John Sculley: The Secrets of Steve Jobs’ Success

My employer learned a similar lesson years ago, securing a fat citrus contract in the process. Before the Japanese buyers arrived to inspect our packing facility, management insisted that every crate on the floor be opened, and the top tier of oranges all turned stems-up. (The packers thought that management had lost its mind. Who cares about presentation of a crate of oranges?) But when the buyers arrived they selected a random box for inspection, saw the fruit arrayed neatly, and nodded their approval.

Sculley seems to be saying the following about Jobs:

- Straddles the line of micromanagement vs. personal communication with workers. (Interested in every detail of the process.)

- Acknowledged all workers (memorized first names of Mac team).

- Directly communicated with all workers. Example was telling developer that their code isn't good enough.

- Is a perfectionist.

- Kept teams small (Mac team limited to 100) and fired people if needed new talent on the team to keep team to that size (enforced accountability).

- Hired well.

- Focused on simplification.

- Got rid of the bad.

It's highly unlikely that these guys were giving him crappy work. I think they were giving him good industry standard work, but given the type of people he selected he knew they have better stuff to give. So, he probably pre-decided that whatever was shown to him was not good enough.

It really depends on the people you hire. For some, they might get depress and want to quit[encouragement might work better for them], but for others they would take it as a challenge to do better.

Even if he thought it was brilliant on first go, I suspect he would say redo it because he figured the person could do a better job[he probably wouldn't do it all time less people caught on].

Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his universe. He must remain capable of saying: "There's no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we'll correct that when we come to it." The mentat-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely a part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: "Now what is this thing doing?" - The Mentat Handbook (Frank Herbert)

Provided in: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1792349

In particular, the whole perfectionism thing seems to be pretty much rejected. Most startups would say that it's better just to get something launched. I'm definitely not saying that's wrong. Just saying that it's interesting to hear another point of view.

BTW: Edison also worked in terms of systems (electric power + grid + lights), as did Mr. Birdseye (refrigerated supermarkets + trucks + frozen food). Yah, that was his actual name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Birdseye