A lot of people talk and write about what life lessons they have learned thanks to Steve Jobs and his work. But only a few can boast that they received these lessons "first-hand" while working in Steve's team. One of these lucky ones is Guy Kawasaki and he shares his wisdom with the rest of the world.
Experts in their field — journalists, analysts, bankers, consultants and other gurus cannot do as they "advise". They can tell what exactly is wrong with your product, but they can't do as good. They can tell you how to sell something, but they can't sell it themselves. They can tell you how to create a great team and at the same time manage only their secretary themselves. Listen to what the experts say, but don't always listen to them.
Apple's marketing research is an oxymoron. Apple's focus group was the ability of the right hemisphere of Steve's brain to talk to the left hemisphere. If you ask customers what they need, they will answer: "Better, faster and cheaper!" — that's all, no revolutionary changes, everything is the same. They can only describe their desires based on what they are using at the moment. The richest source for tech startups is to create a product that you would like to use. Which is what Steve and Wozniak did.
Big wins happen when you go beyond sameness. While the best companies, manufacturers of inkjet printers, introduced new fonts in various sizes for printing, Apple jumped to another level and introduced laser printing. Think about ice pickers, ice factories and refrigeration companies — Ice 1.0, Ice 2.0 and Ice 3.0. Do you still collect ice in winter from a frozen pond?
I lived in fear that Steve would tell me that I or my job was shit. He will say it publicly. Competing with IBM and Microsoft was a big challenge. Changing the world was a big challenge. Me, the Apple employees before me and after me — we all do our job better, because we have to do our job perfectly in order to meet new, more complex challenges.
Steve drove people crazy with his design quibbles—some shades of black weren't black enough. Ordinary mortals think that black is black, and that a trash can is a trash can. Steve was a perfectionist. Some people pay attention to the design, and many at least feel it. Maybe the design doesn't always matter, but it is often very important.
Look at Steve's slides—a 60-point font, one large screenshot or graph. Look at the slides of other technical speakers, even those who have seen Steve in action — an 8-point font and no graphics. So many people say that Steve was the greatest product representative in the world, but why doesn't anyone copy his style?
When Apple released the first version of the iPhone, there were no apps yet. Steve thought that apps were bad, since you never know what they would do on your phone. The first Safari app appeared 6 months later, after Steve decided, or someone convinced him, that it was good. Apple has come a very long way in a very short time from a Safari app to "there's an app for that" (there's an app for that).
Woe to you if you decide that everything is based on price. And even more woe to the one who decided to compete based solely on price. Price is not all that matters. At least for some people, value is also important. The value includes training, support and the inner joy of using the best product ever made. It's safe to say that no one buys Apple products because of the low price.
Steve was sure that good players hire equally good players. I also noted that good players often hire people even more experienced than themselves. Of course, average players can hire players at a lower level to feel superior to them, etc. As a result, there may be an "explosion of profanity" in your company (as Steve called it).
Steve Jobs could release demos of pad, pod, phone and Mac two or three times a year, and a million people watched as many executives urged their heads of engineering departments to make a demo version of the product. Maybe this is done in order to show team effort? Perhaps. But it's more like the executives don't understand well enough what their company produces in order to explain it. Isn't that a pathetic sight?
Despite all Steve's perfectionism, he could supply goods to the market. The product may not have been perfect, but it has always been good for export. The lesson is that Steve was not doing this for the sake of the class itself: he had a specific goal — to deliver and ensure the world domination of existing markets or create new ones. Apple is an engineering-oriented company, not a science-oriented one. Who would you rather be: Apple or Xerox PARC?
Think of a 2x2 matrix. The vertical axis shows how different your product is from the competitive one. The horizontal scale measures the value of your product. Bottom right: valuable, but not unique properties — you have to compete using the price. Top left: unique, but not valuable — you own a market that doesn't exist yet. Bottom left: not valuable and not unique — you are a layman. Top right: unique and valuable — that's where you have profit, money and history. For example, the iPod was valuable and unique because it was the only way to legally, inexpensively and easily download music from the six largest record companies.
When you go to the next level, challenge or ignore experts, face big challenges, are obsessed with design and focused on unique value — you have to convince people to believe in what you are doing in order for your efforts to succeed. People have to believe in the Macintosh in order for it to become a reality. The same goes for the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Of course, not everyone will believe and this is normal. But the starting point for changing the world is to change a few minds. This is the greatest lesson I've ever learned from Steve.
