how many days left till summer
I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty… you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.
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The secret of Apple’s success: simplicity
Apple‘s package-design team had just returned from its presentation to Steve Jobs, and the faces told the story – they had that “things didn’t go exactly as we planned” look. 
“The suspense is killing me,” I said to the project leader. “How’d it go this morning?” “Well,” he said, “Steve hit us with the Simple Stick.” Translation: Jobs had rejected their work – not because it was bad but because, in some way, it failed to distil the idea to its essence.
The person leading the project had directed the team to create packaging for two versions of the same product. Jobs had decided this was brain-dead. “Just combine them,” he said. “One product, one box.” There was no need to explore the idea of a second package.
He was right. It was simpler, quicker, better. The conversation was over in minutes, and it left one very smart and talented group of people wondering why they hadn’t thought of that before.
The Simple Stick symbolises a core value within Apple. Sometimes it’s held up as inspiration; other times it’s wielded like a caveman’s club: a deep, almost religious belief in the power of simplicity.
If you’re prepared to do battle with complexity, you’ll have no trouble finding a fight. Chances are you’re surrounded by it. Unless you work in the rarest of environments, complexity lives inside your organisation’s hierarchy, its goals, and probably most of your colleagues as well. If your company ever fails, you can be sure it won’t be the fault of simplicity – it will be the result of its absence.
Think brutal
Clarity propels an organisation. Not occasional clarity but pervasive, 24-hour, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners clarity. Most people never perceive that this is lacking in their organisation, but 90% of the time it is. Just open a few random emails, activate your “brutal-vision”, and read. The muddying messages are rampant. If people were brutally honest in their emails, the time we spend sorting through our in-boxes would surely decrease by half.
Steve Jobs demanded straightforward communication from others as much as he dished it out himself. He’d cut you off if you rambled. He ran his business as if there were precious little time to waste, which well reflected the reality for Apple – as surely it does for any company serious about competing.
This is probably the one element of Simplicity that’s easiest to institute. Just be honest and never hold back. Demand the same from those you work with. You’ll make some people squirm, but everyone will know where they stand; 100% of your group’s time will be focused on forward progress – no need to decode what people are really saying.
There is a general perception that Jobs was the nasty tyrant who demanded allegiance, barked commands, and instilled the fear of God in those around him. While Jobs certainly did exhibit these behaviours, this portrait is incomplete. The man could also be funny, warm, and even charming. There is a huge difference between being brutally honest and simply being brutal.
You can’t let yourself be talked into going along with something when you know it can be better. Ever. To settle for second best is a violation of the rules of simplicity, and it plants the seeds for disappointment, extra work, and more meetings. Most disturbing, it puts you in the worst possible business position: having to defend an idea you never believed in.
Your challenge is to become unbending when it comes to enforcing your standards. Mercilessly so. If you submit only the work you believe in 100% and approve only the work you believe in 100%, you own something that no one can take away from you: integrity.
As often happens in life, one must often suffer the consequences of doubting before becoming a believer. I’m not proud of it, but that’s the way I learned my lesson about standards.
There was a certain amount of theatre that went on inside Apple. The rules were well known, and a number of dramas played out with predictability. That Jobs was intolerant of stupidity is a matter of record. He wasn’t at all polite when stupidity reared its ugly head. He especially wasn’t fond of employing stupidity, so if you were on Apple’s staff and wanted to retain that status, it was wise not to display your lack of smarts in a meeting with him. You’d just set him off and get it right between the eyes.
A former Apple senior staffer remembers a routine that he saw played out often during his time as a direct report to Jobs. He calls it “the rotating turret”. There was no predicting when it would happen, as it depended on how conversations evolved. But in some meeting, at some random time, some poor soul in the room would say something that everyone in the room could tell was going to light Jobs’s fuse.
First came the uncomfortable pause. The offending comment would reverberate in the air, and it would seem as if the entire world went into slow motion as Jobs’s internal sensors fixed on the origin of the sound wave.
You could almost hear the meshing of gears as his “turret” slowly turned toward the guilty party. Everyone knew what was coming—but was powerless to stop it.
Finally, the turret would lock on to its target. In a split second Jobs would activate his firing mechanism, and without a second thought he’d unload all his ammunition. It was uncomfortable to watch and even more uncomfortable to experience, but at Apple it was just a fact of life.
Think small
How many overpopulated meetings do you sit through in a year? How many of those meetings get sidetracked or lose focus in a way that would never occur if the group were half the size? The small group rule requires enforcement, but it’s worth the cost.
Out in the real world, when I talk about small groups of smart people, I rarely get any pushback. That’s because common sense tells us it’s the right way to go. Most people know from experience that the fastest way to lose focus, squander valuable time, and water down great ideas is to entrust them to a larger group. Just as we know that there is equal danger in putting ideas at the mercy of a large group of approvers.
One reason why large, unwieldy groups tend to be created in many companies is that the culture of a company is bigger than any one person. It’s hard to change “the way we do things here”. This is where the zealots of simplicity need to step in and overcome the inertia.
One must be judicious and realistic about applying the small-group principle. Simply making groups smaller will obviously not solve all problems, and “small” is a relative term. Only you know your business and the nature of your projects, so only you can draw the line between too few people and too many. You need to be the enforcer and be prepared to hit the process with the Simple Stick when the group is threatened with unnecessary expansion.
