What Can I Learn from Steve Jobs?
Carol Frank
Having recently finished the excellent biography on Steve Jobs
by Walter Isaacson, the hundreds of business lessons learned
from this brilliant icon would be enough for 10 columns. But
today I will focus one of the absolute hardest aspects of running
a business – finding the right team.
Steve insisted on surrounding himself by A players. If you
weren’t an A player, you wouldn’t last very long anyway
because Steve’s lack of patience and toxic reactions to
mediocrity would chase away all but those who operated at the
highest level of intelligence and integrity.
His creative brilliance went beyond designing products. He
applied his perfectionism equally to designing his team. " Steve
Jobs has left us bits of wisdom about hiring and retaining talent
that should live on in businesses everywhere.” Some of my
favorites:
On choosing the right people
"I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average
person could accomplish and what the best person could
accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that, you're well advised
to go after the cream of the cream....A small team of A+
players can run circles around a giant team of B and C
players."
"Finding the needles in the haystack" is what Jobs called finding
his A+ players. His belief was that after you've sourced using the
various channels: LinkedIn, job boards, internal databases,
external directories and whatever else you can find; reviewed all
the resumes; and had your one-hour interview; what you have
left is your gut.
It's not a candidate's resume or the answers they give to your
cleverly phrased questions; it really gets down to how you feel
being with this person. And that you get from the metadata
according to Jobs, whose favorite interview question was "Why
are you here?"-a question that would get anyone's metadata
flowing.
Steve Jobs believed that recruiting was one of the most
important things he did. He managed all of the recruiting for his
team, never delegating it. Everyone who made it to a Steve Jobs
interview had to be really smart - competence was his "ante."
But he said his real issue was "Are they going to fall in love with
Apple?" Because he believed if they did, everything else would
take care of itself. If people put what was best for Apple before
what was best for them, they were probably culturally a good fit.
On building a world-changing culture
"We've interviewed people where nine out of 10 employees
thought the candidate was terrific, one employee really had a
problem with the candidate, and therefore we didn't hire him."
Jobs didn't believe that one person, or even a few people could
accomplish major results. Yes, he said, some people, like
Michelangelo, could do a single thing magnificently, but huge
projects require "legions" of extraordinary people. And those
people have to be managed right, which means a culture that
supports them. To him, it was critical that everyone on his team
respected everyone else.
Recruiting perfection wasn't enough for Jobs, nor should it be for
any company. Jobs built cultures where employees understood that
their work could influence the world, and he communicated a
strong, clear vision of how that would happen.
On leading with a clear, compelling vision
"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me.
Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful,
that's what matters to me."
Steve Jobs once said, "I want to put a ding in the universe." I don't
think there's a question in anyone's mind that he succeeded. And the
credit? It always included his field of A+ players. He put his faith
in his people, not in technology, which for him was just a tool that
either worked or didn't.
He knew the Mac would sell "zillions," but he and his team focused
on a product THEY would love and be proud of, not just on
maximizing profits. It was the Mac team who were the judges of
whether it was a great product or not. Market research wasn't
necessary. As a matter of fact, Jobs never believed in market
research. Instead, he trusted his intuition, taste, and style and
created products that consumers didn’t even know they wanted
until they hit the market. Genuis.
As his former, and estranged, business partner John Scully put it,
Jobs' early team was made up of "people who had clearly never
built a commercial product before but they believed in Steve and
they believed in his vision." From the Mac to the iMacs, the iPods,
the iPhones and the iPads, Jobs' vision drove unbelievable
innovation , which he believed came from people meeting in the
hallways or calling each other late at night with a new idea or the
solution to a problem.
On being excellent
"For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning
and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I
want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the
answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need
to change something."
A question we should all be asking ourselves periodically. As
prickly and toxic as Steve Jobs could be, his authenticity was
evident in the way he lived his life each and every day. A good
thing for all of us to remember as we strive to succeed in this
competitive business environment.
Carol Frank of Boulder, CO, is the founder of four companies in the pet industry. As a Managing
Director at SDR Ventures Investment Bank, Carol leads the team in executing pet industry
transactions including M&A, capital formation and strategic advisory services. She is also the
owner of BirdsEye Consulting, the consummate source for pet sector consulting expertise.
She can be reached at carol@carolfrank.com