Guy Kawasaki: What I learned from Steve Jobs

There are many publications explaining what can be learned from Steve Jobs, but few of the people who wrote them were “in the same boat” and learned from personal experience what it was like working with him. I want no lesson I have learned to be lost or forgotten, so here are the 12 most important things I learned from Steve Jobs.

1. Experts don't know what to do.

Experts - journalists, analysts, consultants, bankers and gurus are not capable of doing , therefore they advise . They may say what is wrong in your product, but they will never create a wonderful product themselves. They can tell how to sell something, but they cannot sell it themselves. They will tell you how to create a great team, but they themselves are able to manage only the secretary. For example, experts told us that the two biggest drawbacks of the Macintosh in 1980 were the lack of a driver for a chamomile printer (a printer working by analogy with a typewriter, such printers are now hardly used, approx. Transl. ) And lotus-1-2-3 (product was pushed out from MS Excel market, approx. transl. ); Another great suggestion from the experts was to buy Compaq. Listen to what the experts say, but do not always obey them.

2. Clients will not tell you what they need.

“Apple’s Market Research” is an oxymoron. The only focus group Apple used is Steve's right brain talk with the left. If you ask customers what they need, they will say: “better, faster and cheaper” - and this is an improvement to the existing one, not a revolution in the market. Clients can describe their desires only within the framework of already existing products that they use: for example, at the time when the Macintosh appeared, everyone said that they want faster and cheaper computers on MS-DOS. The goldmine for technical startups is in creating a product that you yourself want to use, and this is exactly what Jobs and Wozniak did.
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3. Go to the next round

Big wins happen when you go beyond improving an existing one. The best companies that produced camomile printers offered new fonts and new character sizes, Apple proposed the next round - the laser printer. Think about ice harvesting (in the middle of the 19th century ice harvesting was carried out on an industrial scale, then was replaced by new technologies of artificial cooling, approx. Transl. ), Ice factories and refrigerators. Ice 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. Are you still harvesting ice from a pond in winter?

4. Large and complex tasks produce the best result.

I lived in fear that Steve would tell me that I or what I was doing was crap. In humans. This fear was a very difficult task for me. Compete with IBM and, subsequently, with Microsoft was a very difficult task. Changing the world was a very difficult task. I and Apple employees before and after me worked to their fullest, because we had to do all the work to solve big problems.

5. Design Matters

Steve drove people crazy with his nagging design — for example, some shades of black were not black enough. Mere mortals think that black is black, and that the trash can is a trash can. Steve was the Absolute, the Ultimate Perfectionist - and, oh, a miracle, he was right: good design is important to some people, and many people at least feel it. Maybe not all, but those from whom something depends - for sure.

6. Large pictures and fonts can not be a mistake.

Look at the slides of Steve's presentations. Font size - 60 units. Usually there is only one large screenshot or picture on the slide. Look at the slides of ordinary speakers, even those who have seen Steve speak. Font - 8 units and no pictures. Then a lot of people say that Steve did the world's best product presentations ... isn't it weird that so few people copy his style?

7. The ability to change one's point of view is a sign of intelligence.

When Apple first introduced the iPhone to the world, there was no concept of Apps. Steve decided that third-party applications are bad, because you can't know for sure what they do with your phone. The only solution was web-applications for Safari, until six months later Steve did not come to the conclusion (or someone persuaded him) that applications are the right way. Of course! Ha! And here Apple for a short time goes a long way from Safari web applications to "for everything there is an iPhone application" ("there's an app for that" - the slogan of the iPhone advertising campaign in the US, approx. Transl. ).

8. “Value” is not the same as “price”

Woe to you, if you choose, focusing only on price. More grief to you if you compete only on price. Price is not all that matters, what really matters is value, at least for many people. And the value is formed from training, support and inner joy from using the best tool of all available. It is safe to say that no one buys Apple products because it has a low price.

9. Class A players hire Class A + players.

In fact, Steve believed that A-class players (most professional and responsible employees, approx. Transl. ) Take A-class players to the team — that is, people like themselves. I slightly corrected this statement - according to my theory, Class A players should hire people who are more professional than themselves. However, it is clear that Class B players will recruit Class C players, and so on. If you start recruiting level B employees, expect what happens in your company that Steve called the “idiot explosion”. (bozo explosion - the rapid increase in the number of incompetent employees, approx. transl. ).

10. Real CEOs make demos.

Steve Jobs could hold presentations of ipod, ipad, iphone or mack to a multimillion audience two or three times a year, why do so many CEOs ask to speak at product presentations of their production directors? Maybe to show what the product does the team? May be. But most likely, the CEO does not understand what his company is doing, well enough to explain it at the presentation. Agree, it looks pathetic?

11. Real CEOs make a product.

Despite all his perfectionism, Steve created the finished products. Maybe the product was not perfect every time, but almost always it was pretty cool. The lesson here is that Steve did not create for the sake of creation - he had a goal: to achieve world domination in existing markets or to create new ones. Apple is a manufacturing company, not a research center. Who would you like to be - Apple or Xerox PARC (Xerox Research Center, which developed many new technologies for Apple and other companies, in particular, laser printing and a graphical interface, laptop, ethernet and OOP, approx. Transl. )

12. The task of marketing is to offer unique value.

Imagine a 2 x 2 matrix. The vertical axis shows the difference between your product and competitors. The horizontal axis measures the value of your product in the eyes of the consumer. Lower right corner: valuable, but not unique - you compete on price. Left upper: unique, but not valuable - you will conquer the market, which is not. Lower left: not unique and not valuable - you are an idiot. Upper right: unique value - this is where you make money and make history. For example, the unique value of an iPod in the USA was that it was the only way to legally, inexpensively, and easily download music from the 6 largest record labels.

Bonus To see some things you need to believe

If you go to new stages, argue with experts, set big tasks, are obsessed with design and focus on unique value, then, in order for your work to bear fruit, you will have to get people to believe in what you are doing. People had to believe in the Macintosh to create it. The same can be said about the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Not everyone will believe - this is normal. But a change in the world begins with a change in the views of several people. This is the most important lesson Steve Jobs gave me.