321: Hashem Bajwa - "The Strategy Linguist"

Hashem Bajwa of Apple

Why Experience Principles are critical to the success of the Apple stores.

"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT

Episode 321: Hashem Bajwa

Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.

This week’s guest is Hashem Bajwa. He describes himself as a creative leader that uses imagination, intuition and inclusivity to create experiences that bring people together. He’s done that at Goodby Silverstein, at Droga5, and for the last six years at Apple, where he was Director of Strategy, working with Angela Ahrendts to reimagine Apple retail, including the Apple Store.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few episodes talking with my guests about the personal and human challenges of leadership in a COVID, climate change, DEI driven world.

Hashem and I discussed that too.

But this episode is a case study in managing change at enormous scale, to the highest standards and under the brightest of lights. It is filled with practical explanations that have helped create one of the most creative, innovative, visible and valuable businesses of any lifetime.

“Historically, Apple has been brilliant at holding it all together in Cupertino, designing the perfect product and then launching it at a keynote around the world. The ads are all the same image. Perfect, perfect consistency. And I think a lot of brands aspire to that. What we were trying to do is respect that and bring the same consistency of values and principles. I'm a big believer in experience principles, because if you can get to a few of those, then you'll make decisions down the chain that are still consistent with the original intention.”

Leading what’s right in front of you is challenging. Leading people who are miles and time zones and cultures apart is exponentially harder. Force of personality quickly get diluted over time and space, and out of sight, out of mind willingly steps in to fill the gaps.

Before you know it, you’re not leading an organization, you’re managing siloed problems armed with a ‘not invented here’ resistance to change.

I’ve seen this up close in big businesses and small. In complex corporations and founder-led partnerships and in all cases, the leaders who were successful planted ‘experience principles’ into the fabric of their organization and then used those to guide, support and ultimately determine decision making across issues both small and business-changing.

When you’re the leader, there’s never enough of you to go around. And as we learn to work across hybrid work weeks and sometimes physical, sometimes virtual offices, the chances that you will find yourself in the right place at the right time all the time, has become essentially zero.

Leadership has a lot to do with giving people clarity and vision while encouraging them to bring their own unique thinking to the decision-making moments.

Today, that means finding ways to both guide and inspire their thinking even when you’re not in the room.

Have you defined experience principles for your organization?

Here’s Hashem Bajwa.

Charles: (03:11)

Hashem, welcome to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Hashem Bajwa: (03:14)

Thank you for inviting me. Happy to be here.

Charles: (03:18)

When did creativity first show up in your life? When were you first aware that creativity was a thing?

Hashem Bajwa: (03:24)

I guess if we look at creativity as sort of looking at the world slightly differently and piecing things together, for me that probably emerged growing up in Michigan as an immigrant, where my family is from Pakistan and I grew up here. And I was sort of forced to constantly reconcile these two different worlds of very conservative family life and history, but living in an American cultural context.

And that led me to things like Model UN and programs where people of different backgrounds were sort of put together. I think creativity probably first started to kind of become a thing I was aware of and doing in that way. Though I don't think that's what we might consider the industry of creativity. I felt it started to get my mind working in a new way. But I wouldn't have known that at that time. I think it just felt very natural to find different worlds I can connect and be part of and play well.

Charles: (04:35)

How did you express yourself growing up? What was your medium of choice?

Hashem Bajwa: (04:39)

Oh, well, for me, it was narrative, though, I again, didn't use that word. But I loved the stage. And I don't mean the theater. I loved presenting. I loved being in a debate class. I loved… I mentioned Model UN, the trying to tell a story and convince people of something, I guess. I don't know that I was ever very good at it. But I found myself very interested in what my words could do. I did some internships with newspapers. I was doing debate and writing and journalism.

And I thought at times, oh, maybe that is a career to go into. But I really believe that writing can lead to a lot of things, underlying means of stories, and stories that I think come about because of great language and narratives and writing and words.

Charles: (05:44)

And school was where?

Hashem Bajwa: (05:46)

I went to school in New York. I was so inspired by it, I said I need to be there. And so, I went to The New School, which The New School University and Parsons School of Design and Actor’s Studios, all kind of part of the same group. And I loved that because it was quite unacademic in a way it. The city was your campus. The teachers were practitioners themselves. None of them had tenure or PhDs or things like this. And the topics that we tackled felt very real and very applied.

And I'm an individual, I think throughout my career, who has believed that you learn by doing and observing. And I think that's how I also try to share or mentor or coach others is through doing it. And so, The New School I think, probably helped shape that, for me. I was really keen to be in the action, not just reading about it and studying it and regurgitating it, but really seeing it firsthand.

Charles: (06:55)

How did you decide what you wanted to do professionally? How did you get started?

Hashem Bajwa: (07:00)

I, again, perhaps because of the kind of immigrant experience, I was very interested in how do we work together globally on things. I liked looking at how do different cultures, different countries, different people, partner up on things. And again, I had studied the UN a lot and thought that's the place I want to work and how do I get there?

