A team that can make noise will grind beautiful stones.
Every time (new product plan) starts, we have many great ideas, and the team is convinced of their ideas. At this moment, I always think of a scene from my childhood.
There is a widow in the street. He is eighty years old. I remember he paid me to help him weed. One day, he said, come to my garage. I have something to show you. He took out the old stone mill. There is only one motor, a coffee can and a belt connecting them on the shelf.
We checked some stones in the backyard, some ordinary, old and small stones. We threw the stone into the jar, poured some water, added some coarse sand powder and closed the jar. He turned on the motor and said, "Come back tomorrow."
When I came back the next day, I opened the jar and took out the magical and beautiful stone!
It turns out that it is just an ordinary stone. After mutual friction and sharpening, it made a little noise and became a beautiful and smooth stone. I always keep this in mind.
In my mind, this metaphor can best represent a team that strives for its ideals. Gathering a group of talented partners and letting them collide, argue and even argue with each other will make some noise, but in the process of work, they will make each other better and their ideas better, and finally produce these beautiful stones.
Later, I joined a team at HP. When I was twelve years old, I called Bill Park Jung Su of HP, which exposed my age again. There was no hidden number in the phone book at that time, so I opened the phone book to look up his name. When he answered the phone, I said, "Hello, I'm Steve Jobs. You don't know me. I am twelve years old. I'm making a frequency counter and I need some parts. "
He talked to me like this for twenty minutes, which I will never forget. He not only gave me a role, but also gave me a job.
I was twelve years old that summer and worked at HP, which had a great influence on me. Hewlett-Packard was the only company I saw at that age, which shaped my concept of the company and made me realize how well they treated their employees.
At that time, people didn't know about cholesterol. Every morning 10: 00, they will take out a truckload of doughnuts and coffee, and everyone will take a break to eat doughnuts and coffee. Little things like this. It is obvious that the company realizes that the real value of the company lies in its employees.
The self-esteem of A-level talents doesn't need your care.
I observed something in Apple a long time ago. I often think about it, but I don't know how to explain it.
In most things in life, the gap between mediocrity and Excellence is usually only two to one. If you get a ride with an ordinary driver in new york, the best driver may get you to your destination 30% faster than the best driver.
What's the difference between a regular car and a top-class car? Maybe 20%. What's the difference between a top CD player and a general CD player? I don't know, maybe 20%. Therefore, two to one is already a huge difference in life. But as far as software is concerned, the gap between mediocre and top-notch may reach 50 1, or even 100 1, which is rare in life. I am lucky to spend my life in this field.
So most of my success comes from finding really talented people. Not B-level or C-level talents, but real A-level talents.
When you gather enough top talents, it takes you a lot of effort to find five people. They really like working together. They have never had such an opportunity before, so they don't want to work with inferior talents. This has become a self-discipline behavior, and they just want to hire more top talents.
If you find really great people, they know they are really great. You don't need to take care of their self-esteem. What really matters is their performance. As we all know, the most important thing is their performance.
I think the most important thing you can do for them is to tell them what is not good enough, and make it very clear, explain the reasons, and then put them back on track.
You must say it in a way that won't make them think that you question their ability, but you can't leave them too much room to explain that things are not good enough. It's difficult, so I always use the most direct method. If you interview the people I have worked with, those really excellent people will find this method beneficial to them, and some people really hate it.
I sometimes say that someone's work is terrible, but usually I just point out that they are far from good enough.
If you ask the Macintosh team members, many people will say that they have never worked so hard. Some people will say that it was their happiest time, but everyone will say that it must be the strongest and most precious experience in their lives.
The real magic is to polish a product with 5000 ideas.
After I left, the biggest thing that hurt Apple was that Scully (former CEO of Apple) made a very serious mistake: he thought that as long as he had a great idea, things were 90% possible. As long as you tell others that there is a good idea here, they will go back to the office to realize it.
The problem is that a good idea needs a lot of processing to become a good product.
When you constantly improve the original "great idea", the concept will continue to grow.
Change, the result is usually not what you think at first: because the more you go into the details, the more you learn.
You will also find that. You have to make a hard choice to achieve your goal: some functions are just not suitable for electronic products, some functions are just not suitable for plastic and glass materials, or the factory just can't do it.
When designing a product, you may have to remember more than 5000 things in your mind. Combine these concepts and try to make these ideas work together in a brand-new way to achieve the desired effect.
Every day you will find something new. This also represents new problems and new opportunities. Making the final combination a little different is the real "process" and the real magic.
The key factor to make a good product is not good at managing the process.
1984 We invited a bunch of people from HP (designing graphical interface computers), and I remember quarreling with some people. They think the coolest user interface is to add a software keyboard at the bottom of the screen. They don't have the concept of equidistant fonts or mice.
They shouted at me that the mouse would take five years to design and cost as much as $300. Finally, I had enough, so I went out to look for david kelly's design. As a result, I got a mouse for 15 yuan in 90 days, which is quite reliable.
I found that Apple lacks such talents in some aspects and can be more oriented to talents who master this concept. There needs to be a core team, but a team composed of HP people obviously cannot.
This has nothing to do with the dark side of professionalism, because people have lost their direction (meaning that the HP team can no longer think about it), and as the company grows bigger, they want to replicate the initial success. Many people thought that there must be something wonderful in the process of success from the beginning, so they began to try to turn the successful experience of that year into a system.
Soon people were confused. Why is the system itself the answer? This is why IBM will fail. IBM has the best system managers, but they forget that the purpose of the design process is to find the best answer.
There's something wrong with Apple. Many of us are good at managing the process, but we don't know how to find the answer. The best people can find the best answers, but they are the most difficult people to manage, and you must tolerate them.
