How Steve Jobs Created a Forward-Thinking Culture at Apple - Book Club #18: "Steve Jobs"

Steve Jobs was a man of incredible talents and expertise. He was an astonishingly creative man and many people - Bill Gates included - would call him “magical” when it came to design, innovation, creativity, and management.

---

---

Current Book & Quotes From: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

 
 

---

---

One of the things that Jobs did extremely well was empowering his team to do the best work possible and to constantly innovate forward in order to create amazing products and open the door to the future. Apple thrived because Jobs instilled the company with an innovative, end-to-end workflow that could not be matched by any other tech giant.

Jobs instilled this culture by being ruthless with his employees. He was famously known for being a hard-ass and he often belittled employees and was very harsh when delivering his criticism. Some found this to be extremely counterproductive and hurtful while others found it to be passionate and stimulating. Jobs would proclaim that the ladder were the "A-Players" - those who were willing to go the distance and work their asses off to make the best product in the world and who weren't afraid to stand up for the products and ideas they believed in.

“I realized very early that if you didn’t voice your opinion, he would mow you down,” said Cook [about Steve Jobs]. “He takes contrary positions to create more discussion, because it may lead to a better result. So if you don’t feel comfortable disagreeing, then you’ll never survive.”

Disagreeing with Jobs could sometimes result in a screaming match back and forth or it could result in him realizing that you in fact have come up with the best possible idea for what you're trying to accomplish. Either way, Jobs's intentions were to get you to work as hard as you can and to be passionate about your idea. While it may seem harsh and unnecessary, it was definitely effective and can be looked at as one of the major reasons Apple was the first to create revolutionary new products like the iPod, iPhone and Macbook.

“The key venue for freewheeling discourse was the Monday morning executive team gathering, which started at 9 and went for three or four hours. The focus was always on the future: What should each product do next? What new things should be developed? Jobs used the meeting to enforce a sense of shared mission at Apple.”

Jobs was always looking to the future and thinking up the best possible product for consumers. He wasn't concerned with what consumers would desire, he was concerned with what he could make consumers desire out of shear "awesomeness".

“Jobs also used the meetings to enforce focus. At Robert Friedland’s farm, his job had been to prune the apple trees so that they would stay strong, and that became a metaphor for his pruning at Apple. Instead of encouraging each group to let product lines proliferate based on marketing considerations, or permitting a thousand ideas to bloom, Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. “There is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him,” Cook said. “That allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.”

Jobs was a master at cutting through the noise and focusing on just a handful of priorities. What's even more amazing is that he was able to instill this quality into the executives and employees at Apple. Most companies tend to create separate divisions who will work on dozens of ideas to try and find the 1 that works. Jobs did the exact opposite - he would force all the divisons to collaborate on just a few ideas and make those few ideas work in the best manner possible.

“He hired Joel Podolny, who was dean of the Yale School of Management, to compile a series of case studies analyzing important decisions the company had made, including the switch to the Intel microprocessor and the decision to open the Apple Stores. Top executives spent time teaching the cases to new employees, so that the Apple style of decision making would be embedded in the culture.”

Jobs also was a master of being analytical. He was amazing at bridging the gap between the past, present and future and collating all of the amazing lessons that could be learned from them. He wanted all his employees at Apple to learn from what he did and be able to make swift decisions about the things that truly mattered. That's why he set up these case studies and that's one of the major reasons why Apple became so innovative.

---

Here's the Question of The Day, don't forget to post your answers in the comments!

Despite being a hard-ass, Jobs was able to cultivate a fire in his employees that allowed them to produce their best possible work. Do you think you would've been able to bear the burden of Jobs's tough management style if it meant being able to produce amazing results?

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to leave your thoughts below and I look forward to seeing you in the comments!

-