On June 24th, a public relations nightmare began for Apple when word leaked that there may be issues with the latest version of its immensely popular iPhone 4. Specifically, users provided evidence of a defective antennae design that causes poor connections and dropped calls when the phone was held in a certain way.
With over 3 million of his company's smartphones sold in the first 22 days on the market, Apple CEO Steve Jobs cut short his Hawaii vacation to address this issue in a hastily scheduled press conference on Friday, July 16th. As "antennagate" gained momentum, Apple handled some things poorly, while they ended up getting it right. It's another story that offers a few leadership lessons from which we can all learn.
1) Communicate, don't fall behind
While few would argue that Apple has been consistently ahead of the curve with their smartphone technology, the folks at Apple fell behind this story early and had trouble catching up. Perhaps they didn't anticipate the coverage, but from the beginning Apple remained quiet as the story gained momentum. The information that was released was largely unsympathetic to end-users. Jobs himself suggested customers "avoid holding it in that way," while internal troubleshooting guidelines suggested that customer service agents should not offer free cases, and instead instruct customers where to (not) hold the phone.
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Apple's way of dealing with the iPhone 4 problem was shaky at first, but gradually improved. Steve Jobs set a positive leadership example by ending his vacation early to have a press conference. While this action was admirable, his speech downplayed Apple's responsibility for the faults by Jobs' recommendation that the users should simply hold the phone certain ways instead of the position where service was limited. Many people did not appreciate this comment, but he went on to advise that all smart phones have similar issues so the fault was not solely related to Apple. Knowledge of non-Apple products shows that he cares about the bigger picture, which good leaders should do. Jobs' apology to the consumers and offer of a free case or refund gained him and his company more respect than they had had before they addressed the issue. Waiting to publicly address the flaw was a mistake on Apple's part, since it seemed like they did not care about the consumers, but they finally realized they needed to step up and try to soothe the consumers to boost their morale toward Apple. Although Apple did make some mistakes, at least they did eventually find a solution for their followers rather than continuing to publicly ignore the situation.
ReplyDeleteBetter late than never - but it's interesting. Apple has been perceived as arrogant for a long time, and a lot of people think that their initial decision to ignore this issue was another example of that arrogance...
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