And as with so many things in life, life throws you different paths. I did work at the UN initially, that was my first real job. I started as an intern there working in the communications team, at the headquarters. And I loved being surrounded by so many different cultures and people of different citizenship and passports of every color and flavor. And to be the backdrop of the globe, not just the United States, not just one point of view, or culture, or religion, but trying to kind of make sense of it all. I loved that.

And the UN is a unique organization. But it is very different than creative cultures. It is a bureaucracy. It is very ageist in the sense that if you're at the very end of your career with a lot of degrees and things, then you have some influence.

As a young person, it's not a place of merit or ideas. And I never even really thought about what it means to uncover an idea and how an idea can lead to a concept and that can lead to creative expression. But it was what I was missing. And I wanted to learn more about that. How do people create ideas in any way?

And so, I decided I needed to go into the private sector and learn this, because that's where it was being done well, in media, in agencies, in advertising. So, I sold out and I went to an ad agency, left my UN public sector, public servant life, and said, "No, I'm going to learn how this works and be around creative people and young people and cool brands and content and all the energy that comes with being in an ad agency at that time," which was 2005.

I joined Goodby Silverstein and started to lay out my career there. And that would be the beginning of my work in brand and marketing design.

Charles: (09:33)

Did you see yourself as a creative person when you made that change?

Hashem Bajwa: (19:37)

No, I did not see myself as a creative person. I saw myself as a strategy person, someone who could piece together stuff and make sense of them. I also probably didn't fully even know truly what at heart it was. I think what I appreciate about agency life that sometimes it gets a little bit lost when people in our business get jaded about agencies and want to move on, is the agency allowed me exposure to a lot of different kinds of skills and different people, who define themselves very differently from each other. And so, I went in one way, but didn't fully know. I was quite excited about the idea of account planning and anthropological views on the human condition and putting the user or the customer at the heart of our thinking. So, I came in that way. But I started to see how other people were defining and learning about that.

I think working at Goodby Silverstein was amazing for me because they taught me what a creative person could be, what a creative idea is, and how to work with creative people. Rich Silverstein was a mentor in many ways. And what I loved about him is, he would come in every day and look to make the work better and better and find these twists on it that were unexpected that led to something bigger than what we hoped or thought could be there.

And seeing how people like that worked in the teams around him, the art directors, the designer, copywriters, and most interestingly, when they came together - copywriter, art director, designer, technologists - and started to see kind of some kind of magic that I don't think I understood from the outside. And I learned a ton from them about that. That's a place that really is filled with creative people that I've come to really respect what I've learned from them.

Charles: (11:44)

How early on do you think were you aware of the impact you wanted to have? I think a lot of people get into their careers, and they look for jobs, and they take on opportunities and the jobs are defined and the requirements are defined. And it takes a long time for people, I think, to start thinking about the fact, "Oh, I have agency here and there are things that make me more satisfied than other things. And I want to have an impact." And we tend to get into our 40s, even our 50s, I think before many people start to think about that. When are you conscious of that becoming a reference point for you?

Hashem Bajwa: (12:17)

Yeah, the notion of impact is really an interesting one. I was drawn to global work because I thought that that was really different. It was interesting. And I thought, “Wow, whatever we're going to do, it's going to touch the world.” That feels interesting. I don't think I thought of it in terms of what impact I personally wanted to have. I was much more drawn to being part of an organization that in that way would have impact.

I didn't think like, “I'm on a mission to have impact, and what does that look like and how am I going to change the world?” or I didn't have that entrepreneurial bit that I think startup people might have, where they're coming out of the gate looking to make a dent in the universe. I wanted to be part of an organization that did that.

So, I guess to come to your question a little bit more, I think I found it exciting to be part of teams and organizations and work alongside leaders that collectively were having impact in the world and stood out and were different. And that motivated me a lot. And I think all the way through my work at Apple, that's been true.

As I've gotten older in my career, I've started to see where I, as an individual, can influence and make a mark that matters. But it's taken some time and hopefully, maturity to learn that aspect of it. And to embrace that a little more. And as I left Apple, I now think more about that probably, where can I as an individual be influential? And it doesn't have to be the biggest brand, the biggest UN organization. It can be in much smaller, more personal ways.

So, my journey has kind of gone from really big organizations that are having impact I want to be part of, to now that I've been part of that, let me take all those learnings and be a leader myself in more human-to-human ways, I think. I haven't quite thought of it in those terms before. But as you raise that question, it's made me maybe reflect on it differently.

Charles: (14:30)

What drew you to Apple, aside from the obvious appeal?

Hashem Bajwa: (14:34)

Well, the obvious appeal to Apple is a funny one because I have loved that brand since the '80s when I was a very young kid. I think I wrote a letter to Steve Jobs when he was still there. And I said, "I saw a photo of your infinite loop campus. And you have this rainbow flag with the Apple logo. Can I please have one of your flags?" And then he wrote a letter back. And he said, "We do not have any flags, but I appreciate your love for Apple. Here's a sticker." I think my parents have that letter somewhere.

So, I like to think that I was always into Apple before it became the brand of the last few decades. I've always loved that company for thinking different, for being creative. Again, words I maybe didn't know at the time, but I loved it. And I've always liked technology. And a lot of my work at Goodby and Droga5 was always trying to connect technology with brands and helping them navigate that.

