"It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much."
This new series on Steve Jobs and how he started, ran and grew Apple (AAPL), will be astounding, in that there are so many myths and legends surrounding him, it's difficult for the average person, even in business management and leadership to understand who and what he is through the mystique; and I believe he loves that idea.
What we'll find out is he isn't that far different from many great business managers, but those things he is different in and good at, of course set him and Apple apart.
while it would be fun to keep a lot of the mystique that surrounds Jobs in place, it won't help us much as far as using some of his strengths to help us in our challenges.
Like many of the great leaders we portray here, even when we know what it is that separates them from the rest of us, it's very difficult to copy or manufacture, if it wasn't, they wouldn't stand out among the crowd. Jobs is the same.
This of course doesn't mean there aren't things to draw and use from his business success, it's means we still have to adapt them to who we are and what our companies represent.
That's the reason I started this first post on Jobs quoting him saying no to a lot of things people offer up as ideas for Apple.
The reason I bring it up is so we understand that through all the spin, Jobs was very aware of the temptation to try too many things or get off the track of what works for the company and its consumers.
So right off the bat, we see he says no all the time to his people. It may surprise many as words like openness and innovation and cool would seem to indicate that the freewheeling Apple culture will try a lot of things and splat everything against the wall to see what sticks. After all, that's what everybody writes about when they talk about innovation.
In Jobs own words, that's not how he operates. Now once a yes decision is made, that's the time the true innovation and experimentation comes in.
So from the start, we want to see Jobs in his own words saying amidst all the possibilities, we need to learn to say no to a 1,000 things if we don't want to be chasing down dead ends all the time.
Now you know one of the reasons he very specifically introduces a very low number of products into the marketplace. He'll look for those very few products which have great chances to be wildly successful. The iPhone is the latest example.
Other Steve Jobs Resources:
You've got to find what you love
Steve Jobs, Business Personality
Steve Jobs' Greatest Presentation
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» Andy Grove: Only the Paranoid Survive - 23 from ManagersRealm
"The most powerful tool of all is the word no."It's interesting to come across this comment by Grove, because I had recently started posting a new study about Steve Jobs and the ways he led and managed Apple (AAPL), w... [Read More]
Tracked on: July 15, 2007 12:12 AM | Permalink to Trackback