Since Steve Jobs died on 5 October this year there has been an outpouring of tributes from President Obama’s amazing statement — to users of iPhones, MacBooks and iPods cards, post-it notes and bitten apples left as makeshift shrines outside Apple stores.
I have personally felt a deep sadness, the passing of a man who has meant a lot to me for many years — as my use of computers grew, and with it an interest in how digitisation could be used for content in so many areas of life. Steve as the central character in his unfolding story — one man’s drive to create great things that people love to use (accelerated by his knowledge of his shortened life) — has acted as a distant mentor at times when I’ve needed inspiration to change direction and lift my head a little higher.
One example of what he did that is less to do with the products, but the methods he developed for organising great people in a way that brought out the best of them and resulted in great products. Here is the transcript of part of an interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at AllThingsD in 2008. The video (above) is worth watching too.
SJ: “One of the keys to Apple is Apple’s an incredibly collaborative company. know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero, no committees. We are organised like a startup: one person’s in charge of iPhone OS software one person’s in charge of mac hardware, another’s in charge of iPhone hardware engineering, another person’s in charge worldwide marketing another person’s in charge of operations. We’re organised like a startup. We’re the biggest startup on the planet. We all meet for three hours once a week and we talk about whatever we’re doing — the whole business. And there’s tremendous teamwork at the top of the company which filters down to tremendous teamwork throughout the company.
And teamwork is dependent on trusting the other folk to come through with their part without watching them all the time. And we’re great at figuring out how to divide things up into into these great teams that we have, and all work on the same thing, touch bases frequently and bring it all together into a product – we do that really well. And so what I do all day is meet with teams of people, work on ideas, and solve problems, to make new products, to make new marketting program — whatever it is. ”
(He is asked by Walt if anyone ever disagrees with him)
SJ: “We have wonderful arguments. You can’t, if you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win otherwise good people don’t stay.”
Walt: “But you must be more that a facilitator who runs meetings, you obviously contribute your own ideas”
SJ: “I contribute ideas — SURE — why would I be there if I didn’t!”
There are too many examples I have known where people are too unconfident in their own position to allow others to contribute — and that results in groups of people that never really learn to function as teams, or which dissolve after a short while when the individuals find themselves in cul-de-sacs or contradicted one too many times by people who don’t offer any better solution. The evidence is there for all to see, that letting great people get on with doing great work gets results — may Apple continue with great ideas and products for many years to come.