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Inside Steve's Brain
cgjherr writes "There are management insights to be learned from Steve Jobs? You're nuts. The only things you can learn from Jobs is how to drive people nuts. Or at least, that's what I thought up until I read 'Inside Steve's Brain.' Turns out, there are things to learn from Steve's obsessive perfectionism. Certainly I wouldn't copy every aspect of Jobs' management style. Doing that will likely get you fired, or at least reprimanded, in most companies. But there is some stuff to be learned from how Jobs designs products and analyses the market, and that's the view that Leander Kahney gives us access to." Keep reading for the rest of Jack's review.
Inside Steve's Brain
author
Leander Kahney
pages
304
publisher
Portfolio
rating
10
reviewer
Jack Herrington
ISBN
1591841984
summary
A look inside Steve Jobs' management style at Apple and Pixar
Chapter one covers in some detail Jobs and his relationship with Apple, both before he left and after he came back. He talks about exactly what steps Steve took to revive the company and restore the morale of the employees. As with all of the chapters it ends with a summary of what Leander thinks are the takeaways from each of the anecdotes.
Chapters two and three; Despotism and Perfectionism, talk about the two traits that most often associated with Steve. In Despotism Leander offers some stories about just how in control Steve is of every aspect of development at Apple. And Perfectionism, well, that's self explanatory. Though you'll probably find some things you don't know about exactly where Jobs gets his design and style influences.
Chapter four and five, Elitism and Passion, dig into how Jobs cultivates that magical Apple touch. He works his people inside the company and inculcates a sense of pride and perfectionism in the Apple brand. And he works the customer base through innovative advertising that promotes the ideals and the brand, even when the product was inferior when he first took over. In the short Passion chapter Leander talks about how he builds a wider sense of world changing responsibility in the company and through his products.
The sixth chapter, Inventive Spirit, cite several examples of how Jobs used his relentless management style to refine products, and most interestingly the Apple Store. He went so far as to develop a prototype store in warehouse at the edge of the Apple campus, and how he was willing to completely scrap the design of the store when it wasn't exactly right, costing him months of time.
The seventh chapter provides a complete case study on the development of the iPod and Jobs' role in that effort. It's intriguing to see how, while there had been MP3 players in the market already, Steve and his team were able to stand back and look at the larger picture of the iPod in it's complete product ecology.
The final chapter, the Whole Widget, covers what I think is the most important lesson to be learned from Apple; that they take care of the entire product cycle. Where other vendors take care of just one piece, the hardware, the software, the network, Apple takes care of everything. If there is a problem with an Apple product you take it to the Apple store and they fix it.
Leander Kahney is the same guy who wrote "The Cult of Mac" and "The Cult of iPod". He knows his way around Apple. He has a clear grasp of the history of Apple in the large and the evolution of their key products. His insights prove that he also has good working relationship with some of the people on the ground in Apple.
There are certainly some interesting anecdotes about Steve in this book. But it would be a mistake to look at the book as just some psychoanalysis of one man. Steve doesn't make all of the products himself. The developer and designers at Apple do. It's the culture of the company that Jobs' controls, but the people who work there are motivated by it and produce within it. What you really learn here is just how passionate these folks are about finely tuning everything about their products, their services, the whole deal. It's inspiring.
You can purchase Inside Steve's Brain from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Chapters two and three; Despotism and Perfectionism, talk about the two traits that most often associated with Steve. In Despotism Leander offers some stories about just how in control Steve is of every aspect of development at Apple. And Perfectionism, well, that's self explanatory. Though you'll probably find some things you don't know about exactly where Jobs gets his design and style influences.
Chapter four and five, Elitism and Passion, dig into how Jobs cultivates that magical Apple touch. He works his people inside the company and inculcates a sense of pride and perfectionism in the Apple brand. And he works the customer base through innovative advertising that promotes the ideals and the brand, even when the product was inferior when he first took over. In the short Passion chapter Leander talks about how he builds a wider sense of world changing responsibility in the company and through his products.
The sixth chapter, Inventive Spirit, cite several examples of how Jobs used his relentless management style to refine products, and most interestingly the Apple Store. He went so far as to develop a prototype store in warehouse at the edge of the Apple campus, and how he was willing to completely scrap the design of the store when it wasn't exactly right, costing him months of time.