Or in Goodby's case, working with creative people to show them how technology can be a canvas for creativity, which I think is something rooted in Apple from day one. And Steve always talks about the company, used to talk about the company being at that intersection of liberal arts, humanities, and technology, engineering, not one or the other. And I think that has been an ingredient in all my work. I've never been a digital marketing person that spends their day thinking about clicks and ad networks and ad tech. That's not the type of digital that I'm excited by.

I dig into creating experiences through new means that are human, that resonate emotionally, that bring stories to life. And Apple was an opportunity to do just that on a much bigger scale than I had been able to do in an agency and last longer and be a bit less ephemeral.

The agency's weaknesses I think sometimes, or the work is very ephemeral and temporary, and can be a little surface level. There's a role for that. But I had a real strong desire to go into something where I could see that, to use your word from earlier, impact in a bigger way. And at Apple, there is a chance to work on something new, which always draws me. I don't want to just work on something that's already great. I want to help make something great. I think that's part of good leadership in general is looking for new opportunities.

And at Apple, we were looking at evolving the Apple Store concept and design and experience and there's a new leader, who joined Apple, Angela Ahrendts, amazing leader in her own right, former CEO of Burberry. And she was on a mission to shake up what the Apple Store represented for the whole of Apple. And I just thought this is a big, bold mission. Let's jump on that one. I was fortunate enough to go over there as the Head of Strategy.

Charles: (17:59)

There are quite a lot of people I think, who get onto a career cycle and are looking for the next position in the chain that they have imagined for some time.

And I think what the world is moving towards, and I think COVID has accelerated, is very much what you've just described actually, which is the recognition that we have agency, we have choice, being clear about the difference we'd like to make, and the way that we'd like to discover our own journey, actually, has a lot more flexibility to it than I think a lot of people used to realize, when I think career paths were much more predetermined than they are today.

And so, I'm interested in the choice that you made to go there and how that tied into your previous experiences, and also your growing understanding of who you were and who you wanted to be.

Hashem Bajwa: (18:45)

Yeah, you're hitting on such an important point for people in creative fields, I think, as they become more senior and want to accomplish more. I personally believe in missions and adventures over careers and jobs. I've had jobs. You can call my professional life a career. But I personally look at it in that lens. The UN was a big mission for a time. Helping an agency inspire creativity through digital was a great adventure at a time when agencies were trying to figure all that out.

And Droga5 was another mission behind the startup agency with that startup energy and entrepreneurialism. It was very different than other places. And so, going to Apple to me could have become the career where I spend the rest of my professional life in, but it wasn't the choice I made. My choice to go there was because I thought, “This is going to be a mission I want to be part of. And it might not be forever.”

I think each of my professional experiences had been four- to five-year ranges. Apple was up there at seven. So, a little more. But I think that's actually the science behind this. This is why startups have vesting schedules on four-year basis. That's the time period where people are fired up, where they're learning, they're looking outward. After that, the data shows us that people tend to come inwards. And now, they're just optimizing internal issues and position and org charts and levels and all of these things.

And when I went to Apple, I thought, "Oh, right, that's what success should look like, too. You build your headcount. You build your budgets. You expand your org. You get promoted. You'd take on bigger orgs and bigger structures, and along the hierarchy." Agencies have less of that structure, perhaps, but still from art director, to copywriter, to Senior Creative Director to ECD, CCO, all of these things. And then what?

And I found that I wasn't very good at the managing of big organizations. I did my best work with the SWAT team trying to crack the strategy and the concepts that we wanted to do, and then launch that. I didn't want to keep climbing and taking this on. Someone said to me at Apple that managing is responsibility, not a reward. And I think a lot of people think, "Hey, I've been here this many years, and I did good work, I should get promoted. I want to be a manager. I want to be a senior manager. I want to be a director." And fair enough, you should be compensated for your value.

The one thing I learned at Apple that I think is unusual for a lot of big corporations is Apple values the expertise of the individual so much that you can be an individual contributor with a similar compensation as someone who's running 100-person organization and is kind of the manager, if you will. And so, that was a little bit of my journey that I found that I was very good at influencing teams and inspiring and setting direction and being part of the onset of things. And that was very meaningful to me.

I didn't enjoy or particularly good at daily staff meetings with managers, who are managing other managers and you have to be really good at some of those things. I forget the… there's a term for this, like the Peter Principle maybe, I can't remember. But where if you're a great individual contributor, you're a great designer, and then you become promoted because of that, and you get promoted so far up that you become a creative director, head of an agency department. And the skills that got you there are not the skills that are going to make you successful going forward.

And I have heard that phrase many a time. But only when I went through this and probably... Well, I know, I wasn't very good at it. That's when I started to realize what that idea meant. And I was lucky that people believed in me at Apple. People at Apple have a culture that values this idea of individual creativity and expertise. And so, they said, "Okay, you don't need to manage 100-person org. Let's set you up for success the way you are wired, because that's something that is unique. And let's get more of the best of you, not more of the worst of you."

And I think that's hard for a lot of people in our business, who are told that they have to climb that ladder to get more money, to get more influence, or whatever it might be. It really takes strong leaders and a good culture, I think, to break that.

