How Steve Jobs built ‘insanely great’​ products

To transform 6 industries (personal computers, animated movies, music, mobile phones, tablet computers and digital publishing) with Apple, Pixar and NeXT is something special.

I just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs. There are a few qualities that stood out for why Jobs was able to repeatedly transform industries and build incredible products.

1. Focus

Jobs had an ability to cut through the noise and say “no” to many things, in order to make a few insanely great.

For example, when Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after being fired, it was producing an array of random products. After a few weeks of product review sessions he shouted “Stop! This is crazy.”

Jobs grabbed a marker, walked barefoot over to a whiteboard and drew a two-by-two grid. “Here’s what we need” he declared as he labelled two columns “Consumer” and “Pro”, and two rows “Desktop” and “Portable”. Their job was to focus on four great products, one for each quadrant. All other products should be canceled.

2. Simplify

Jobs had an instinct to simplify things by focusing on their purpose and eliminating unnecessary features.

For example, during the design of the iPod, Jobs always tried to find ways to reduce clutter. He insisted on being able to get wherever he wanted in three clicks.

At one point he suggested they get rid of the on/off button. At first team members were taken aback, but then they realised the button was unnecessary.

3. Brutal honesty

In Jobs eyes people were either “bozo’s” or “genius’s”. If they did a bad job he would say it to their face. This helped Jobs drive out B players and propel forward a team of A players.

For example, in 1980 Jobs was forced out of Apple’s Lisa project and instead joined the Macintosh project. He began competing internally with the Lisa team, which turned out to be a commercial failure for Apple.

After the Lisa team failed Jobs stood in front of the combined Lisa and Macintosh teams and said they’d be merged, and a quarter of the Lisa staff would be laid off. “You guys failed” he said, looking directly at those who had worked on the Lisa. “You’re a B team. B players. Too many people here are B or C players, so today we are releasing some of you to have the opportunity to work at our sister companies here in the valley.”

4. Bend reality

Jobs had a way of warping reality to push colleagues to do what they previously believed to be impossible. Employees called this his “reality distortion field.”

For example, when Larry Kenyon, an engineer working on the Macintosh operating system explained why the computer took so long to boot up, Jobs cut him off saying “if it would save a person’s life, could you find a way to save 10 seconds off the boot time?”

Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if five million people were using the Mac and it took 10 seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to 300 million hours or so a year — the equivalent of at least 100 lifetimes a year. After a few weeks Kenyon had the Mac booting up 28 seconds faster.

5. Push for perfection

Jobs always pushed for the highest standards when building products, which often meant “hitting the pause button” and going back to the drawing board because it wasn’t perfect.

For example, the initial iPhone design had a glass screen set into an aluminium case. One morning Jobs told Apple’s lead designer Jony Ive, “I didn’t sleep last night, because I realised that I just don’t love it.”

“Guys, you’ve killed yourselves over this design for the last nine months, but we’re going to change it” Jobs told Ive’s team. “We’re all going to have to work nights and weekends, and if you want, we can hand out some guns so you can kill us now.” Instead of balking, the team agreed. “It was one of my proudest moments at Apple” Jobs recalled.

Wrapping up…

The list goes on, but these are the qualities that stood out to me as setting Jobs apart from other great product leaders.

Was he the nicest guy? No. Maybe he would’ve benefited from being more kind to people. But then would he have helped so many people achieve the impossible?

Interested to hear your thoughts.

All the best,

Matt