Joanna Hoffman was fearless when facing Steve Jobs, and Jobs respected her for it.
In the Aaron Sorkin/Danny Boyle movie Steve Jobs, Hoffman is played by actress Kate Winslet. According to Winslet “Joanna very much saw herself as his equal, as a colleague. She wasn’t afraid of him, ever,” she adds. “They really admired and respected each other.”
Hoffman was one of the original Macintosh team members at Apple, and followed Jobs to NeXT after he was let go from the company he had co-founded. Joanna Hoffman was Steve Jobs’ confidant and marketing advisor. She was also fearless.
In a rare video showing an internal meeting at NeXT just thirty days after the company started, we see the team debating the date of a product launch (Hoffman appears about 10 minutes in). Jobs wanted to see the product finished in 18 months. Hoffman was strong, forceful, articulate, and knowledgeable.
In the video we see Hoffman challenging Jobs on his famed “reality distortion field,” an ability to persuade people that they could do the impossible. “Reality distortion has its motivational value,” Hoffman said. “However, when it comes to the date effecting the design of the product, that’s when we get into a rut. If we are unrealistic about this date we make design decisions that we have to go over, reiterate, throw out, start all over again.”
“I think we have to drive a stake in the ground somewhere,” responded Jobs, who counter-argued that there were psychological and marketing reasons for his proposed schedule. But Hoffman’s challenge gave the others in the room confident to speak up, too.
“It was crucial that this character [Hoffman] be able to stand toe-to-toe with Jobs, that she not be pushed off the screen,” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin recently remarked about the Kate Winslet character. It’s interesting that Sorkin uses the phrase “toe-to-toe” because that’s exactly how Apple Store managers are taught to evaluate a new hire.
When I was conducting my research for one of my books, The Apple Experience, I learned a valuable lesson for any organization: the Apple Store hires for 10 percent product knowledge and 90 percent personality, but a job candidate must be 100 percent fearless.
For example, after interviewing a job candidate, hiring managers are instructed to ask themselves, Could this person have gone toe-to-toe with Steve Jobs? “At Apple we see feedback as a gift,” one manager told me. If a person cannot form an opinion and, more importantly, confidently own and communicate that opinion, constructive feedback is nearly impossible to achieve. Jobs would sometimes take a contrary position simply to spark debate and discussion. Steve Jobs wanted to see that you had an opinion and were ready to fight for it.
At the memorial for Steve Jobs on the Apple campus, Apple designer Jony Ive said, “Steve used to say to me, ‘hey, Jony, here’s a dopey idea.’ And sometimes they were. Sometimes they were truly dreadful. But sometimes they took the air from the room.” Dopey ideas often lead to world changing innovations, but not if people are afraid to voice their opinions.
Fearlessness does not mean does not mean insubordination. When Apple speaks of “fearless feedback,” it means that anyone at any level should be able to provide constructive feedback to anyone at any level.
Do you have a Joanna Hoffman in your organization? More important, are you actively hiring Joanna Hoffmans? I once read a story about a U.S military general who hired an outspoken pacifist as his aide. Her job was to purposely disagree with him. Fearless feedback works both ways. You must hire employees who are comfortable delivering feedback and, as a leader, you must be comfortable receiving it and actively soliciting it.
Joanna Hoffman won an unofficial internal award at Apple given to the person who could best stand up to Steve Jobs. She won it twice. See ‘fearless feedback’ as a gift and work to cultivate it. Innovation cannot occur without it.