Charles: (24:03)

Yeah, I think any number of powerful insights in there, but the two that really stand out to me, I think are one, the recognition as you've highlighted that Apple has to say, “We value your individual talents as much as we value managerial talent,” because most organizations, to the point you've just made, don't do that.

And then the other one being I think that people who have been celebrated and rewarded for individual success, the ones that I have seen successfully transition into leadership roles where they have real impact, are the ones that have almost consciously stopped the train, got off, changed the points, and chosen to go in another direction.

It doesn't often, as I've seen, happen organically. They have to consciously decide, “That was about me,” and claiming opportunity. Susan Credle talks about going from a mindset of scarcity to one of generosity, that if you are the talent, you're looking for the next opportunity to prove yourself. And if you are a leader, you have to look around and say, “How do I make this great for everybody else?” And so, I think that's really powerful insight. What was the mission that Angela laid out that drew you to that opportunity?

Hashem Bajwa: (25:12)

Yes, yes. Let me reflect one more thought on what you've just said, because I think you hit on those insights in an interesting way. There's doing the work. There's influencing people to do the work. And then, there's managing and driving the work. And I think that's a bit of a spectrum sometimes. But, to your point and to Susan's quote there, there are differences in how one does that. They have to put more front and center.

And I think there's something remarkable and rare about that middle one, about being able to inspire and influence. I don't think great managers are always great leaders. And that was what drew me to these other areas where maybe the day to day, the managing, the operating wasn't to my skills or interests really. That's the other bit is, do you spend time getting good at something that you're not all that interested in? Or do you double down on things that you're really great at?

And so, as I said, I want to be more involved in the work. I also said I am growing and having this influence. Let me start to design that as part of this. So, when we do the work, we're also influencing teams. My greatest success at Apple probably was with the team that we were part of, that we were creating, we were able to create something that inspired all 70,000 employees in the stores all around the world.

And I wouldn't necessarily have been able to get there if I was focused only on building and running my team in Cupertino. I'm not saying these are mutually exclusive concepts. But just to say that the journey I had was one of, how can I work with a team of people like me that are experts in their field, because you can't do it alone, but focus on using that team and our work to inspire way more inputs.

And that is something I can go home and feel proud of, versus just obsessing on the operations of running things. There are people who are brilliant at that, and without them, no work gets done. So, we need that harmony of all of it.

But to your point, I think a lot of company cultures don't have this understanding. They focus on one or the other. Startup agency, all individual contributors. They're all trying to just hunt for whoever's idea can get… It's very aggressive in a way. Or you’ve got the opposite. You've got the big corporations with hierarchies and structures and managers upon managers. Finding that harmony of both is something that I think I learned a lot about at Apple.

Let me answer your question about what drew me. Angela, I owe so much to her. She created a ton of opportunities for myself and for others. And she was very unlike Apple. She was not a technology person. She came from fashion. And Tim said to her in the interview process, before she came, "I got enough technology. I needed someone like you." And that was a little bit of my feeling with what inspired me with Angela, is she wasn't looking for a retailer. And I think I said that, “I'm not a retailer. I haven't worked in retail before.”

And she said, “No, no, that's not what we need. We're not here to run a bunch of stores.” And the Apple Stores have been really successful, profitable all the rest for many years. Her mission was to try to evolve the Apple Store to bring all of Apple together. And if you look at the history of the first Apple Store in 2001, Apple had one product basically, the Mac. I don't even think iPod was out yet.

And now, you look at Apple and all the places it plays and how those things intersect. But the stores fundamentally hadn't gone through a big transformation. Iteration, evolution, for sure. But nothing that really stepped up to this new Apple that exists whatever it was at that time, several years after Steve had died.

And so, her mission was to bring together all of Apple for the community and the people that are our customers. Her view was that the bigger Apple gets, the smaller it needs to feel on the human level through Apple Stores. And I've always felt that Apple's superpower is its humanity. An Apple retail is where as an individual, you can interact with a human at Apple. You can't really do that with any of the other big tech companies. They're all on digital platforms, et cetera, et cetera.

So, I was drawn by this mixture of a really creative, ambitious leader wanting to do something different that would set up all of Apple's next stage, not just, how do we run our stores a little bit better, how do we optimize this and that. There are better people for that. I was drawn to the idea of creating something new that would be a new chapter for Apple, and hopefully, set a new standard for what retail can be, the way we did with the first Apple Stores, which I think arguably set a different kind of bar.

Charles: (30:45)

I think your point about the differentiation between leadership and management is such an important one. I know I’ve made it on this podcast before, but I think your example is particularly acute in terms of the difference.

From a leadership standpoint, therefore, as you're taking on the vastness of this mission with a company that by then already had an enormous profile and very high standards, and for whom we all had massive expectations as consumers of the products, how did you go about bringing that to life? And what did you discover you needed to bring from a leadership standpoint to allow you and the teams to be able to actually deliver that mission?

