with product innovation, then the example from the top becomes very important. So the CEO responding to customer concerns or complaints or praise is really a very important branding factor. Now how much of Steve Jobs’s time can be used to be customer-centric is another matter, but the fact that the individual is responding to the customer on a business proposition of customer-centricity as critical to Apple, that to me at least makes a lot of sense.

So the first concern to address is: What’s the business proposition of the company? The second is: What makes the difference? Regarding differentiation. in world that’s highly competitive, where in many ways it’s difficult to tell the difference in terms of product quality, service, support, pricing, and/or customer care amongst products and companies, that extra 1% difference creates a unique differentiating factor, and for all I know, Steve Jobs may be achieving just that.

So, under those circumstances, those organisations that do really well examine their context, examine their competencies, are very often quite honest about their weaknesses and what needs to be done to address those weaknesses, and try exceptionally hard to make that 1% difference. We’ve found that context is critical: What is it unique about you? What makes the difference about you? And how do you show that difference even just a little bit? We’ve found that making a 1% difference can have a 10% effect on performance.

So the way Steve Jobs interprets his CEO role (which is someone more informal, distinctly in charge of the business, very creative and at the same time deeply concerned with customers and interacts with customers) could be the result of two things: the business proposition of Apple, and that unique differentiator that makes Steve Jobs stand apart which other companies don’t have.

All CEOs should keep these two factors in mind: what’s the business proposition of your firm, and what is it about you that makes the unique difference that will stand out and make this brand grow? Does it matter whether it’s customer centricity? Does it matter whether it’s excellent stakeholder relationships? Does it matter whether it’s very good internal disciplines within the corporation? And the answer is yes it does, when those little bits of extra effort are linked to a clear business proposition that makes the difference.