The Lessons we were taught by Steve Jobs
My feelings about Steve Jobs have
always been a little mixed. I long admired his entrepreneurial spirit and
business acumen and was in sheer awe of his natural instincts for what appeals
to consumers. On the other hand I bristled at what I saw as his -- and by
extension Apple’s -- occasionally capricious and even contradictory actions
(App store products in or out, inability to get in front of product
issues, and super-secretive
nature.
Like most of us, his personality had many sides. He could be
aloof, super-intense, odd, gross, passionate, creative, driven, unfair,
conciliatory and deeply introspective. He lived a rich and unique life.
As I read the tome on my Kindle, I highlighted interesting, surprising
and relevant passages. Now, as I look back at them I realize that many help
illustrate some of the larger lessons we can all glean from Steve Jobs’
remarkable life.
Don’t Wait
When the young Steve Jobs wanted to build something and needed a
piece of equipment, he went straight to the source.
“He began by recalling that
he had wanted to build a frequency counter when he was twelve, and he was able
to look up Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP, in the phone book and call him to
get parts.”
Make Your Own Reality
Steve Jobs learned early that when you don’t like how things are
in your life or in your world, change them, either through action or sheer force
of will.
“As Hoffman later lamented,
“The reality distortion field can serve as a spur, but then reality itself
hits.” – Joanna Hoffman, part of Apple’s early Macintosh team.
“I didn’t want to be a
father, so I wasn’t,” Jobs later said, with only a touch of remorse in his
voice.
Control Everything You Can
Steve Jobs was, to a certain degree, a hippie. However, unlike
most free spirits of the 1960s-to-1970s love-in era, Jobs was a detail-oriented
control freak.
“He wants to control his
environment, and he sees the product as an extension of himself.”
Own Your Mistakes
Jobs could be harsh and even thoughtless. Perhaps nowhere was
that more in evidence than with his first daughter. Still, as Jobs grew older
and began to face mortality, he more readily admitted his mistakes.
“I’ve done a lot of things
I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was
twenty-three and the way I handled that,” Jobs said.”
Know Yourself
While not always aware of how those around him were reacting to
his appearance or demeanor, Jobs had no illusions about his own formidable
intellectual skills.
“Then a more disconcerting
discovery began to dawn on him: He was smarter than his parents.”
Leave the Door Open for the Fantastic
Jobs was a seeker, pursuing spiritual enlightenment and body
purification throughout his life. He wasn’t a particularly religious person,
but did not dismiss the existence or something beyond our earth-bound realm.
“I think different
religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house
exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery.” -- Steve Jobs
Don’t Hold Back
Apple’s founder was famous for his outbursts and sometimes
over-emotional responses. In product development, things were often amazing or
sh_t.
“He was an enlightened
being who was cruel,” she recalled. “That’s a strange combination.”-- former
girlfriend and mother of Jobs’ first daughter, Chrisann Brennan
Surround Yourself with Brilliance
Whether he was willing to admit it or not, Steve Jobs could not
do everything. Yes, he could have a huge impact on every product and marketing
campaign, but he also knew that there were others in the world with skills he
did not possess. Jobs' early partnership with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak
perfectly illustrated this fact. His early success with Wozniak provided the
template for future collaborations.
“After a couple of months
he was ready to test it. ‘I typed a few keys on the keyboard and I was shocked!
The letters were displayed on the screen.’ It was Sunday, June 29, 1975, a
milestone for the personal computer. “It was the first time in history,”
Wozniak later said, “anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it
show up on their own computer’s screen right in front of them.”
Build a Team of A Players
Far too often, companies and managers settle for average
employees. Steve Jobs recognized talent and decided that any conflict that
might arise from a company full of “A”-level players would be counterbalanced
by awesome output. He may have been right.
“For most things in life,
the range between best and average is 30% or so. The best airplane flight, the
best meal, they may be 30% better than your average one. What I saw with Woz
was somebody who was fifty times better than the average engineer. He could have
meetings in his head. The Mac team was an attempt to build a whole team like
that, A players. People said they wouldn’t get along, they’d hate working with
each other. But I realized that A players like to work with A players, they
just didn’t like working with C players.”-- Steve Jobs
“I’ve learned over the
years that when you have really good people you don’t have to baby them,” Jobs
later explained. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do
great things.”