Hashem Bajwa: (31:25)

Yeah, it's a hard question to answer because, so much of it were small things we did along the way that built up to this larger impact that we had. And we didn't necessarily go in with a design for how to do that. But looking back at it, if I think about trying to connect some of the dots and put a narrative to what happened and how we work, a few things come to mind. One is, it's really easy for external people to come into an organization and put a deck together and say, “This is what you need to do to change and grow or whatever you want to accomplish.”

The good part about that is you have perspective and not inundated with the day to day. You can come in fresh thinking. You can imagine really big possibilities. But, but the flip side of that is, if you're not entrenched in the work and you're not bringing people along in the process, it's never going to happen. Or it's not going to happen to scale and depth and longevity that is required.

And so, that was a bit of a learning we went into Apple is like, we had all these ideas. But we needed to pause and really figure out how we were going to work before we decided what we were going to go after. And I think often in creative fields, you get it inverted slightly, where like, "Okay, this is what we want to do, then let's go race to figure out how we get there." And I had to learn, how does Apple work? How do we want to work in relation to that? And then let's start to bring in those tools and those creative ways of concepting and being creative to get to that.

So, I like to think that what makes that kind of thing work is looking back and looking forward, which again, sounds really easy, but it's so, so critical. And Angela really set the example of this where she looked back and said, “Okay, Steve set up these ideas in the store, that it's going to be human-centric, when you're learning about technology. Education was always rooted in what we were about.

“But we got to look forward and say, okay, automation is on the rise. What does that mean for the workforce? What skills are going to matter? Creativity is going to matter. So, what's our role there to bring education, which has always been part of Apple, and this important need to bring creativity to people in their everyday life, not just design in art, but creativity in the broader sense of the word. And can Apple be a place that that does that?”

So, that was important because if we respected where Apple came from, that would give us license and credibility to then talk about where we go.

And I'm fortunate that Apple has a culture that does embrace new thinking. The path to get there, though, requires rigor, requires detail. You have to demonstrate your way there. You can't just have a concept. You’ve got to go build the concept. And if it's not good enough, then we won't even talk about whether do it or not. It's a culture of real demo culture we often use.

And so, I tried to pull all these pieces in, partnering up and bringing people along, looking back and creating the language. This is something else we learned, again, Angela, really set the tone for. But we used language that the product people in the organization understood. We didn't come in and say, "We need a new retail customer experience."

Instead we say, "You know what? The Apple Store is Apple's biggest product. And like every product, it has hardware and software. And like anything we build at Apple, we do those two things together. We design them together. The iPhone has apps that you can create and do things with. And it has hardware and cameras and metal and design and glass that allow you to interact with that. No different with the store, literally glass on the front of the store. And what do you do in it? That's the programming. That's the experience. That's the education stuff that we developed."

So, once we started using that language, that also allowed people who maybe are not as tied into these ideas of brand and experience design, really see it and connect with it. So, yeah, so it was a huge learning of what for this culture, this organization is the currency, and who do we need to partner with to bring our thoughts forward? And how do we look backward and forward in a meaningful, smart way? Yeah, I know I've rambled a bit there. But it's the best summation of a very ambiguous process. There is no five-step plan for it.

Charles: (36:33)

I want to shine a light on the point you just made about language. I've become increasingly aware of the importance of establishing, from a leadership standpoint, a common language across complex organizations. Nancy Dubuc made this point to me a couple of years ago, the CEO of Vice. When she came in, she felt that one of the things that was missing was a common language because there were so many different kinds of businesses involved in Vice, and still are.

And she established almost a dictionary of, “Okay, we're going to call this, this, and this is going to be called this.” Clearly that was a factor as well, in terms of what you've just described. And I imagine as well, because obviously what you did, as you said earlier, had a global imprint. I mean, you were dealing with providing this experience on a global basis. It wasn't just, can you upgrade or improve or evolve the Apple Store in Grand Central Station? It was, how do we create a universal brand appeal across different cultures?

And so, from that standpoint, not just in terms of obviously, translation, but in terms of actually having commonality of language, that must have played an important role from a leadership standpoint, I imagine.

Hashem Bajwa: (37:36)

Yeah, certainly, certainly. Language played out in a couple of ways. One was what I described, the internal language and understanding what things mean. And in a way, I can't speak to the Vice experience, but at Apple, the culture is super strong. So, if anything, the language is really defined. And so, introducing new language is challenging. What was sort of adjacent issue but related to what you're describing is, we have teams that are all segmented out. They all have the same language, but they're not all necessarily coordinating together.

Apple is known for its collaboration. But up until the last few years is also quite siloed. Steve ran at the top, and that's where the connection point was. And so, down design or marketing or retail, you've got teams working deeply on their expertise, but only at the top is where it ended up coming together. So, when we came in, 2014 in retail, we saw that. We saw, “Okay, we've got… the language is all there. We need to learn it, maybe evolve it a little, add something to it. But the real issue is, how do we get these teams to coordinate and collaborate to create this new thing?”

Apple very somewhat famously doesn't have many CEOs or general managers of business units. It's all functional. And so, again, design is a whole thing or engineering, or operations, and then they work across. And that is intentional because that's how Steve designed it to create great products, one of the world class experts in each field and didn't want to have a bunch of business units that are all fighting for their own resources and protecting their product at the expense of maybe a new one. I mean, think about it. The iPhone basically destroyed the iPod market, in a way. If you had two CEOs of that, you'd have a clash.

