Learn from Apple: Having fans means you’re always forgiven

Mentioning Apple with anything less than admiration is like saying “Frau Blucher!” in “Young Frankenstein” — the horses reflexively whinny. Last week’s Apple/Blucher moment came when I suggested that the new Lightning connector for iPhone 5 calls into question Apple’s credibility as an enterprise technology vendor. For those who missed it, the argument centered on respecting the specs businesses come to rely on, and while making a technological shift without supporting past standards may be OK for consumers, it’s bad news for business organizations — and a breach of trust.

It earned me admiring comments, like, “Get over yourself. There are bigger things to worry about. Get a real job,” “Idiot,” and (my favorite) “Nice faux outrage.”

My point wasn’t that it’s time for more outrage. It was that, when you’re not Apple and you make a similar shift, the outrage is palpable. The difference comes from Apple having fans rather than customers — a big difference that, once earned, you can exploit to your own advantage.

Connector changes: The past as prologue

Several commenters on last week’s post listed past connector changes, about which yours truly expressed little or no concern, including the elimination of parallel ports, PCI interfaces, and PS/2 connectors, as evidence of my inconsistency.

There was, however, a huge difference between how the industry retired these interfaces and how Apple retired the old Dock connector: overlap. In every case, the technology replacing the connectors that went away (USB) appeared years before the old ones disappeared. Dual ports aren’t practical on an iPhone-size device, so overlap wasn’t an option, but that doesn’t make the cases any more parallel.

As might have been expected, someone mentioned that Microsoft has shipped versions of Windows with significant security holes. Why isn’t that a worse offense? First, Microsoft has steadily improved Windows security over the past decade — this wasn’t about how bad the old connector was. Second, the legitimate parallel with respect to new Windows versions would have been to note how Vista broke the device driver/Windows interface, which was probably undertaken to fix some of those security holes. That was a serious breach of trust, and many in the industry made a very big fuss, including me.

Finally, lots of folks defended Apple on the basis of the old connector being 10 years old and the Lightning connector being so much better. However, “better” turns out to mean you can insert it either way — a convenience I’d be willing to pay as much as 50 cents for — and it enables cool new capabilities no one can actually identify, but since they come from Apple they’ll be awesome when they show up.

Here’s one new feature: You can’t use it to play video through the $29 HDMI or VGA adapter you already own. But why would you want to do that? Oh, that’s right — because you used to be able to. Guess you’ll have to wait until Apple ships another adapter to connect Lightning to HDMI or VGA. Oh look, it just did. What will that cost you? $49.

As it isn’t clear what the old connector can’t do, my bet goes with the folks speculating that the “new features” Lightning brings to the table will be an improved ability for Apple to collect a license fee for anything that plugs into one of its iGadgets. That’s just a guess. Maybe I’m getting cynical in my old age.

What everyone who works in IT can and should learn from Apple

If you work in internal IT, you and Apple have something in common, and you’d be even better off if you had two things in common.

The first is that neither of you have customers. OK, that’s an overstatement for Apple: Some people who buy its products are merely customers. It isn’t an overstatement for you, though. The people you work with outside of IT aren’t your “internal customers.” They’re your peers and collaborators, or at least they should be, as by now you’re tired of reading in this space.

Which brings us to what you should have in common with Apple: Fans — as in people who buy what you have to sell and feel so much loyalty that they accept anything and forgive everything you do.

Case in point: I’ve been a Cubs fan for 55 years now, and if I lived in Chicago, I’d spend whatever I had to get season tickets. I even think that, while selling naming rights has led to sports facilities around the country having awkwardly commercial-sounding monikers (Comerica Park, Safeco Field, AT&T Park, and Target Field), for the Cubbies to play anywhere other than Wrigley Field (the best place in the known universe to watch baseball, even with the misbegotten lights that allow night games) would be a travesty.

Anywhere other than Chicago’s north side, a baseball team that went more than a century without a World Series win would find attendance seriously reduced. Cubs games sell out because that’s what being a fan is about — the rules are different for the organization I’m rooting for.

Make ’em your fans

Here’s the rule, a well-studied one: If they’re fans, whenever you do something well, they’ll brag about you to everyone they know. If you mess up, they’ll make excuses for you and find a reason to blame someone else, even if you tell them it was your mistake. Heck, patients who had the wrong kidney removed will find someone else to sue if they like their surgeon.

If you work with people who like you, your perceived performance will be far superior to someone whose actual performance exceeds yours, if they don’t like the other person. If they’re your fan, you can do no wrong at all.

Advice Line is about what it takes to make the transition to “next-generation IT.” We can argue about exactly what next-generation IT will be like: its scope, methodologies, governance, and so on. I promise you, though, that making everyone in the business a fan of IT will stand you in good stead no matter how you define your next level. How do you go about this? There are lots of bits and pieces, not all of which are under anyone’s control, especially yours, and some of it is blind, dumb luck.

What is within your control is remembering that every single interaction with every single employee at all levels and parts of the business is an opportunity to further strengthen your relationship. But handled badly, every interaction becomes an opportunity to do serious damage to your relationship with the rest of the business.

Relationships happen one interpersonal interaction at a time. I’d tell you to be a rock star about it, but really, acting like a diva, being both demanding and demeaning, and making it all about you probably isn’t the right answer.

Solve their complex-appearing problems without breathing hard? That’s part of it. Another part: Communicate with everyone on their terms, using their vocabulary to connect what you know to what they ought to know.

Then there’s No. 3: Appearing confident without seeming arrogant. The difference? Here’s one tangible, telltale indicator: If you’re confident, you listen much more than you speak. If you’re arrogant, the reverse is true because you don’t see any point in listening.

Does this describe Apple? Not really, yet it has as many fans as ever. I don’t know — the diva thing appears to be working for Cupertino. Maybe it will work for you, too.

I wouldn’t count on it though.