John Sculley: The Secrets of Steve Jobs’ Success

"<i>... we had to learn to make products the way the Japanese wanted products. We were assembling products in Singapore and sending them to Japan. And the first thing the customer saw when they opened the box was the manual, but the manual was turned the wrong way around – and the whole batch was rejected. In the United States, we’d never experienced anything like that.</i>"<p>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.

(argh! somehow this comment got posted into the wrong thread originally: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790564" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790564</a> )<p>Sculley seems to be saying the following about Jobs:<p>- Straddles the line of micromanagement vs. personal communication with workers. (Interested in every detail of the process.)<p>- Acknowledged all workers (memorized first names of Mac team).<p>- Directly communicated with all workers. Example was telling developer that their code isn't good enough.<p>- Is a perfectionist.<p>- 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).<p>- Hired well.<p>- Focused on simplification.<p>- Got rid of the bad.

This raises my opinion of John Sculley more than it does of Jobs. Considering the obvious conflicts he's had with Jobs in the past, plus the fact that Jobs basically succeeded where he failed, this is a very gracious and (apparently) honest appraisal of his former rival's abilities.

I think Steve founded a hack in telling people it is not good enough.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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].

Steve Jobs isn't just a CEO, he's the <i>mentat</i> CEO:<p><i>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?"</i> - The Mentat Handbook (Frank Herbert)

Great insight: "The thing that separated Steve Jobs from other people like Bill Gates - Bill was brilliant too - but Bill was never interested in great taste. He was always interested in being able to dominate a market. He would put out whatever he had to put out there to own that space. Steve would never do that. Steve believed in perfection.”

Full transcript: <a href="http://www.cultofmac.com/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full-interview-transcript/63295" rel="nofollow">http://www.cultofmac.com/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full...</a><p>Provided in: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1792349" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1792349</a>

It's amazing to see how some of these have been accepted as conventional wisdom in startups while others seem to be completely rejected by startups.<p>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.

I get the impression that this is heavily influenced by everyone else's analysis of Steve Jobs. Disappointing but not surprising.

Perfectionism was mentioned at least three times (3. Perfectionism, 7. Sweat the details, 10. Perfection). That says a lot about Steve Jobs. I'm still amazed how the 'death grip' slipped through.

An interesting perspective, esp actually studying Italian cars.<p>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: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Birdseye" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Birdseye</a>

I loved the entirety of this article. It felt really genuine like I was being told a story by my grandpa. I cannot explain it, but this article is worth being reminded of in my future.