How To Break A Promise And Make It Sound Good - The Apple Way

In this tutorial, you will learn how to break a promise and make it sound good. Utilizing tips, tricks and techniques exemplified in the recently released statement by Apple which knocked the OS X Leopard ship date back to October, you will learn how to successfully break promises easier and more effectively.

This is an advanced tutorial. While suitable for lower level promise breakers like parents, spouses, partners and lovers, this tutorial analyzes techniques usually reserved for corporate CEO’s, CIO’s or whatever re-written abbreviation of “person in charge” comes next.

Step 1: Before Breaking A Promise, Always Say Something Positive

Let’s look at Apple’s recent statement as an example. The beginning of the statement about OS X not being released on time starts with a positive statement about something that’s virtually unrelated to the original promise, the iPhone:

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is.

50% of the people you talk to only hear the first thing you say. A positive statement can send these people on their way happily. Half of the people still listening to you after your initial statement will be thinking about your positive statement during the duration of your announcement and are less likely to pay attention to, or remember, the announcement of your broken promise. This leaves roughly 25% of your original audience who are actively listening to your bad news or broken promises.

Think Presidential for this one. When was the last time you heard the President start the State Of The Union without a positive statement? As warned, this is a very advanced technique. Amateur promise breakers often have great difficulty tying two unrelated events together.

Step 2: When Breaking A Promise, Try To Make Yourself Sound Like A Victim

Let’s look at the example:

. . . finishing it (iPhone) on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team . . .

Victimization at the corporate level is daunting. Lower level politicians and other public figures have become experts at the technique, but pulling it off on a corporate level takes real skill.

How many developers does Apple have? Are the iPhone guys running down the hall and bugging the OS X Leopard guys all the time? “Hey dude, got a question for you. What font should we use for the number pad?”

Are the iPhone developers the reason Apple couldn’t get one single Apple Application to work on Vista when it was initially released?

Making yourself a victim before breaking your promise goes a long way to soothing someone else’s hurt feelings. It’s hard to feel bad for yourself when you feel worse for someone else.

Come on, which one of you out there who was dying to buy a new MacBook as soon as Leopard was released really cares about having to wait another 5 or 6 months? Don’t you just hope Apple’s developers will get a much needed break from all this hard work on the iPhone?

See how it works?

Step 3: When Breaking A Promise, Immediately Make Additional Promises That Are Not Really Promises At All

This step is far beyond the reach of all but the best promise breakers.

We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing . . .

Thank you! A “near final version”. We’ve been waiting all this time, suffering the endless rumors and speculation that you allowed to persist, we’ve denied ourselves the impulsive purchase of a new state-of-the-art machine like some monastic ritual of self-purification and now . . . yes, now a “near final version” . . . in two more months.

All this time and they weren’t even close.

Step 4: When Breaking A Promise, Never Lock Yourself Into The Next Promise

This sort of goes without saying. Don’t pin yourself down. Never admit a mistake, inadequacy, misjudgment or underestimation on your part.

. . . and ship Leopard in October.

No, I don’t count a 31 day time period 6 months off as locking into a target release date.

Step 5: Assure Everyone That Breaking Your Promise Was The Right Thing To Do

Again, think Presidential. This is the old, “I didn’t want to have to do this, but it’s the right thing to do, and oh, by the way, you’ll thank me for it later” step.

Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones.