30 Books in 30 days – Remembering 15 years of the 1st Friday Book Synopsis – (Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson)

{On April 5, 2013, we will celebrate the 15^th Anniversary of the First Friday Book Synopsis, and begin our 16^th year.  During March, I will post a blog post per day remembering key insights from some of the books I have presented over the 15 years of the First Friday Book Synopsis.  We have met every first Friday of every month since April, 1998 (except for a couple of weather –related cancellations).  These posts will focus only on books I have presented.  My colleague, Karl Krayer, also presented his synopses of business books at each of these gatherings.  I am going in chronological order, from April, 1998, forward.  The fastest way to check on these posts will be at Randy’s blog entries — though there will be some additional blog posts interspersed among these 30.}
Post #29 of 30

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(Personal note: I read Steve Jobs on my iPad, the last new product Steve Jobs was able to introduce)

Synopsis presented January, 2012
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster.  2011).

Let’s start with this paragraph from the book – maybe the paragraph from the book (although there are many!):

Steve Jobs became the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now. History will place him in the pantheon right next to Edison and Ford. More than anyone else of his time, he made products that were completely innovative, combining the power of poetry and processors. With a ferocity that could make working with him as unsettling as it was inspiring, he also built the world’s most creative company. And he was able to infuse into its DNA the design sensibilities, perfectionism, and imagination that make it likely to be, even decades from now, the company that thrives best at the intersection of artistry and technology.

“Right next to Edison and Ford.”  Now, if you know anything about Edison and Ford, they were not the only two people working on the ideas that they are given such credit for.  Others were trying to come up with the breakthroughs that are credited to Edison and Ford.  So too, with Jobs.  Thus, Steve Jobs may not have single-handedly done much of anything.  But, of course, he did in fact, practically singlehandedly change so very much.  He was a genius:

Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical. He was, indeed, an example of what the mathematician Mark Kac called a magician genius, someone whose insights come out of the blue and require intuition more than mere mental processing power. Like a pathfinder…

There is so much good, useful, valuable insight in practically any and every book I read.  But as I reflect on the books I have read, there are a handful that I just remember.  I remember some of what was in them, and I remember the sense of awe and discovery and excitement I felt in reading them.  Two such experiences came from two of David Halberstam’s books:  The Powers that Be and The Reckoning.  I get a sense of it from reading the books of Michael Lewis.  This book by Walter Isaacson absolutely joins this short personal list.  I loved reading this book!

And, in watching the current travails of Apple (at least, as seen in their stock price variations/declines), one wonders… is there ever a way to “replace” a Steve Jobs?

But, to the book.

“Abandoned. Chosen. Special.”  — These are the words that described Steve Jobs own self-awareness, and Isaacson’s description of Jobs.

His story begins with a mother who put him up for adoption, and a vivid memory when a neighborhood child reminded him of that.  He rushed home to his adoptive parents in tears (Steve Jobs cried a lot over his lifetime).  Here is how he remembers that moment, recounted to Isaacson:

My parents said, ‘No, you have to understand.’ They were very serious and looked me straight in the eye. They said, ‘We specifically picked you out.’ Both of my parents said that and repeated it slowly for me. And they put an emphasis on every word in that sentence.”

That moment of affirmation, of “we wanted you/we picked you out,” was profound for Steve Jobs.  But, take another look at that paragraph.  This is recounted late in life, from his memory of the moment so many years before.  I find something striking:  it is a great, powerful tutorial on communication skills, and if you watch any of Steve Jobs’ presentations, he practiced this:  “put an emphasis on every word in that sentence.”  Steve Jobs was the Super Bowl Champion level verbal presentation master, partly because he chose the right words, and he used vocal variety and verbal punch – the use of “emphasis” of key words — so very effectively..

In these blog posts these 30 days, I have tried to give enough of the book to help you think about the key ideas.  This book is so “big” (long; sweeping), that this is the most difficult challenge I have faced…  I will leave so much out.  But, I have to include this from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak:

“Woz was the first person I’d met who knew more electronics than I did,” he once said, stretching his own expertise. “I liked him right away. I was a little more mature than my years, and he was a little less mature than his, so it evened out. Woz was very bright, but emotionally he was my age.”

The chronology unfolds with relationships, and conflicts, and temper tantrums, and crying exhibitions to the company board…  But there are such profound insights into his business genius in this book.  Steve Jobs was a true “salesman.”  He could sell things that others came up with.  And he did.  And, ultimately, it turned into great success.

Steve Jobs was shaped by, and he embraced, such a diversity of thought – Zen, Eastern thought, LSD…

…mostly he tended to the stirrings of his own soul and personal quest for enlightenment… I came of age at a magical time,” he reflected later. “Our consciousness was raised by Zen, and also by LSD.” Even later in life he would credit psychedelic drugs for making him more enlightened. “Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important— creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”
We learned how to tune out distractions. It was a magical thing.