The seventh chapter provides a complete case study on the development of the iPod and Jobs' role in that effort. It's intriguing to see how, while there had been MP3 players in the market already, Steve and his team were able to stand back and look at the larger picture of the iPod in it's complete product ecology.
The final chapter, the Whole Widget, covers what I think is the most important lesson to be learned from Apple; that they take care of the entire product cycle. Where other vendors take care of just one piece, the hardware, the software, the network, Apple takes care of everything. If there is a problem with an Apple product you take it to the Apple store and they fix it.
Leander Kahney is the same guy who wrote "The Cult of Mac" and "The Cult of iPod". He knows his way around Apple. He has a clear grasp of the history of Apple in the large and the evolution of their key products. His insights prove that he also has good working relationship with some of the people on the ground in Apple.
There are certainly some interesting anecdotes about Steve in this book. But it would be a mistake to look at the book as just some psychoanalysis of one man. Steve doesn't make all of the products himself. The developer and designers at Apple do. It's the culture of the company that Jobs' controls, but the people who work there are motivated by it and produce within it. What you really learn here is just how passionate these folks are about finely tuning everything about their products, their services, the whole deal. It's inspiring.
You can purchase Inside Steve's Brain from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Personalities like the one that Steve Jobs shows to the world and his employees have their only chance for success in the top seat within an organization. As the summary hints, acting like Steve Jobs would get you fired pretty quickly if you were in middle-management somewhere, or just a worker-bee.
The psychopaths must have absolute control around their environment-- they cannot be held to orders from a boss. Some of the psychos are lucky, some are just personable enough to get things done, some are obsessive yet gregarious enough to build a company.
Steve Jobs got where he is because he never worked for anyone else-- he's never been homogenized inside the corporate zoo. Same goes for Sergei, same for Jerry Yang, Jeff Bezos, and the others: they never knelt at the trough of corporate life and got the stink of doing "just enough to not get fired" on them.
davejenkins.com |
You're right. Big oops right there. The misuse of the apostrophe is so widespread that I am almost getting immune to the misuse. If I had a penny for every time I saw the apostrophe used to denote plural form...
I'm SHOCKED to discover that people could learn something from a man who has completely and utterly turned Apple around from a company on its way to failure into a company that is flourishing and growing and showing no signs of slowing down any time soon.
SHOCKED, I tell you.
One may not agree with him. One may not like him. But, anyone who claims that there's nothing to learn from the man is an idiot.
Apple's early success really isn't attributable to Jobs. The Apple II was Wozniak's thing. Jobs insisted on a moulded plastic case for the Apple II, but Commodore had that, too. The Lisa (a good machine, but too expensive because the parts cost was too high back then) was a commercial flop. The original Mac (not enough memory, no hard drive) was too weak to be useful, and the Mac was a commercial flop until it was built up to Lisa specs of 1MB or so and a hard drive. (Understand that there were UNIX workstations with graphics years before the Mac came out. Cost, not innovation, was the problem in the early days.)
What actually saved Apple was the LaserWriter. That's what made the Mac useful and created the "desktop publishing" industry.
I'd much rather see into Steve Wozniak's head. The 'Mozart of the Motherboard' must have some beautiful stuff going on in there.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
for me...he has steered some excellent products; some shaking the industry down to it's foundations (read: iPod), but one thing that's struck me the most is how he's managed to re-create the "coolest kid in the school" feeling kids go through but in adults, by having selling the coolest image/product/both with consumer electronics. The kind of emotion that buying a high-performance car has been reproduced in electronics & computer gear, even if the product in question isn't necessarily the best technically. That's impressive.
Also, Steve understands people want a complete experience; not component parts. iPods come with iTunes for complete top-to-bottom management. OSX comes with Apple hardware only. Even the throw-away packaging somehow looks like someone really thought it through as to how it fits into the whole "product experience". That to me is Steve's influence. Congrats I guess!
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"As with all of the chapters it ends with a summary of what Leander thinks are the takeaways from each of the anecdotes...."
I think it takes quite a bit of arrogance to assume that you can find out what's going on inside someone else's brain. I don't know what goes on inside my wife's brain, let alone my boss's, let alone that of any Fortune 500 CEO.
It takes even more to assume that you can explain the success of a man like Steve Jobs... and even more to assume that you can draw transferrable lessons that will enable others to replicate that success.
