Stay Start up Hungry

“Inside Apple” Chapter 4 - Stay Start up Hungry

When Steve Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997, it looked like big companies everywhere. “Like other companies” is precisely what Jobs did not want Apple to be. After Jobs returned, the corporate culture changed, employees would focus on whatever they did best and nothing else.

Jobs would tell the story of confronting sixteen divisions at Apple, each with a divisional advertising budget. He put an end to it quickly and he made sure that only the hottest product would command the most advertising dollars, which has always been a success model for apple by promoting fewer rather than more products.

DRI
The notion of responsibility is enshrined in Apple with an acronym DRI - Directly Responsible Individual. It is the person on any given assignment who will be called in the carpet if something isn’t done right. There’s no confusion of who’s going to do what, it’s very detailed oriented.

For example graphic designer just needs to think about the biggest graphics thought he can focus on being world class in his area. Being a well rounded employee is neither required nor frankly wanted. Be the best at your thing was what Apple wanted.
At Apple, small team works on really important projects. That is one of the advantages of being in a start-up. For example: just two engineers wrote the code for converting Apple’s safari browser for the iPad

Values at Apple
Putting together corporate attributes – clear direction, individual accountability, sense of urgency, constant feedback, and clarity of mission comprises of Apple’s values. Values may be a soft topic in the corporate world, a term that’s interchangeable with culture or core beliefs. In case of Apple – It is being able to assess how deeply ingrained its values are and informs the question of how the company will fare without Steve Jobs.

Hiring Talent
Steve Jobs long considered the issue of spotting and grooming talent to be one of the most important aspects of being an entrepreneur and CEO.

Once hired, people stay at Apple for years, assuming they have learned to accept the literal and unspoken terms of employment. At the time Steve Jobs resigned as CEO, every member of the executive team except for general counsel and CFO had been in their jobs since at least 2000

Apple is not for everyone. “Apple runs so fast and so lean it requires people to really work hard and take on a lot of tasks and do them in a short period of time,” said a recruiter who is close to Apple employees. They want to be a part of something cool, but then they get in there and they’re like “Oh this really isn’t the hip company that I thought it was”.

If more companies did these things, it might work, and it might not. It might not even work so well at Apple after Steve Jobs hasn’t been CEO for a few years. But if more companies thought about such things, they’d most certainly be more like Apple.

Embrace Secrecy

“Inside Apple” Second Chapter – Embrace Secrecy.

Apple employees know something big is afoot when the carpenters appear in their office building. New walls are quickly erected. Doors are added, windows that once were transparent are now frosted. What’s more, your badge which got you into particular areas before the new construction no longer works there. End of Story

Secrecy takes two basic forms at Apple –external and internal

Internal Secrecy
Internal secrecy as those evidenced by mysterious wall and off limits areas. Unlike Google’s famously named “Googleplex” where a visitor can roam the inner courtyards and slip into an open door as employees come and go, Apple’s buildings are airtight. Yet the link between secrecy and productivity is another way Apple challenges long held management truths and notion of transparency as a corporate virtue. For new recruits, the secret keeping begins even before they learn which of these buildings they’ll be working in. Employees are hired in so called dummy positions, roles that aren’t explained in detail until after they join the company.

Reason why Apple embraces internal secrecy
Teams are purposely kept apart, sometimes because they are unknowingly competing against one another, but more often it is the Apple way to mind one’s own business. Like a horse fitted with blinders, the Apple employee charges forward to the exclusion of the rest. Apple employees and their projects are pieces of puzzle. The snapshot of the complete puzzle is known only at the highest reaches of the organization

External Secrecy
The obvious kind of secrecy that Apple uses a way of keeping its products and practices hidden from competitors and the rest of the outside world

Reasons why Apple embraces external secrecy

To create Anticipation
The aversion to pre-release publicity is a constant tradition at Apple. They believe releasing details ahead of time would dampen the anticipation. The rationale is that when apple launches a product, if it’s been a secret up until the launch, the amount of press, coverage and buzz is hugely valuable to the company.

Existing products are not cannibalized
If a consumer knows exactly what’s coming, they may hold off on a purchase for fear it will be superseded by the next generation. This may lead to dulling of demand for the products already awaiting purchase in retail shelves or warehouses worthless.

Competitors don’t get time to respond
Announcing products before they are ready gives the competition time to respond, it raises customer expectation, and critics start bashing an Idea than an actual product.

It will be interesting to see in the coming years if Apple is able to hold on to the trait of embracing secrecy with Tim Cook on board as the CEO.

Rethink Leadership

The Book I am reading is “Inside Apple” - by Adam Lashinsky
The secrets Behind the Past and Future Success of Steve Job’s Iconic Brand


In the first Chapter- Rethink Leadership. Adam frames Steve as a leader using countless examples to drill home the image of Steve as a narcissistic, micro managing, God like leader. Steve led in a way that was in contrast to conventional wisdom. Culture at Apple was consistent with the traits and style of its dominating leader. It was secretive, not transparent. It was micro managing not empowering. It was in most ways a very large start-up and that is the culture that Steve wanted it to be. But despite all these things, the current mindset of thinking would cause a business to derail, Steve and the Apple train continually picked up steam and success by almost all accounts. With this as the back drop several questions come to mind that needs to be explored.

Work Culture
A company is the reflection of its leader’s actions and behaviours. Steve was a micromanager who reviews every single ad, every product design, every outbound communication, his hand is on everything and if he doesn’t like it, he changes it and he wins every time. That is not the leadership style of most managers, we tend to delegate more, we think hire the right people and let them do their job. But is that right? Should they be more balanced in their approach? Is some of the question that arises after reading the book.

Accountability
Adam captures Steve theory of accountability crisply in a janitor story he shares that Steve shares with and reminds all employees once they reach a certain level of the organization. The basic tenant on the story is that when you are a janitor and you can’t access an office to clear the trash because your key no longer works, that is an acceptable answer with an easy solution. Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO reasons stops mattering and that level is senior executive. Like an invoking Yoda from star wars Jobs would tell the VP: “Do or do not. There is no try” Apple didn’t disappoint its customers, executives would not disappoint Steve.

Focus
Adam tells the story of life at Apple leading up the launch of the iPhone. During this time the massive organization concentrated all of its best on a single product. Think about the confidence and belief required to make that call in an organization. All your bread and butter products that make you what you are and all the countless number of customers behind those products are going to be ‘risked’ to put almost all of your eggs in the basket of a product that has no equivalent, no real market research to speak of, no pivots, no A/B testing, just Steve’s belief that it was the right product at the right time.

It will take years, but eventually the world will learn if Steve Jobs was Apple – or if he succeeded in building a complex organism strong enough to survive his death.