1. Be Like
Steve Jobs*
* Remembering that you’re not him,
your company isn’t Apple, and he
himself got fired from Apple at one
point for being like Steve Jobs.
(spoiler alert: they hired him back.)

2. Lessons
learned
from this:

3. Make business
decisions like they’re
your earthly legacy, not
just a few pennies of
next quarter’s earnings.
Focus on products and customers instead of
profits. The money will find you.
Strange, but true.

4. Take pride in your
work, even those
parts of it customers
won’t see.
Steve demanded that more expensive
components be used on circuit boards if they
looked more pleasing.
His reasoning: the customer may never know, but
we will.

5. Bean counters and
salespeople run
uninspired companies.
Steve brought John Sculley to Apple as CEO, but
regretted it because Sculley only cared about
profit. Result: the Second Coming of Steve.
He said Microsoft will never be innovative under
Steve Ballmer because he only knows sales.
Steve Jobs was a product guy.

6. Simplify everything
mercilessly.
Apple has few products, but they own those
markets (actually, they created most of those
markets.)
Apple’s products look simple. Almost all the
technology is hidden. They don’t even have an
on-off button.

7. Fire everybody who
isn’t an A-teamer.
Stars work best with other stars.
Great employees are 30% better than the merely
good, and way better than most.

8. Don’t let someone else
control the user
experience.
Apple products have screws your
tools can’t open. They’re sold from
stores they own. Their software runs
mostly only on their own hardware.
Endless thought goes into product
packaging (like using California as a
brand.)

9. The Steve-mobile. He refused to put
license plates on it for fear someone
might follow him.
It’s OK to be a petulant, cruel,
insensitive, immature, vindictive
jerk as long as you take care of
what’s important. And as long as
you’re almost always right.

10. Push people hard to do
the impossible.
Sometimes they will
actually do it.
Apple called it the Reality Distortion Field.
Steve could distort reality in convincing people
that an impossible task was not only doable,
but expected.

11. Partner with someone
whose strengths and
weaknesses are opposite
yours.
Jobs: design, vision, and business.
Wozniak: engineering.
There would be no Apple today without either.

12. Be a showman. Keep
product details secret until
the unveiling event.
Don’t overexpose yourself or your product.
Script, rehearse, and control every event.
Image should not be accidental.
Note: the jeans and turtleneck made up
Steve’s brand identity.
Real CEOs demo.

13. Customers are not always
right. Focus groups didn’t
tell Alexander Graham Bell
to invent the telephone.
Customers don’t know what they want until
someone creates it and shows them. Nobody
asked Apple to make music players, iPhones,
or iTunes. Apple finds problems and fixes
them, even if you didn’t know you had the
problem in the first place. Customers can only
think of “better, faster, cheaper.”

14. Good artists copy. Great
artists steal.
Apple didn’t invent computers, graphical
operating systems, music players, or cell
phones. Packaging, design, marketing, and
customer support are not trivial.

15. Do it right even if it
costs more.
Set the price after you know the cost and trust
customers to see the value. It’s OK to be more
expensive than your competitors.

16. Building layout should force
employees to have random
encounters.
Steve wanted one huge Apple building to have only one set
of restrooms. He uncharacteristically compromised. He
allowed two.

17. No PowerPoints (or even
Keynotes) in meetings.
Ever.
PowerPoints let the presenter hide behind
boring, edited information. Tension breeds
creativity and avoids polite rubber-stamping.
Challenge people hard to justify their
arguments to see how passionately they really
believe them.

18. Take the top company
performers on a retreat. Get
consensus on the 10 most
important things to do next.
Then erase the bottom seven
and do the top three really well.

19. Companies should
have one P&L, not
divisions
competing for
corporate love.
Source: Bonkers World

20. A good idea
isn’t enough.
Executives can’t just hand off a
good idea. Someone has to
manage the craftsmanship and
packaging as it evolves.

21. “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the
troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the
ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of
rules… they push the human race forward, and while
some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius,
because the ones who are crazy enough to think that
they can change the world are the ones who do.”