Steve Jobs (35 page)

178
REFINE AND REHEARSE

Bueller? Bueller?

Ben Stein provides us with one of the best examples of a

horribly dull, monotone vocal delivery. In the 1986 movie

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ben Stein played a boring economics

teacher. Stein’s most famous line in the movie occurred when

he was taking attendance and Bueller (the Matthew Broderick

character) was nowhere to be found. In the driest monotone

on film, Stein asked, “Bueller . . . ? Bueller . . . ? Bueller . . . ?” as the camera flashed to an empty chair. In another scene, Stein

discussed the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act and voodoo econom-

ics. The looks on the students’ faces are hilarious. One kid has

his head on the desk as drool is coming out of the side of his

mouth. Stein’s character is so boring, it’s funny.

If Stein were to read a transcript of a Steve Jobs presenta-

tion in the same manner in which he played the teacher, it

would surely be one of the longest, dullest presentations in

the history of corporate America. This proves once again that

words matter, but an effective delivery makes the difference.

D IR EC TO R ’ S N OT E S

 Pay attention to your body language. Maintain eye

contact, have an open posture, and use hand gestures

when appropriate. Don’t be afraid of using your hands.

Research has shown that gestures reflect complex think-

ing and give the listener confidence in the speaker.

 Vary your vocal delivery by adding inflection to your

voice, raising or lowering your volume, as well as speed-

ing up and slowing down. Also, let your content breathe.

Pause. Nothing is as dramatic as a well-placed pause.

 Record yourself. Watch your body language, and listen

to your vocal delivery. Watching yourself on video is the

best way to improve your presentation skills.

SCE

SCENNEE 1

155

Make It Look

Effortless

Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good.

It’s the thing you do that makes you good.

MALCOLM GLADWELL

Steve Jobs is a master showman, working the stage with

precision. Every move, demo, image, and slide is in

sync. He appears comfortable, confident, and remark-

ably effortless. At least, it
looks
effortless to the audience.

Here’s his presentation secret: Jobs rehearses for hours. To be

more precise: many, many hours over many, many days.

“Jobs unveils Apple’s latest products as if he were a particu-

larly hip and plugged-in friend showing off inventions in your

living room. Truth is, the sense of informality comes only after

grueling hours of practice,” observed a
BusinessWeek
reporter.

“One retail executive recalls going to a Macworld rehearsal at

Jobs’s behest and then waiting four hours before Jobs came off

the stage to conduct an interview. Jobs considers his keynotes

a competitive weapon. Marissa Mayer, a Google executive who

plays a central role in launching the search giant’s innovations,

insists that up-and-coming product marketers attend Jobs’s key-

notes. ‘Steve Jobs is the best at launching new products,’ she says. ‘They have to see how he does it.’
”1

How does he do it? The
BusinessWeek
reporter provided the

answer in the article: Steve Jobs puts in
hours of grueling practice
.

When was the last time you could say that you devoted hours

179

180
REFINE AND REHEARSE

of grueling practice to prepare for a presentation? The honest

answer is probably “never.” If you really want to talk the way Jobs does, plan on spending more time rehearsing every portion

of your presentation.

Glimpse Behind the Magic Curtain

In an article published in the
Guardian
on January 5, 2006, former Apple employee Mike Evangelist wrote about his personal

experience rehearsing a portion of a demonstration for a Jobs

keynote: “To a casual observer these presentations appear to be

just a guy in a black shirt and blue jeans talking about some new

technology products. But they are in fact an incredibly complex

and sophisticated blend of sales pitch, product demonstration,

and corporate cheerleading, with a dash of religious revival

thrown in for good measure. They represent weeks of work, pre-

cise orchestration, and intense pressure for scores of people who

collectively make up the ‘man behind the curtain.’
”2

According to Evangelist’s first-person account, Jobs begins

his preparation weeks in advance, reviewing products and tech-

nologies he is going to talk about. Evangelist had been tapped

to demo the new iDVD, Apple’s DVD-burning software, for

Macworld 2001. Evangelist said his team spent hundreds of

hours preparing for a segment that lasted five minutes. That’s

not a typo:
hundreds
of hours for a five-minute demo.