Will find the answer-this is the key factor of a good product, not the management process but the answer itself.
We are not ashamed of stealing great ideas.
You asked me where my intuition about the product came from.
In the final analysis, it still comes down to taste, which is a matter of taste. The key is to expose yourself to the essence of human beings and try to integrate it into what you are doing. I mean, Picasso once said that "a good artist knows how to copy, and a great artist is good at stealing", and we are not ashamed of stealing great ideas.
I think the reason for the success of Macintosh is that its creators are musicians, poets and artists, zoologists and historians, who happen to be the best computer scientists in the world. If they hadn't devoted themselves to computer science, they would have made outstanding achievements in other fields, and we all brought humanity to computers. This humanistic attitude allows us to introduce ideas from other fields, which is impossible with a narrow vision.
We can control a big event with a small thing.
I first came into contact with computers when I was about ten years old. I went to the Ames Research Center of NASA to see it. At that time, there was no image display on the computer. It is actually a printer, a telex printer with a keyboard. You can input instructions, wait a moment, the machine will start to run, and then tell you the answer. But even so, it is amazing.
You have heard the later story, which we read in Gentleman magazine. There is a man named Captain Church. It is said that he can make free phone calls. We are fascinated by this again: how could anyone do such a thing? One night, deep in the technical database of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, on the last shelf in a corner, we found AT &；; T's technical journal lists all the principles. It was a moment I will never forget!
This is really amazing! We made these little boxes. This device is called "Blue Box". We added a small note at the bottom. Our slogan is "Master the world with one hand".
You can use a public telephone to go to White plain through the backbone of the network, then go to Europe by satellite, then to Turkey, and then return to Atlanta by cable. You can travel around the world five or six times. Because we have learned how to connect satellites, you can call the public phone next door and shout into it. In a minute, the voice will appear on the phone next door. It's amazing!
You may ask, what's so funny about this? Interestingly, we are still young and we already know that we can build equipment that can control the construction of billions of dollars. Just the two of us, you know we don't know much. This is a valuable experience in controlling a big event with a small matter.
Without this blue box, I don't think there would be an Apple computer.
We can make free international calls to test the blue box, and we also called the Pope. We found the phone number of the Vatican, and then Wozniak (the founder of Apple) pretended to be Kissinger to call the Pope, which woke up the whole Vatican.
I don't know what a cardinal is. When they sent someone to wake up the Pope, we finally couldn't help laughing. They realized that we were not Kissinger. We've never talked to the Pope, but it's really interesting.
I have never started a business for money.
This company has an exclusive market position, so it can't be successful any more. Therefore, the people who can make the company more successful are the business and marketing personnel, so in the end, they run the company, while the product personnel are driven out of the decision-making circle, and the company forgets the importance of making products well. At first, their keenness and creativity made them dominate the market, but later they disappeared because of the operators. They have no idea about the quality of products, they don't know the process of turning good ideas into good products, and they don't really want to help customers-
After so many years in the industry, I often ask others why you do something, and the answer is: that's the way it is. No one knows why they did it.
No one will really think seriously about doing business. This is my experience and knowledge. So if you are willing to ask questions, think hard and work hard, you will soon learn to do business, which is not difficult.
I was only twenty-three years old when my worth exceeded one million dollars. Twenty-four years old, worth more than ten million dollars; Twenty-five years old, more than 100 million dollars. But money is not that important, because I have never started a business for money. Of course, it's good to have money, because it allows you to do a lot of things.
You can invest in ideas and ideas that cannot be recycled in the short term. The most important thing is the company, the people, the products we make and the benefits that products bring to people, so I don't always take money to heart. You know I haven't sold any stocks. I really believe that the company will develop well in the long run.
When I was a child, I read an article in the magazine Scientific Man, which measured the exercise efficiency of various species on the earth, including bears, chimpanzees, raccoons, birds and fish-how many calories do they consume per kilometer? Humans have also been tested.
As a result, the vulture won, and it is the most efficient species, while the human spirit of everything is not very eye-catching, ranking only about one-third. But some people are very smart and know how to measure the efficiency of human riding, so that vultures can candidly admit defeat and dominate the whole ranking.
I remember this incident had a great influence on me: I remember that human beings are the builders of tools, and the tools we build can greatly enhance our innate abilities. In the early years, Apple really had such an advertisement, saying that personal computers are bicycles for the soul. I sincerely believe that among all the inventions of mankind, computers must be among the best, and so will they be in the future. This is the best tool we have invented. I am lucky to be involved in it and witness its formation in Silicon Valley.
Space travel is a thousand miles away. If you can adjust your course a little when you start, the space will be very different. I think we are still at the beginning of the channel. If we can adjust it in the right direction, it will develop into something better. We had the opportunity to make some adjustments, which brought great satisfaction to all parties concerned.
I am obviously a hippie, and so are the people I work with.
If I have to choose, I'm obviously a hippie, and the people I'm involved with are also hippies.
What is a hippie? This is an ancient word with rich meanings.
There is one aspect of life that people don't often mention: when there is a gap in life, we will experience it. At that time, everything seemed chaotic, as if there was a gap. Many people have been asking you to find out what it is. Whether Thoreau or an Indian mystic, the hippie movement has a taste. They want to find out what it is, and that is the answer to life.
Life is not the old way of parents, so ideas sprout, so people want to be poets instead of bankers. I think this is a very beautiful thing. I want to put the same spirit into products. When these products come out and reach people, they can feel this spirit.
Everyone who uses Macintosh will fall in love with it, and you rarely hear anyone fall in love with goods. You can feel its existence, and there is some wonderful spirit in it. Most of the top talents I have worked with don't work because of computers. They work on the computer because it is the best medium to convey their feelings, because you want to share it with others.