"It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Believe"

Adam Lashinsky's new book Inside Apple offers lots of intriguing material about Steve Jobs and the strategic choices, design principles, and business tactics that created the most valuable company on earth. But for all of Lashinsky's behind-the-scenes material about Apple's legendary leader, it was a public story about Apple's new leader, CEO Tim Cook, that captured my attention — and offered a powerful insight for leaders everywhere looking to create value in their organizations.

The story goes back to January 21, 2009, during Cook's inaugural conference call with investors after Jobs announced his medical leave of absence. The very first question, Lashinsky reports, was from an analyst who wanted to know whether Cook might replace Jobs permanently and how the company would be different if he did. Cook did not respond with a detailed review of the products Apple made or the retail environments in which it sold them. Instead, he offered an impromptu, unscripted statement of what he and everyone at Apple believed — "as if reciting a creed he had learned as a child" in Sunday School.

"We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that's not changing," Cook declared.

"We believe in the simple not the complex...We believe in saying no to thousands of products, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us," he added.

"We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in ways other cannot...And I think that regardless of who is in what job those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well," he concluded.

It's not what you sell it's what you believe. If there is one principle that explains why some organizations — Apple, Southwest Airlines, USAA, Cirque du Soleil, the Marine Corps, Pixar — consistently and dramatically outperform their rivals, it is that every person in the organization, regardless of job title or function, understands what makes the organization tick and why what the organization does matters.

Roy Spence, one of the toughest-minded business thinkers I know, is a cofounder of GSD&M, the legendary advertising agency based in Austin, Texas. In a provocative and saucy book, It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For, Spence explains the unique beliefs behind many of the one-of-a-kind organizations he has studied or worked with over the years, from BMW to Whole Foods Market to Southwest Airlines. Sure, these and other organizations are built around strong business models, stellar products and services, and (of course) clever advertising. But Spence is adamant that behind every great company is an authentic sense of purpose — "a definitive statement about the difference you are trying to make in the world" — and a workplace with the "energy and vitality" to bring that purpose to life.

In a chapter on the mission and culture at Texas A&M, the huge (48,000 students), rabidly conservative, steeped-in-tradition university that traces its history to 1871, Spence and his coauthor, GSD&M "purposologist" Haley Rushing, highlight a saying about the school that students have been reciting for decades: "From the outside looking in, you can't understand it. From the inside looking out, you can't explain it." That's a neat way to capture how it feels to change the sense of what's possible in your field — and a reminder of why so few leaders muster the commitment to build an organization with a unique sense of itself. "The unique culture you encounter when you step foot in 'Aggieland,'" argue Spence and Rushing, "is like nothing you'll experience on any other college campus."

That's the same feeling I get when I step foot inside business organizations that stand for something special in their field. I've written before about the one-of-a-kind strategy and culture at Umpqua Bank, a fast-growing financial-services company in the Pacific Northwest that has reimagined how a bank can interact with its customers. Umpqua's branches are unlike anything you'll find from other banks, and the culture is rooted in a commitment not just to serving customers but to entertaining them, surprising them, going beyond their loftiest expectations. This approach to retail and customer service is not just about business strategy, though. It's about a set of personal beliefs that define why the bank does what it does.

Umpqua's corporate "manifesto" explains that what makes the company tick is a "state of mind," not just a strategy. "It's constantly surprising the world with what a bank can be and how a bank can actually be part of a customer's life." It's "equal parts checking account and knitting club, commercial loan and local music source, IRA and Internet café." It's "building something that's never been built before."

"Slow Down, You Move Too Fast"

What do these words have in common? "Savor," "relish," " "luxuriate," "stroll," "muse," "dawdle," "mosey," "meander," and "linger?"

We rarely use them, because we rarely do them. We don't have time. We've got so much to do, so many balls to juggle, so many miles to go before we sleep.

I've been thinking about this a lot since I posted the blog "The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time" two weeks ago. It prompted a passionate outpouring of comments from people feeling overwhelmed by the relentless demands in their lives, and the sense that there's no way out.

We're all wired up, but we're melting down. We're dancing as fast as we can. Stroll? Mosey? Linger? That's what slackers do.

I'm not suggesting this is a new phenomenon. "More, bigger, faster" has been the rallying cry of capitalism for more than two centuries, since the advent of the industrial revolution. I first wrote about this subject 25 years ago in an article forVanity Fair titled "Acceleration Syndrome: How Life Got Much, Much Too Fast." Even then it was before anyone had cell phones or an email address, and before Google, Facebook, texting, and tweeting existed.

But the acceleration has accelerated — crazily so. The speed of our digital devices now sets our pace and increasingly runs our lives. Any doubt? See if you can turn off your email for a day, or even for a few hours, or try holding the attention of a 12- year-old who has a smart phone in her hand.

I like getting more done, faster, as much as the next guy does. But I also recognize how costly it can be. Speed is the enemy of depth, nuance, subtlety, attention to detail, reflection, learning, and rich relationships — the enemy of much, in short, that makes life worth living. 

Last week, my wife and I accompanied my older daughter, a theater director, to a play called "Gatz" at the Public Theater in New York City. The show is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The script is the novel itself, which the main character, Nick Carraway, reads from the stage over six and a half languorous hours between 2 pm and 10 pm. There are two 15-minute intermissions and an hour and fifteen minute break for dinner.

Honestly, this is not the sort of event I would have chosen to attend, but it was a gift from my daughter. To my amazement, I found it riveting. I savored and luxuriated in Fitzgerald's elegant sentences, and I became so immersed in the story and the era Fitzgerald so vividly evokes, that my attention rarely wandered. I felt enriched and enlivened by the experience. It has stuck with me.

Speed is a source of stimulation and fleeting pleasure. Slowing down is a route to depth, more enduring satisfaction, and to excellence.

How would you feel if you knew the surgeon operating on you was racing through your surgery, while checking email, and writing texts along the way? I notice my own impatience if the Internet doesn't come up fast enough on my phone when I'm walking from one appointment to another.

Am I nuts? It makes me think of a line from Simon and Garfunkel's 59th Street Bridge Song: "Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last." Why can't I just take a deep breath when I've got a free moment, and appreciate my simple aliveness?

Here's one reason:

The faster we move, the less we feel, which may be a primary reason we move so fast. Most of us are more worried, uncertain, and insecure than we care to acknowledge, even to ourselves. Moving fast keeps those discomfiting feelings at bay. 

So we deify doing. Just think about this senseless but venerable cliché: "No rest for the weary." Really? Isn't resting precisely what the weary ought to be doing?

To savor is to enjoy and appreciate something completely. It necessarily takes time and requires slowing down. So how might you build more savoring into your life? Try one of these:

1. Designate one meal a day — or even one a week — during which you take the time to notice the aroma, flavor, and texture of what you're eating.
2. Curl up in a favorite chair at some point after you return home from work and spend at least a half-hour reading a book purely for pleasure.
3. Take the time to really listen to someone you love — to give that person the space to speak without interruption, for as long as it takes.
4. Choose a place that interests you — it could be in the city or the country — and spend a couple of hours just exploring it without any specific end in mind.
5. Buy a journal, and before you go to bed, take a few minutes to reflect on what you feel grateful for that day, and what went right.

Above all, slowly build more strolling, dawdling, moseying, meandering, musing, lingering, relishing, and savoring into your life.