Evangelist said Jobs rehearsed for two full days before the

presentation, asking for feedback from the product managers in

the room. Jobs spends a lot of time on slides, personally writing

and designing much of the content, along with some help from

the design team. “On the day before show time, things get much

more structured, with at least one and sometimes two complete

dress rehearsals. Throughout it all Steve is extremely focused.

While we were in that room, all his energy was directed at mak-

ing this keynote the perfect embodiment of Apple’s messages.
”3

In the weeks before the keynote, Evangelist saw the full range

of Steve’s emotions from disappointment to elation. “I believe it

MAKE

IT

LOOK EFFORTLESS
181

is one of the most important aspects of Steve Jobs’s impact on

Apple: he has little or no patience for anything but excellence

from himself or others,” Evangelist conclude
d.4

In October 1999,
Time
magazine reporter Michael Krantz was

interviewing Jobs one day before the introduction of a line of

multicolored iMacs. Jobs was rehearsing the big moment when

he would announce, “Say hello to the new iMacs.” The comput-

ers were then supposed to glide out from behind a dark curtain,

but according to Krantz, Jobs was unhappy with the lighting. He

wanted the lights to be brighter and to come up sooner. “Let’s

keep doing it till we get it right, OK?” said Jobs
.5
The show’s lighting folks practiced again and again as Jobs grew increasingly frustrated.

“Finally,” Krantz reports, “they get it right, the five impec-

cably lighted iMacs gleaming as they glide forward smoothly

on the giant screen. ‘Oh! Right there! That’s great!’ Jobs yells,

elated at the very notion of a universe capable of producing

these insanely beautiful machines. ‘That’s perfect!’ he bellows,

his voice booming across the empty auditorium. ‘Wooh!’ And

you know what? He’s right. The iMacs do look better when the

lights come on earlier.
”6
The scene that Krantz described could be interpreted in one of two ways: either Jobs is a microman-ager or, as one of Jobs’s friends observed in the article, “he is

single-minded, almost manic, in his pursuit of quality and

excellence.”

What Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, and

Winston Churchill Have in Common

Psychology professor Dr. K. Anders Ericsson has studied top ath-

letes such as Michael Jordan as well as superachievers in other

walks of life: chess players, golfers, doctors, even dart throw-

ers! Ericsson discovered that star performers refine their skills through
deliberative practice
. In other words, they do not just do the same thing over and over, hoping to get better. Instead,

182
REFINE AND REHEARSE

they set specific goals, ask for feedback, and continually strive

to improve over the long run. From Ericsson’s research, we have

learned that star performers practice specific skills again and

again over many, many years.

Ordinary speakers become extraordinary because they prac-

tice. Winston Churchill was one of the foremost communicators

of the twentieth century. He was a master of persuasion, influ-

ence, and motivation. Churchill, too, deliberately practiced the

skills required to inspire millions of British during the darkest

days of World War II. “He would prepare in the days before a big

parliamentary speech, practicing quips or parries against any

number of possible interjections. Churchill practiced so thor-

oughly that he seemed to be speaking extemporaneously . . . he

held his audience spellbound,” wrote Churchill’s granddaughter

Celia Sandys and coauthor Jonathan Littman in
We Shall Not

Fail
. “The lesson is simple but requires lots of hard work. Practice is essential, particularly if you want to sound spontaneous.
”7
The world’s greatest communicators have always known that “spontaneity” is the result of planned practice.

You

can
speak the way Jobs does, but it takes practice. Jobs

makes an elaborate presentation look easy because he puts in

the time. In
The Second Coming of Steve Jobs
, Paul Vais, a NeXT

executive, was quoted as saying, “Every slide was written like

a piece of poetry. We spent hours on what most people would

consider low-level detail. Steve would labor over the presenta-

tion. We’d try to orchestrate and choreograph everything and

make it more alive than it really is.
”8 M
aking your presentation

“more alive” takes practice. Once you accept this simple prin-

ciple, your presentations will stand out in a sea of mediocrity.

Ten Thousand Hours to Mastery

There are no “naturals.” Steve Jobs is an extraordinary pre-

senter because he works at it. According to Malcolm Gladwell

in
Outliers
, “Research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works.

MAKE

IT

LOOK EFFORTLESS
183

That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work

just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work

much,
much
harder.”
9
Although the observation Gladwell makes in
Outliers
applies specifically to musicians, the vast amount of research on the subject of peak performance shows that practice