And so, language helped us knit things together. A huge part of it was understanding your expertise and understanding the end goal. So, we spent a lot of time concepting what we wanted to get to and then working out with each of these slices or functions, they're part of that, and evolving the end concept. And so, that journey took us a lot of time, but was so invaluable.

And that, what I think a lot of times other companies miss about this is, they think they've got a concept and their job is to sell it in to everybody. And they call that bringing everybody in. That's not what I mean. What I mean is literally whiteboarding the evolution of that thing in an open generous way with these different functions, whether or not they fully get it or not. And so, we would sit with the support team, the store operations team, the learning and development training team that's going to train the people in the stores.

And these functions, they're not necessarily going to get a pretty creative picture that we've painted. So, we need to know how they work, what they're looking for, and involve them in that. And that's where the design of a project became so critical. And where I was fortunate that I had partners that were good at designing the way the work is going to get done. That wasn't my inherent skill. Without that partnership, we wouldn't have gotten there.

And just to touch briefly on the store teams, Apple has 500 plus stores around the world, 30 plus countries, different languages, big flagship spaces, really small mall stores. We were also evolving the business strategy around the shape and size and location of these stores. But from a innovation, evolution perspective, we had to figure out how to get everybody on the same level. And there's lots of debate around how to do this.

Some people argue you go super local, empower local geographies, regions. Let them drive it. Others say, “No, no, no, bring it all to the top, make it super, super consistent.” We did a bit of both. But we knew that. And so, we were going in with different approaches to get to this end result where we were going to launch the next phase of Apple retail. Historically, Apple has been brilliant at holding it all together in Cupertino, designing the perfect product and then launching it at a keynote around the world. The ads are all the same image. Perfect, perfect consistency.

And I think a lot of brands aspire to that. What we were trying to do is respect that and bring the same consistency of values and principles. I'm a big believer in experience principles, because if you can get to a few of those, then you'll make decisions down the chain that are still consistent with the original intention. We were trying to take all that with that same level of consistency. But we were also operating with human beings that every day are going to be different humans in different stores interacting with different kinds of communities and customers with different kinds of tools and resources in their store.

So, we had to sort of design a way where we could create more independence at that local level, while still bringing everybody back to a few North Stars. I don't know that we had the perfect model for that. I think it's really challenging in retail. The debate that we always had was, do we go lowest common denominator, create something that will work for everybody. Or do we create different models?

So, for example, our global flagship in Chicago right on the river, massive space, beautiful. How we operate there versus in the mall in Syracuse, in New York. And so, we had some successes and some failures on that way. I don't think we had it perfect. What we kept coming back to though is, the role of the store is this. It is the place to be inspired about creativity with technology. And the language we use about the role each person has, how they contribute to that was always consistent, and the values of Apple above that.

So, we were lucky that we had that to work with, the culture of Apple. But we also had to define what this program represents. And then, be okay empowering people at the local level to do what they need to do. It was a huge learning, at a time that Apple really wasn't used to that. Even on the marketing side, the advertising side, a lot of that was happening all in California. That's changed now. But in some ways, other global organizations were probably more used to working globally and in different regions than we were at Apple. Because we had been so central.

You don't want to lose what's great about that but you want to embrace the opportunity and necessity of creating more freedom for teams. It does come back to people in leadership though, inspiring people about the end result and what we want people to feel when they experience Apple. That was the biggest question we would always come back to and set the bar with when we were dealing with teams in Asia, Mexico and Europe was, what we want people to feel from this experience. And take that with this toolkit we’ll give, with this point of view, with all the stuff that we will do to support you, but keep asking that question. And if you trust people and inspire them about that, great things come back that way. And we keep evolving as a result of that.

Charles: (45:41)

What are experience principles? How do you define experience principles?

Hashem Bajwa: (45:46)

So, for me, I think you can have a big mission statement, you can have a big brand purpose, you can have all of that stuff. But when I come to creating a marketing campaign, a program, a product perhaps, or a retail experience, what are the things I fall back on when I'm making choices? Should this table be wood? Or should it be glass? Should this program be very educational and tutorial? Or should it be participatory and fun and entertaining?

And once we define these principles, I use them as simply filters. And we had one set when it came to Today at Apple and the retail experience. We wanted to have inspiring stories by makers, we wanted to have hands-on participation, and we wanted to have celebration. And so, when we would design a new Today at Apple session or a program about music creation or something else, we would always evaluate it against these principles. Is it an inspiring story by a maker? Is there a way for the user to get hands-on and make something themselves? And is there a way to celebrate what they've made with other humans?

And as long as we had those three things at the top, then we had all kinds of factors below that, but this allowed us… and it's probably one of the most consistent elements that we had, even as other things in the business and the customer experience will change. So, I like to think if you're designing anything, a program, a product, a campaign, having a set of principles or filters that help shape what you do makes a huge difference.

