Most people think they're putting out great content. But that's obviously false. One side of Steve's point about letting elite talent do their work presupposes that the talent is elite. Mediocre talent will do much worse work if not bound to process, and Steve was very, very good at rooting out what he thought was mediocre talent.
if you pay 200+ bucks per mouth you want something amazing, and that usually means you pick from a fixed menu (interestingly your choices likely be a lot more limited compared to McDonald's), and that restaurant then does the well rehearsed dance and prepares the fancy food for you, with a lot more attention to detail, than what you would find (or need) in a McDonald's fast kitchen.
both are examples of 'process'
just as coming up with a new interesting-innovative-1-2-3-star entree or coming up with a new McD menu item are examples of a creative design process.
- accept the need guidance
- follow some standards and rules to make work reproduceable and understabdable by others
- be able to work in teams
People tend to ignore the finer points in whatever Steve Jobs said, especially after his return to Apple.
I think they did pretty well, didn't they win a few big titles?
- had Pep Guardiola as coach
- players like Messi, Xavi, Iniesta
But sure, the only super star during that period was Messi...
The 2017/18 team had, in addition to Messi, Iniesta, Suarez and Alba
But again, of course it was only Messi who carried them. Sure.
But even if he did, which he did not, there are only two players like this in his generation, Ronaldo and Messi. That means the vast majority of "rockstar" emoloyees by definition cannot be in that league.
Of course, this is a contrived example and even rockstars make mistakes too, but many mistakes are detectable/foreseeable and that’s the kind of thing good process is meant to help with.
Maybe top talent also does worse work sans process, but they get away with it. That's my experience: Many take advantage of their power to disregard process (sometimes as a demonstration of power), which hurts the team, and undermines and creates extra work for others, but the top talent's contributions create a net gain.