A couple of decades ago, a bestseller entitled "In Search of Excellence" purported to explain factors that made companies successful. If I recall correctly, their examples of some of the best-managed high-tech companies included Atari, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Wang Laboratories.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
(That doesn't really work, because he's not forced to use it)
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Steve Jobs is definately a creative entrepreneur, but he is also a lucky one.
Nah... the failure rate for startups is phenomenal, but Jobs:
- Made a success Apple (maybe luck there - right place, right time - but also the right product)
- Made a success of NeXT (at least sufficiently so to sell it for boatloads of cash, and much of the tech lives on)
- Made a success of Pixar
- Came back to Apple when it was failing, turned it around, and introduced: iMac, OS/X, iPod, ITunes, iPhone ...
That's a heck of a string of "luck"! ;-)
Incidently I'm not a fanboy - never owned a Mac - but you've got to give the man his due.
Implications of the subject for this thread!
Brain == Mind as Television == Ronald Reagan
The inside of Steve's brain is probably much like the fatty substance between most people's ears. I'd like to know about his mind.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If all you care about is staying under radars, then of course you'll not want to work at Apple.
Otherwise - what sane technical person does not dream of a product with the reach of the iPod or iPhone? To work on an API used by tens of thousands of developers?
You could put up with a lot for that kind of opportunity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When working with teams of brilliant and inspired people it can become difficult if not impossible to point out that something someone did just plain sucks. Being able to do this when it is necessary is an unusual and powerful skill.
Then when the work appears finished it can be even harder to point out that the results suck. Being able to do this can be critical for honing a product to the point it becomes truly relevant.
Personally, I don't care for Jobs' taste or the Apple style generally, but you're on to something there all the same. Apple's success in recent years is precisely because Jobs and the designers that work for him have made their products fashionable. It doesn't matter whether they're technically superior or not. Taking MP3 players for example, there really isn't much to distinguish one from another. The iPod's interface is well done, yes, but the price premium it commands has a lot more to do with how fashionable it is to own one than anything else. iPods are hip and trendy, and the competing brands are not.
Jobs' genius has a lot less to do with being "insanely great" than it does with having the same kind of sensibility that you find in successful fashion designers. He comes up with (or supervises the people who come up with) hot products and successfully creates the kind of buzz around them that normally goes with things like designer clothing and sports cars. Mind you, I'm not knocking the technical quality of Apple products; I'm just saying that as long as they are roughly comparable to competing products at a technical level, that's not what most people care about. They want to be seen with Apple products, and they're willing to pay a higher price for them the same way they'll pay an extra hundred bucks for a pair of shoes from a fashionable brand.
All that said, the attention to detail exhibited by Apple in recent years is something the rest of the industry could learn from, too.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Ok, I've been working for the gubberment for a good long time and I'd love to work for a despot like Steve jobs. It is not ethical to keep poor performers around just because they are your friends. Doing this penalizes the hard workers who have to pick up the slack. There is nothing wrong with getting rid of the deadwood. Keeping someone in a job because they are your friend or you feel bad for them or whatever is just another form of nepotism... and *that* is not ethical. And when, as in the case of where I work, this is done by spending tax-payer money to keep people employed in spite of their poor performance, that is getting awfully close to the same kind of corruption that plagues government agencies in the third world.
I am sick and tired of people accusing the likes of Jobs of being ethically challenged for the ease with which he fires people. Better to have someone like that at the helm than to suffer at a place run by the peter principle and where seniority trumps performance.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Here's an interesting article from a few months back. Among other things it talks about Jobs' "hero-shithead roller coaster" in which subordinates or developing products often flip from "insanely great" to "shit" depending on his mood. Apple seems to be a highly sought after employer among geeks, but is it really worth that, if you're unlucky enough to be on Steve's radar?
Apple may attract a certain personality that may not be considered "mainstream". One thing Jobs does well is motivate people to think their project is the most important thing on earth even if its just an accessory. When people screw up, Jobs makes them feel like its their own fault because he instills them with a sense of ownership in their work.
While he may chew you out big-time, you do feel attached to your work in an intimate way and don't feel like just another cog in the wheel. He ties your ego to the gizmo at hand so that you rise or fall with it.
Other companies talk about "team-work", and while it may create harmony and integration, it does tend to water down one's connection to the product. Teamwork is one approach to success, but Jobs found another path: ego coupling to the result.
Table-ized A.I.