The Business Sensei

Lost in Map Land

The map, as many people know, is not the territory. However, as discussed in a recent NY Times editorial, some iPhone 5 users are finding that the map app doesn’t even do a job representing the territory. I haven’t had that particular problem yet; I’ve been too busy with a different irritating feature of iOS6: podcast management.

In iOS5, I could download my podcasts through the Music app and assemble them into playlists on my iPhone. In iOS6, Apple removed that functionality from the Music app — oh, you can still make song playlists, just not podcasts — and moved podcast management to Apple’s podcast app. Not only is this app slow and buggy, it doesn’t allow users to assemble playlists.

This leads me to wonder if Apple is succumbing to the Creeping Box trap. The Creeping Box trap is something I wrote about in my book, The 36-Hour on Organizational Development, and spoke about in several talks I’ve given on organizational culture and innovation. Fundamentally, it’s what happens when the box you’ve been thinking outside of finally catches up with you. In Apple’s case, the original iPhone created a whole new standard for smart phones. The iPad created a whole new space for tablet computing. Apple blazed the trail, and plenty of other companies followed them or are on the way. They are all in a new box that Steve Jobs built.

Here’s the thing: Apple’s competitors have much less to lose than Apple. They are trying to knock Apple off its perch. Assuming the have the sense to not bet the farm, the worst that can happen to them is that the status quo remains unchanged: “The <new, revised, improved> <Google, Amazon, Samsung, Nosuchco> <Nexus, Kindle Fire, Galaxy, Clay Slab> is really nice but doesn’t live up to the <iPhone, iPad>. Still consumers will like… and so they’ll sell enough of their tablets to make it worthwhile to try again. And, if they beat the iPhone or iPad, the rewards are immense. Indeed, I know many people would argue, with a great deal of justification, that there are plenty of phones out there as good or better than the iPhone 5.

Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone 5 is a beautiful piece of technology. I’ll probably upgrade to one eventually (unless I decide to stick it out and see what the iPhone 6 looks like 🙂 ). But it’s a lot closer to the iPhone 4s than the iPhone 3g was to the original iPhone. Apple may be growing the box, but it sure isn’t outside it, and they have lots of company in there.

So here’s the thing: Apple’s competitors are looking to find a way out of the box that Steve Jobs created. Is Apple?

Wait! Where’s the death ray?

When I first started planning this post, I was expecting Apple to announce an iPhone 5. Naturally, the mythical i5’s been hyped to insane levels, and I had a great idea for a post about the dangers of overly high expectations: you see, I figured that when Apple announced it’s iPhone 5, it would be an amazing device and still people would be disappointed because it just didn’t have a death ray. Or maybe a built in razor. Or it didn’t cook your dinner for you.Rather than focus on what it did have, everyone would focus on what it didn’t.

The fact is, over building expectations can be a real problem: build the expectations for the new hire too high and nothing that person does will be good enough. Build the expectations for the seminar too high, and the actual seminar is bound to be a disappointment. Build the expectations for the pony too high and you’ll complain that it wasn’t a thoroughbred horse.

But Apple fooled me, and now I feel more like Marvin the Martian wondering what happened to his Earth-shattering kaboom. For sixteen months of hype, it’s rather anti-climactic. Perhaps Apple should take Marvin’s advice at the end of the cartoon.

It’s also rather rough for Tim Cook. Even a bigger question than the i5 was whether or not Tim Cook could fill Steve Jobs’ turtleneck. I, for one, still don’t know. He was, in a manner of speaking, given some pretty poor lines. The question now is whether or not the i4S release will define the image of Tim Cook.

Managing expectations is important. Letting them get too big may be fun sometimes, but can also have some very negative consequences. And when you don’t even come close, everyone remembers the missing earth-shattering kaboom.