Daniel O'Neil

Did Steve Jobs make Apple into a Great company?

In Issac Walterson's biography of Steve Jobs, Steve is repeatedly quoted in saying that he has strived to make Apple into an enduringly great company--one that will stand the test of time. Yet so much of Apple revolved around the cult of Steve Jobs and his "reality distortion field" that it is very hard to imagine Apple without him. So what is the chance that Apple will thrive in the post-Steve era?

In Jim Collins book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, he described the seven characteristics that companies who had made the leap from average performance ("good") to exceptional Performance ("great"). Under Steve Jobs, Apple exhibited all but one.

First who than what: Steve was fanatical about hiring the right people. Shortly after his return to Apple, he would hound someone to come to work at Apple if he taught that the person was right for the job. He was equally merciless in firing someone if he thought that the person was not performing. He always struggled to have only A players on his team.

Confront the brutal facts: Steve was brutally honest. Although he had a magical way of getting what he wanted out of a product, he never hid from failure. When products didn't work out (remember "Mobile Me"?) he wouldn't hesitate to kill it.

Hedgehog concept: Steve's greatest strength was his ability to focus like a laser on a few products. At his death, when Apple was one of the largest companies in the United States, its entire product line would fit on an average dining room table. He knew that Apple's success was tied to its ability to make a small number of truly great products.

Culture of discipline: Steve drove his team mercilessly to create the culture that he wanted. His team knew his vision and tried hard to implement it.

Technology as accelerators: Although Apple produced wonderful technologly, they never based their own business systems on cutting edge technology. They adopted web-based ordering only long after others had done it. Their best marketing was through their beautiful stores and traditional ads. They used technology, but did not follow fads.

Flywheel effect: As Apple produced one beautiful product after another, the cumulative effect of the other characteristics was clear.

He did everything right except for one thing. Although he was a Level Five leader that cared more for the company than his (quite oversized) ego, he did not prepare Apple for a successor. He did work closely with Tim Cook and hand the company over to him shortly before he died. However there is no cult of Tim Cook. Steve's hand was in everything that Apple did. The iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad could not have been built under anyone else's leadership. It took a CEO who cared passionately about quality and who had an exquisite sense of taste to make these into the masterpieces that they are. Tim Cook has a reputation for someone who gets things done, not for someone who makes great things.

In the conclusion of the biography of Steve Jobs, he is quoted as he talks about the downfall of other great companies. He claimed that companies such as Hewlett Packard fell apart when they were run by salesmen instead of product people. He said that is what happened to Apple in the 1980’s under Scully. Unfortunately, it seems that he has left Apple is just that type of hands. Bill Gates was quoted as saying that only Steve Jobs could have built a company that offered such complete integreation of software and hardware. When Steve was asked to name another company that so successfully offered the same level of complete integration, he couldn't come up with one.

Without a Steve Jobs to set the tone and vision, how could Apple continue to innovate so beautifully?After the last of Steve's products make it to market, will Apple be able to come up with a worthy sucessor to the iMac-Ipod-Iphone-Ipad family?

What do you think? Is it time to buy or sell Apple stock?

 

Steve Jobs did not wrestle with Uncertainty

The beauty of Apple's products was their singular, clear vision. Whether it is the iPhone, iPod, or Macintosh, the product was clearly designed with its purpose--Steve Job's vision of what the product should be. By contrast, Farhead Mohat's biggest complaint about his Android phone is that it seems to be designed by a committee. Although it is "the most powerful phone" on the market, people don't love it because they don't understand its purpose--and that is the beauty of Steve Jobs' leadership. He knew what he wanted and fearlessly pushed for that result. He didn't need focus groups or committees to validate his vision. He did not seem to wrestle with uncertainty. He boldly pushed forward and was right often enough.

I have been wrestling with leading through uncertainty as I read Jonathon Field's book: Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance. I have been fortunate to lead our Haiti office through a time of change as we have tried to move from being a good organization to being a great one. When I preordered the book, I was hoping for suggestions on how to be more certain that the path that I had taken was the right one. I thought the discussion would be on the importance of establishing a strong baseline and clear milestones to be able to track progress. Instead, the book talks about meditating and being comfortable with uncertainty. If I had merely read the book and put it aside, I would not have gotten much out of it.

Fortunately, the preorder deal allowed me to participate in a series of teleconferences and to listen to his interviews with two of the people highlighted in the book. What I learned surprised me. I learned that the ability to work through uncertainty--to neither run from it nor to allow yourself to be immobilized by the fear that it brings--is a rare and valuable skill. A key value that a strong leader brings to an organization is to reduce the uncertainty for the rest of the team by providing a clear vision--in effect absorbing the uncertainty so that others don't have to. After all, any path to great results cannot be a certain one or everyone else would already be walking down it.

