Topics to Explore

Moneynomics (33) Science (29) General (26) Business (25) informative (22) research (22) Healthrive (21) Interesting (20) Technology (20) insightful (20) Books (16) offbeat (16) Economy (15) Culture (14) Physics (14) Electrical (13) Engineering (13) Electronics (12) America (11) Economics (11) World Affairs (11) World Views (11) psychology (11) Arts (10) Authors (10) Foreign Policy (10) GenSci (10) COGpsych (9) Creative (9) Globalization (9) Hard Science (9) History (9) Interview (9) Mental Health (9) cogsci (9) Health (8) Neuroscience (8) hacktive (8) Entertainment (7) United States (7) brain (7) Career (6) China (6) Cosmos (6) Job Search (6) Jobs (6) Kids (6) Lifehacks (6) Literature (6) Logictive (6) Perceptive (6) Space (6) Tips and Tricks (6) ee (6) how to (6) infographic (6) video (6) Astronomy (5) Energy (5) Green Energy (5) Politics (5) Resume (5) Universe (5) Wisdom (5) innovative (5) innovators (5) nanotechnology (5) Autism (4) Entrepreneur (4) Inspiration (4) Lifentials (4) Quote (4) Religion (4) WTF (4) geek (4) Crime (3) Employment (3) Endings (3) Genetics (3) Green Tech (3) Infotainment (3) Job-Hunt (3) Pics (3) Social Sciences (3) Women (3) apple (3) cover letter (3) explainer (3) movies (3) philosophy (3) social issues (3) AstroPhysics (2) Beginnings (2) Blog (2) Education (2) Electric Vehicles (2) Evolution (2) Food (2) Frugal (2) Funny (2) Future (2) Gaming (2) Internet (2) Men (2) Music (2) Nutrition (2) Parenting (2) Quantum (2) Review (2) School (2) SciFi (2) Short story (2) Smart (2) Songs (2) Stories (2) TV Shows (2) advertising (2) cars (2) children (2) environment (2) inventors (2) phenomenon (2) power (2) speculative (2) Aotomobiles (1) Architechture (1) Comics (1) Cooking (1) DIY (1) Death (1) Divorce (1) Europe (1) Family (1) Fiction (1) Fuel Cells (1) Games (1) History of science (1) Human body (1) Lessons (1) Marriage (1) Medicine (1) MultiCulturism (1) NPR (1) Nature (1) Old age (1) Organized crime (1) Parents (1) Personal finance (1) Pregnancy (1) Programming (1) Projects (1) Quantum mechanics (1) Renewable energy (1) Retirement (1) Revolution (1) Satire (1) Science fiction (1) Sex (1) Social Media (1) Sociology (1) Solar (1) Space Travel (1) Stats (1) Talks (1) Tesla (1) Theoretical Physics (1) Thoughtful Meditations (1) Weight loss (1) Wikipedia (1) aging (1) biology (1) diet (1) documentary (1) excerpt (1) feminism (1) flash game (1) ideas (1) indie (1) marketing (1) marvel (1) psychiatry (1) sceptic (1) superhero (1) technology and mathematics (1) x-men (1)

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Being Steve Jobs' Boss - Confessions of the last man to manage the singular inventor!

Businessweek.com had done an indepth feature on former PepsiCo and Apple President John Sculley, who was the last man to manage Steve Jobs! It's one of the more insighful stories i have read about the duo. I posted some insights that John Sculley had about working with and managing Steve Jobs below.

 

http://images.businessweek.com/mz/10/44/600/1044_mz_96sculley.jpg

Jobs and Sculley in New York City, 1984 DIANA WALKER/CONTOUR/GETTY IMAGES

 

Steve Jobs was 28 years old in 1983 and already recognized as one of the most innovative thinkers in Silicon Valley. The Apple (AAPL) board, though, was not ready to anoint him chief executive officer and picked PepsiCo (PEP) President John Sculley, famous for creating the Pepsi Challenge, to lead the company. Sculley helped increase Apple's sales from $800 million to $8 billion annually during his decade as CEO, but he also presided over Jobs' departure, which sent Apple into what Sculley calls its "near-death experience." In his first extensive interview on the subject, Sculley tells Cultofmac.com editor Leander Kahney how his partnership with Jobs came to be, how design ruled—and still rules—everything at Apple, and why he never should have been CEO in the first place.

 Sculley reminisces about his experience:

What makes Steve's methodology different from everyone else's is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do, but the things you decide not to do. He's a minimalist. I remember going into Steve's house, and he had almost no furniture in it. He just had a picture of Einstein, whom he admired greatly, and he had a Tiffany lamp and a chair and a bed. He just didn't believe in having lots of things around, but he was incredibly careful in what he selected.

 

 

 

Everything at Apple can be best understood through the lens of designing. Whether it's designing the look and feel of the user experience, or the industrial design, or the system design, and even things like how the boards were laid out. The boards had to be beautiful in Steve's eyes when you looked at them, even though when he created the Macintosh he made it impossible for a consumer to get in the box, because he didn't want people tampering with anything.

 

 

Apple is famous for the same kind of lifestyle advertising now. It shows people living an enviable lifestyle, courtesy of Apple's products. Hip young people grooving to iPods.

 

 

I don't take any credit for it. Steve's brilliance is his ability to see something and then understand it and then figure out how to put it into the context of his design methodology—everything is design.

 

 

An anecdotal story: A friend of mine was at meetings at Apple and Microsoft on the same day. And this was in the last year, so this was recently. He went into the Apple meeting (he's a vendor for Apple), and as soon as the designers walked in the room, everyone stopped talking, because the designers are the most respected people in the organization. Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him. It is only at Apple where design reports directly to the CEO.

 

 

Later in the day he was at Microsoft. When he went into the Microsoft meeting, everybody was talking and then the meeting starts and no designers ever walk into the room. All the technical people are sitting there trying to add their ideas of what ought to be in the design. That's a recipe for disaster.

 

 

Everyone around him knows he beats to a different drummer. He sets standards that are entirely different than any other CEO would set.

 

He's a minimalist and constantly reducing things to their simplest level. It's not simplistic. It's simplified. Steve is a systems designer. He simplifies complexity.

 

The reason why I said it was a mistake to have hired me as CEO was Steve always wanted to be CEO. It would have been much more honest if the board had said, "Let's figure out a way for him to be CEO. You could focus on the stuff that you bring, and he focuses on the stuff he brings."

I'm actually convinced that if Steve hadn't come back when he did—if they had waited another six months—Apple would have been history. It would have been gone, absolutely gone.

 

Continue reading here.

Steve Jobs’ outlook on life at 31 after resigning from Apple [1986].

 


 


 


 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please b.Logictive! :)