Everyone is fired up about the Steve Jobs appearance at the Cupertino City Council to present plans for Apple’s modern, spaceship-esque campus that will become their new HQ. It’s a neat looking building. I’ll certainly go visit it and take photos of it. However, I don’t care about the building or the appearance.
What I care about is how Steve handles himself when he’s Steve and not Steve presenting a new product. I can certainly see the correlation of a new technology product and a new campus being a “product” but Steve was very much himself here.
MG Siegler (on his Tumblr blog did a great job of summarizing the ordeal). I’d like to borrow a few of his notes.
11) When asked if Apple would offer the city free WiFi (like Google does in nearby Mountain View), Jobs smiles and says that if they’re paying taxes, he thinks the city should take care of those things. Then he quips, “Now, if we can get out of paying taxes, I’ll be glad to put up a WiFi network.”
12) “I think we bring a lot more than free WiFi.”
14) The mayor pulls out his iPad 2 at one point and gushes about it — then begs for Jobs to build an Apple Store in Cupertino (Jobs declines because he doesn’t think it will be successful enough due to low traffic).
15) Every council member is absolutely eating out of Jobs’ hand. (“Thank you so so much.”) At the end, the mayor asks that everyone give Jobs a big round of applause.
You must watch the entire presentation because how Steve acts is very much like you’d see him in meetings and interactions with partners, colleagues and peers day to day. Steve will tell a story to bring you in, share how wonderful this idea was, slightly lead on that it was a work by him and “other geniuses” and then, if you cut him off to interject or ask a question, he’ll pause, look away, think deeply and respond frankly with a very succinct statement.
There aren’t many CEOs that have this style.
Steve was honest in his saying “this will benefit you more than it will benefit us” but he was very quick to say no to anything from the council that he didn’t like. “I don’t think we’re gonna do that.” He wasn’t going to budge on what was already on his mind and you couldn’t change his mind. Steve was giving you a gift by just being there and no he won’t put an Apple Store in town or open up city-wide Wi-Fi just because you asked for it. “Our taxes to the city are enough of a gift”
I loved it.
I watch a lot of interviews from CEOs. Analyzing their style is interesting to me but Steve’s performance was flawless.
Also: Here is his previous City Council presentation from 2006. Of note, Apple was leasing 30 buildings in 2006 (before iPhone & iPad came along) and they were already “at their max for office space”. That was 5 years ago. I can’t imagine what it’s like now if you work in a Cupertino building for Apple.