Because sometimes the big brand mission, ‘inspire creativity’ or whatever, is good, but it's hard to then translate that to how I'm going to work and how I'm going to do it, especially if you're an individual contributor down on one piece of that puzzle, and you’ve got to train the team to do this program. You need more, let's call it left brain tools or inputs.

This is also something I think that a lot of teams forget is, you have to create the blueprints and tools for all kinds of people to do their work, not just the big brand strategy thing, or just a bunch of… a big deck that a strategist rolls out. You have to think about how this is going to come to life. That was probably one of the biggest things I learned at Apple was to appreciate and work with those people that know the how. It's not just enough to have the what.

Charles: (48:31)

And the experience principles are driven through the lens of how the consumer, how the customer, how the user will actually connect with this, why it will be interesting, relevant, meaningful, important to them.

Hashem Bajwa: (48:42)

Absolutely. And sometimes, we take a point of view on that, and then see if that plays out. Sometimes it's just coming straight from our understanding of a customer. For us, we'll take Apple for now, I'll give you one example. We said, "Okay, we want to create content, we want to help educate people about creativity." All right.

When you look at the landscape, you've got things like TED Talks, on one end, super inspirational, but no action, no follow on. What do you do after a TED Talk and you share it with someone else probably. And that's fine. There's no shortage of that content world. On the flip side, you've got online learning, you've got MOOCs, you've got LinkedIn learning tutorials, YouTube videos by all kinds of amateur people telling you how to do something, how to write a resume, or paint a picture, blah, blah, blah, take a photo.

And we said, there's not anything that is at the intersection of that, that is inspiring to get lots of people in, but also hands-on enough where you do take away a learning that you can play with and do more with. LinkedIn learning - functional, but not very inspiring. You got to really want that to go do it. And again, like I said, TED, very inspiring. Great, but what's the impact?

When and we said we want to have impact, and we believe that it can't just be more learning content, but it can't be shallow like this other kind of surface level stuff. And so, that got us to then design out these principles, as in order for us to be successful, we think that these are the things that are going to create the behaviors that are going to matter most to get there. So, it is a bit of understanding behavior, but also knowing what you bring that's uniquely different and then setting those principles in place to guide you.

Again, manifestos and brands statements are fine, but when it comes to actually doing the work, how do you take it from that to the next level? And that's why, I practically am always like, “What are the three principles that are going to shape our decision making here?” Within the framework of the brand, within the knowledge of the customer, within the constraints and goals of the business, of course. I think it's an art though to get to that right language that is actionable and that people can really relate to.

Charles: (51:02)

I think it's not only fascinating, but essential. And it resonates so much with so much of the work that I do as well. Is there a number that you think is too few or too many?

Hashem Bajwa: (51:13)

I love threes. One of my colleagues at Apple, great marketer, Karl Heiselman really always pushed that on to me. It's like, you can remember three. Five is hard to remember. And less than three is not enough.

Charles: (51:29)

Yeah, not enough to be important. Right.

Hashem Bajwa: (51:31)

Yeah. I like that. Yeah, I think that's important. And there's different aspects of this, too. Maybe over the years, I'm just thinking out loud here. I haven't thought this out loud before. But I think as a strategist in the earlier part of my career, I was taught to create the perfect deck, really smart brand strategy, purpose, all of that stuff with a great argument about why that is and research and insight. All of that is powerful. I don't think I'm very good at it anymore.

But what I've come to realize is that the making of stuff, you need that, but then there's a second step with that brand strategy piece. If it's not developed right, no principles or whatever, then people don't know how to act on it and make the thing to live up to that. I always say, the idea of a smartphone with a multitouch screen is cool, but there's a big difference between the iPhone and a Galaxy something or another.

And why is that? I don't think Steve ever had a big brand statement and strategy when they set out to create the iPhone. I think it was a set of principles rooted in the culture with a clear point of view about what the end product needed to be, the bar, the level of its capability. And then as they make decisions, like, “Okay, do we do the keyboard this way or that way? Well, this is how we design products at Apple. These are our principles.”

I don't think it was ever written down that way. But I think people inherently had that sense. And when you're going into a new space where you have vast numbers of teams, then the language thing is important. And for me, language and principles are almost interchangeable here. Because they're the things you come back to or the way you measure success.

After you launched that thing, you can come back and say, "Okay, we said these were our principles. Did we deliver on them or not?" You can quantify principles. You can say, “How much participation happened?” Or dig down to and sort of say, "Okay, we have these high level principles here. Great. We know that. Now, what do we need for this digital takeaway piece of content?”

You can kind of go from high-level big program ambitions and use these principles to define that, and then down to a choice about what's the training module for the store employee when they first join the store? And they need to learn about this new education program. Well, the training module should embody the same principles, inspiring, participatory, celebratory, because you're asking them to go out and create something that does that. So, let's make sure the thing we give them does that.

It's seeing the intention of a project throughout all elements of it. And that's why I keep coming back to this how part because I think that's what I've learned at Apple, is that's the magic of doing something really great, getting down to the details of how you go about doing it. And again, I don't claim to be great at that part. But I know that we need people to partner with who really do get that.

Charles: (54:43)

Yeah, I think that's so powerful. I've always believed both in my own experience in terms of building a business, and then selling it.