Be Yourself
Steve Jobs was often so busy being himself that he had no idea
how people saw him, especially in his early, dirty-hippie days.
“At meetings we had to look
at his dirty feet. Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the
toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his colleagues.”—Mike Markkula,
Apple’s first chairman.
Be Persuasive
While it’s true that early Steve Jobs was a somewhat smelly and
unpleasant person to be around, this same Steve Jobs also trained himself to
stare without blinking for long periods of time and found that he could
persuade people to do the seemingly impossible.
“If it could save a
person’s life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?” he
asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and
showed that if there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten
seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million
or so hours per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at
least one hundred lifetimes saved per year.”
Show Others the Way
Jobs wasn’t truly a programmer or technologist, certainly not in
the way that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is, yet he had an intuitive
understanding for technology and design that ended up altering the world’s
expectations for computers and, more importantly, consumer electronics.
“To be honest, we didn’t
know what it meant for a computer to be ‘friendly’ until Steve told us.” --
Terry Oyama, part of the early Macintosh design team.
Trust Your Instincts
I have, in my own career, navigated by gut on more than one
occasion. Steve Jobs, though, had a deep and abiding belief in his own tastes
and believed with utter certainty that if he liked something, the public would
as well. He was almost invariably right.
“Did Alexander Graham Bell
do any market research before he invented the telephone?” -- Steve Jobs
Take Risks
Throughout his career, Steve Jobs took chances, first with the
launch of Apple, then in walking away from it and then returning in 1997. In an
era when most companies were figuring out ways to diversify, Apple -- under
Job’s leadership -- shed businesses and products, and focused on relatively few
areas. He was also willing to steer the entire Apple ship (or at least some
aspects of it) in a single direction if he thought it would generate future
success.
“One of Jobs’ management
philosophies was that it is crucial, every now and then, to roll the dice and
'bet the company' on some new idea or technology.”
“I had this crazy idea that
we could sell just as many Macs by advertising the iPod. In addition, the iPod
would position Apple as evoking innovation and youth. So I moved $75 million of
advertising money to the iPod, even though the category didn’t justify one
hundredth of that. That meant that we completely dominated the market for music
players. We outspent everybody by a factor of about a hundred.” -- Steve Jobs.
Follow Great with Great
In everything from products to movies (under Pixar), Steve Jobs sought to create great
follow-ups. He wasn’t so successful in the early part of his career (see Lisa),
but his third acts to Pixar and Apple proved he had the sequel touch.
“There’s a classic thing in
business, which is the second-product syndrome,” Jobs later said. It comes from
not understanding what made your first product so successful. “I lived through
that at Apple. My feeling was, if we got through our second film, we’d make
it.”
Make Tough Decisions
Good managers and leaders are willing to do hard work and,
often, make unpopular decisions. Jobs apparently had little concern about being
liked and therefore was well-equipped to make tough choices.
“The most visible decision
he made was to kill, once and for all, the Newton, the personal digital
assistant with the almost-good handwriting-recognition system.”
Presentation Can Make a World of Difference
The Apple founder hated PowerPoint presentations, but perhaps
somewhat uncharacteristically, believed elegant product presentation was
critical.
“Packaging can be theater,
it can create a story.” -- Jony Ive, Apple designer.
Find a Way to Balance Your Intensity
It’s unclear if Steve Jobs ever truly mellowed, but he did learn
that a buffer between him and the rest of Apple could be useful.
“In a company that was led
by a CEO prone to tantrums and withering blasts, Cook commanded situations with
a calm demeanor, a soothing Alabama accent, and silent stares.”
Live for Today
Even as Steve Jobs struggled with cancer, he rarely slowed down.
If anything, the disease helped him focus his efforts and pursue some of his
grandest dreams.
“Remembering that I’ll be
dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the
big choices in life.” -- Steve Jobs
“Remembering that you are
going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have
something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your
heart.” -- Steve Jobs
Share Your Wisdom
Steve Jobs was not a philanthropic soul. He had a passion for
products and success, but it wasn’t until he became quite ill that he started
reaching out and offering his wisdom to others in the tech community.
“I will continue to do that
with people like Mark Zuckerberg too. That’s how I’m going to spend
part of the time I have left. I can help the next generation remember the
lineage of great companies here and how to continue the tradition. The Valley
has been very supportive of me. I should do my best to repay.” -- Steve Jobs
Posts
inShare