In one iconic technology company with which I worked I found a framed sign in every conference room designed to nudge the employees toward greater productivity. The headline on the sign was how to have a successful meeting. The content read like it came right out of a corporate manual, which it likely did. It featured a bullet-pointed list of things like: “State the agenda at the start of your meeting,” “Encourage participation by all attendees,” and “Conclude your meeting with agreement on next steps”.
What these signs really said, though, was: “Welcome to a very big company! Just follow these signs and you’ll fit in well.” It’s not hard to imagine Jobs, who actively fought big-company behaviour, gleefully ripping these signs off the wall and replacing them with Ansel Adams prints that might provide a moment of reflection or inspiration.
If you ever work at Apple there will be no signs on the wall telling you how to run a meeting. Likewise, there will be no signs telling you how to tie your shoes or fill a glass of water. The assumption is that you are well equipped with brains and common sense and that you’re a fully functioning adult. If you’re not already a disciple of simplicity, you’ll become one soon. Either that, or you’ll decide you’d rather not be part of such a thing, which is okay too. Simplicity prefers not having to train a bucking bronco.
If big companies really feel compelled to put something on their walls, a better sign might read:
How to Have a Great Meeting
1. Throw out the least necessary person at the table.
2. Walk out of this meeting if it lasts more than 30 minutes.
3. Do something productive today to make up for the time you spent here.
Think clarity
This is an area where just about every business needs more work. Words are powerful, but more words are not more powerful – they’re often just confusing. Understand that in your company’s internal business and in communications with your customers, dissertations tend to drive people away.
Though many writers never seem to grasp the point, using intelligent words does not necessarily make you appear smarter. The best way to make yourself or your company look smart is to express an idea simply and with perfect clarity. No matter who your audience is, it’s more effective to communicate as people do naturally. In simple sentences. Using simple words. Simplicity is its own form of cleverness – saying a great deal by saying little.
Think human
Unless you’re in the business of sterilising things, business is no place to be sterile. Have the boldness to look beyond numbers and spreadsheets and allow your heart to have a say in the matter. Bear in mind that the intangibles are every bit as real as the metrics – are often even more important. The simplest and most effective way to connect with human beings is to speak with a human voice. It may be necessary in your business to market to specific target groups, but bear in mind that every target is a human being, and human beings respond to simplicity. Best advice: Just be true to your species.
This is an edited extract from Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success by Ken Segall (Portfolio Penguin, £14.99) or at Guardian Bookshop for £11.99
Doing business the Steve Jobs way
It’s natural for people to be resistant to change, large or small, so trying to change attitudes within an organisation can be difficult. But when you spread the word about the value of simplicity you are not spreading some oddball theory, you’re echoing one of the most successful people in business history, Steve Jobs (right). If you refer to the benefits Apple has enjoyed by embracing simplicity, and make the appropriate parallels to your own business, you’ll build a compelling case.
You can spread the religion of simplicity project by project, by interacting with people and groups one at a time. Getting people to buy into a concept to the point where they start contributing their own ideas can literally create a movement within an organisation.
Simplicity is a way of looking at every part of your job, the jobs of those around you, and the way your company operates. Once you start seeing the world through the lens of simplicity you’ll be astounded at how many opportunities exist to improve the way your business works.
Quotes
inspirational Steve Jobs quotes
Steve Jobs was always described as an innovator, a visionary; and rightly so. He dropped out of college at the age of 21 and started Apple with his friend Steve Wozniak from his parents’ garage.
Apple’s first product was not a runaway success but Apple II helped the company in getting noticed. Steve Jobs became a multimillionaire by the time he turned 25. He also graced the cover of Time magazine at 26.
In a surprise turn of events, Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1984 when he was 30. He did not waste too much time sulking about being unemployed and went on to establish NeXT computers. In 1986, Steve Jobs bought the computer graphics arm of Lucasfilm, Ltd., and this company is knows today as Pixar Animation Studios.
In the meantime, Apple struggled to keep pace with the changing times and decided to bring back Jobs in 1996 by buying NeXT. Steve Jobs returned as the CEO of Apple in 1997 and took the company to unprecedented heights.
Over the years, many people have looked up to Steve Jobs as a source of inspiration and on his first death anniversary, we complied the ten best inspirational quotes by the man himself.
1. At an Apple product event for the first Macintosh computer on January 24, 1984: “We’re gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make “me, too” products. Let some other companies do that. For us, it’s always the next dream.”
2. In Playboy magazine in February 1985: “If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.”
3. At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, May 1997: “I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
4. Talking about work at the Stanford University’s Commencement address on June 12, 2005: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
5. Talking about him being fired from Apple at the Stanford University’s Commencement Speech 2005: “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.[…] It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.”
6. Steve Jobs gave an interview in “60 minutes” in 2003 in which he shared that his business model was inspired by The Beatles: “My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.”
7. In an interview to BusinesWeek in 1998: “That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
8. In a statement to The New York Times, 2003: “[Design is] not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
9. On being the richest man in an interview to The Wall Street Journal in 1993 “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”
10. Talking about Death at the Stanford University commencement speech, June 2005: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. … Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
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