Hashem Bajwa: (54:51)

Yeah.

Charles: (54:52)

And then working with other people who are entrepreneurs as well. And you get to that moment where you want to sell the company. And I've always recommended and suggested if the story of the company isn't reflected through all of its behaviors as well as its structures, so, for instance, the way that your books are set up, should be a reflection of the story of the company. Right? You can tell I think when you come in from the outside, is this true? Is this company really living a story and a mission? Or is it actually just a façade that is plastered over the top of it in order to convince you that there's something here when there probably isn't that much of it.

Hashem Bajwa: (55:25)

Yes, yeah. Just one question on that for you is how do you describe that? Because I think sometimes people talk about it as like living the brand, maybe. But I think that again, it doesn't speak to everybody equally. I use the phrase ‘experience design’ a lot. But I think that's been overused, too, and experience design can make a lot of things.

But what you just hit on when you're building a business, you're building a product, you're building a store, you're creating anything really, I'm curious what words or language you use to describe this. Because I think that is the new era for creative leadership is thinking about where the books are and like what you said. I don't think it's just any more like the high level creative stroke of genius. I think it's this everyday aspect. Any thoughts on that?

Charles: (56:19)

I think it's a great question. I tend to talk about it through language like three-dimensional, even four-dimensional structures and four-dimensional thinking. I like to get people to think about stuff physically. I think there's a lot of physics in leadership. I'm always interested in helping leaders to get up and out. I feel the energy flow of leadership as that which both pushes a leader up and outside the organization, so they can do their most influential work there.

And that allows, that creates space for people to fill in underneath them. You also have to pull people up towards you. So, there's a lot of physical dynamics. And I think in terms of human nature, how does a company show up? I think you need companies to be not just three-dimensional, but four-dimensional.

You have to be able to, as I say, pull this veneer off and find out, does the story still work? Is it still embedded? Is there physical evidence of it in multiple applications of the company, whether it's looking at the books or just looking at how employees are brought on board or whether it's looking at compensation structures, or even if you have a company with multiple locations, what's the both philosophy and practice by which we move people around?

I think all of those are part of the company's story. And they also have a time component to them, which is where I think the fourth dimension comes in. They both need to be substantive enough to stand the test of time. But they also need to be able to evolve over time. And if you're not thinking about where do we want to be two years, five years and 10 years from now, you will inevitably build a business that just hits a wall at some point, either because the partnership itself has run out of steam or trust or interest in each other or because the business is no longer fashionable enough to be relevant.

Hashem Bajwa: (57:57)

It's very interesting. It's very interesting. I love your thoughts on the physics of leadership. It sounds like a book for you, Charles.

Charles: (58:03)

Yes. I've thought about that. Maybe I should dig into this. As a complete non sequitur and as a traditional wrap to every episode, how do you lead?

Hashem Bajwa: (58:14)

Oh, you'd have to ask people that have followed me. Angela always said, "How do you know if you're a good leader? You look behind you and see if anybody's there." God, I think my leadership continues to evolve as I encounter and learn from others. I've always learned by watching people do work. And I feel like I teach and express and share by doing stuff myself. I don't think I'm very good at formalizing my leadership in that way.

I think what I come back to is the player coach model and being in the work and playing on the field with the right crew. I wish I had a smarter answer for you on that. I think I'm still learning. Even in this chat, you talked about physics of leadership, I think that's such an interesting one, especially as we think about the physics of going back to work in physical offices and is there even a going back to work? Or is it a sort of... Missions and adventures, like I said in our earlier part of our chat. So, I don't know, I'm still learning. I haven't been good at it throughout. I'm trying to get better at it. So, maybe it's a leadership through learning, how about that?

Charles: (59:37)

What are you afraid of?

Hashem Bajwa: (59:39)

Oh, I used to be afraid of not being relevant. And I think I felt that because of the frenetic nature of agencies where everybody's judged on your last good idea or your last award or pitch or whatever. And now, I think I care a lot less about that. I think I know a lot more about who I am, what I'm good at and where I suck. And that has been so liberating and empowering when you have more awareness of who you are.

I know I have my blind spots, but I'm aware of them. And so, that's allowed me to get beyond the fear of relevancy. I think I'm just afraid that I will not be able to get in the whiteboard and jam with people I really respect and admire as I get older maybe. I think that's something I sometimes worry about is maybe COVID is overshadowing my answer slightly, where I haven't been able to do that.

I try to not worry too much about where I'm going to land. And I think that suits how I live and how I work. Again, missions and adventures. So, yeah, maybe my fear is that the adventures dry up. But I don't know. I think I can keep finding adventures. The world's pretty big.

Charles: (01:01:09)

Yeah. I have to say I'm not worried about that for you.

Hashem Bajwa: (01:01:11)

Okay.

Charles: (01:01:13)

Thank you so much for joining me today. I think for people listening to this, this has been nothing less than a masterclass in strategic thinking at a phenomenal level. And I thank you so much for sharing so much.

Hashem Bajwa: (01:01:25)

Thank you for creating the space and inviting me and yeah. That's what my fear really is, is that maybe whatever I say is not going to be valuable or useful to people. I hope that this is useful.

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