And he understood business basics, and business excellence, with such clarity:

…a one-page paper titled “The Apple Marketing Philosophy” that stressed three points. The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: “We will truly understand their needs better than any other company 
Focus: “In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.” The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was “impute.” It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. “People DO judge a book by its cover,” he wrote. “We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.”

Steve Jobs was so passionate about design:

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Jobs felt that design simplicity should be linked to making products easy to use… The main thing in our design is that we have to make things intuitively obvious.”
“His design sensibility is sleek but not slick, which came from his Zen devotion to simplicity, but he avoided allowing that to make his products cold. They stayed fun. He’s passionate and super-serious about design, but at the same time there’s a sense of play.”

It is well known that he could be quite a jerk…  But he also beckoned forth such great work, such great innovation, such great commitment, and ultimately he created great loyalty…  Here was his philosophy:

Jobs had latched onto what he believed was a key management lesson from his Macintosh experience: You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players. “It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players,” he recalled. “The Macintosh experience taught me that A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.”
Business Week asked him why he treated employees so harshly, Jobs said it made the company better.
“I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest. I know what I’m talking about, and I usually turn out to be right. That’s the culture I tried to create. We are brutally honest with each other, and anyone can tell me they think I am full of shit and I can tell them the same.”

 Yes, it was great products – but not just great products.  It was also great companies:

Jobs was known during his career for creating great products. But just as significant was his ability to create great companies with valuable brands. And he created two of the best of his era: Apple and Pixar.

Here are some of the highlights from the book, which I included in my synopsis handout:

Some traits:

• “The rules don’t apply…”
• He was enlightened – but cruel (a strange combination!)
• He would call (anybody!), and ask for what he wanted
• He cried (really – when he did not get his way; to get his way)
• He would not take no for an answer
• He was relentless
• He was “brutal” (an ________) – (What particularly struck Nocera was Jobs’s “almost willful lack of tact.”)
• He was focused – even ignoring, and/or hurting, others because of his focus
• He loved! Simplicity (he attributed this to his Zen training)
• He showed great attention to detail, to the extreme end of the extreme end of the extreme end of showing attention to detail
• He was truly visionary – he truly did “envision the future”
(“Do you want to see something neat?” When he flipped it open, it turned out to be a mock-up of a computer that could fit on your lap, with a keyboard and screen hinged together like a notebook. “This is my dream of what we will be making in the mid-to late eighties,” he said. They were building a company that would invent the future).

He believed this, and practiced this:
• Hire the right people – keep none! of the not-right people

Some Key Phrases:
• Insanely great…
• The journey is the reward
• Think Different

Some lessons:
1) Care about the product, not about the money. The money must – must! — be the by-product, not the focus.
2) Everything matters. Everything. Including what no one can see. Insanely great cuts no corners!
3) Do few things. Do them really well.
4) Absolute control. Because such control created consistent quality. (No “crap”!)  Don’t ship junk.
5) The customer does not know what he/she wants “until we’ve shown them”… (R.M. – this may be his greatest competitive advantage – he understood what people wanted, and demanded it from his team!).
6) Build a team of A Players – Keep them A Players. Non-A Players create more non-A players. (They drag people down…) A Players are genuinely, truly critical.

And a personal observation:  maybe Steve Jobs is unreplicable.
Isaacson tells a story of Steve Jobs visiting a jelly bean factory as he was working on the colors of the (now old) iMac (before the flat screen era).  Steve Jobs stared at jelly beans for hours, examining/pondering the different colors, then made his design demands on his team.  No one else on planet earth would have thought to go to a jelly bean factory, would they, to study and ponder colors?  There really was only one Steve Jobs.

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In my synopsis handout, I included this partial chronology:

• A partial chronology:
• 1974 – Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak get together, and the Apple 1 is born in a garage
• 1976 – Apple Computer Inc. is born
• 1984 – the Macintosh (the Super Bowl Commercial)
• 1985 – Apple’s Board removes Steve Jobs, replaces him with
John Sculley
• 1985 – The NeXT corporation (the NeXT computer system is introduced in 1988)
• 1986 – Steve Jobs helps launch Pixar Studios
• 1996/1997 – Steve Jobs returns to Apple

• 1998 – Steve Jobs introduces the iMac

• 2001 – Steve Jobs introduces iTunes and the iPod
• 2001 – the first Apple Store opens
• 2007 – Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone

• 2010 – Steve Jobs introduces the iPad tablet
• October 5, 2011 – Steve Jobs dies

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You can purchase many of our synopses, with our comprehensive handouts, and audio recordings of our presentations, at our companion site 15minutebusinessbooks.com.  The recordings may not be studio quality, but they are understandable, usable recordings, to help you learn.
(And though the handouts are simple Word documents, in the last couple of years we have “upgraded” the look of our handouts to a graphically designed format).
We have clients who play these recordings for small groups.  They distribute the handouts, listen to the recordings together, and then have a discussion that is always some form of a “what do we have to learn, what can we do with this?” conversation.  Give it a try.