As Steve Jobs takes time of to deal with health issues (Steve, you are in our thoughts). I can't help but think about his influence over the years and probably decades to come. But wait, talking about influence can get us talking in circles—and we already know how Apple has produced game changing products and services such as iTunes.
But there's another way to look at this in even more simpler terms. Steve Jobs has changed my behavior. There are so many examples I can cite, from how I digest media, to watching movies on the small screen during travel to using a mobile device in ways most of us would have never predicted.
But one thing I noticed about my own personal behavior over the past year or so—is how I treat my "phone". Before iPhone (BI), I was constantly dropping whatever smart phone I had. They were usually too big and cumbersome to keep in my pocket and so they were often times misplaced, dropped, forgotten about and sometimes even lost. Once I got an iPhone, I immediately noticed a change in my behavior (besides all the different ways I use it), I began to care for a device like I had never cared for one before. I babied it, kept it by me at all times and cleaned its screen regularly. Steve Jobs and his merry band of desingers, engineers and marketers had given me not only a product, but practically a new member of the family. In fact, I have only dropped my iPhone once and I still feel badly about it.
That's a serious shift in behavior (at least for me). That's significant.
Right now, we are all in the same boat. Trying to get people to listen to us, to use our products—to talk about them, to evangelize on our behalf. Whether it's the organizations we work for, our own personal brands or businesses or the services we sell. We are trying to compete as best we know how. We're al after the next "game changer", but in reality it's behaviors that we are trying to influence. It's a good time to think about this from another perspective. Ask yourself "can I change someone's behavior"? Even if it were only one person? That one person could tell ten. And they could tell 20 and before you know it, thousands of people are doing things a little differently.
I never thought I'd stop dropping or losing my phone. Turns out, Steve Jobs and Apple got me to change my ways.