I don't have Steve Jobs arrogance, but I find it easier to live with uncertainty knowing that not only is it critical to leading teams in new directions, but it is a service that I am providing to my team.

How do you deal with uncertainty?

Notable books on Haiti

Several friends have asked me for recommendations on books about Haiti. The following are books that I have read and would recommend. I have divided them into four categories (fiction, non-fiction, dubious but interesting, and coffee table books). I thought about leaving out entirely the books that I consider a bit dubious, but the all have facinating information. (Note all links are amazon affiliate links)

Fiction

The Comedians  by Graham Greene: Classics just never go out of date. This is still a great book about Haiti.

Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende: a moving portrayal of the Haitian revolution told from the point of view of a slave, her owner, and people both sympathetic to the revolutions and fighting against it. Note that the second half of the book takes place in New Orleans.

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat: the story of the massacre of Haitians in the Dominican borderlands in 1939.

Breath, Eyes, Memory also by Edwidge Danticat: fictionalized story of growing up in Haiti.

Non-Fiction

Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti by Michael Deibert and Raoul Peck: a great overview of the collapse of the second Aristide government.

Rainy Season: Haiti-Then and Now by Amy Wilentz: a fascinating look into Aristide's role in the downfall of the Duvalier Government. It was written before Aristide's government collapsed and does not look into the darker side of what later happened.

The Immaculate Invasion by Bob Shacochis:  the story of the 1994 US occupation told by an embedded reporter. This nicely brings out the rambling, lack of focus that characterized the occupation.

Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American ;the autobiography of Jean-Robert Cade. Tells the story of the abuses that he faced as a child slave in Haiti. Knowing how many kids never escape form this fate makes it a painful read.

Mountains beyond Mountains : Tracy Kidder the fascinating story of Dr. Paul Farmer and the start of Partners in Health.

Dubious facts, but interesting reads

Anything by Paul Farmer: Dr. farmer is a hero for the work that he has done in Haiti and around the world. In his books, he plays fast and free with the facts to back up his own point of view.

The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic by Wade Davis: A supposedly scientific investigation into voodoo. I don’t believe the insights into how voodoo works, but it does have good insights into Haitian rural life.

Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola by Michele Wucker: provides a great, east to read overview of the history of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. However, the central thesis that the island is too small to allow for strong presidents to govern in both countries doesn't really hold up.

Coffee Table/gift books

Paroles et Lumieres-Where Light Speaks: Haiti (English and French Edition), by Hiebert; Phelps; Yates; Cav: A beautiful look at Haiti by two people who love it well.

Hispaniola: A Photographic Journey through Island Biodiversity  by Eladio Fernández: A beautiful catalog of the animals on both sides of the island.

What other books would you recommend on Haiti?

 

The 7 Steps to Great Projects E-Book

I received a series of great comments on the Linkedin group Chief of Party Exchange to my earlier post Notes to a Newly Appointed Project Director. I reworked the earlier blog post into a free ebook: 7 Steps to Starting a Great Project. It is a six-page essay that focuses on the first seven things that a newly appointed project director should do to ensure that his or her project starts off right and hopefully ends well. It also includes short reviews of six books that every Project Director should read. What do you think? What would include in an expanded version?

What would it have felt like to live through the Haitian Revolution?

 

 

The story of the Haitian revolution is a bizarrely twisted tail. The revolution began as an uprising by the slaves, became a civil war between the French and the mulatos (mixed race, free people) to a slave revolution. General Toussaint Louverture fought first for the French, then for Spanish, then for Haiti. Then when Haiti finally won its independence, its new rulers put the former slaves right back to work on the plantations. I tried to make sense of the convoluted story through a series of posts on the Our Border website. Isabel Allende has done a beautiful job of painting a picture of life during these turbulent times in her book, Islands beneath the Sea.

Island Beneath the Sea is the story of life in Haiti before and during the revolution and later in New Orleans as seen by a handful of different characters. The beauty of the story is how each of the different narrators shows how they view the world and what happens: the slave girl who stays with her master even though he repeatedly raped her because it is best for her daughter; the plantation owner who finds ways to justify owning and even beating slaves even though he knows it is wrong; a doctor who is outspoken against slaves but unwilling to admit that his mistress is colored. I was fascinated watching how each character saw and related to the outbreak and spread of the revolution.

My interest was in what happened in Haiti. I was disappointed when the characters all moved to New Orleans. The book kept me interested, but I was sorry that they never returned to Haiti.

Island Beneath the Sea is a great addition to the fictional narrative of Haiti’s history along with Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones. 

 

A Little Guide to making Big Changes

Seth Godin's new book, Poke the Box, is a passionate manifesto to begin something and carry it through. It builds on his earlier work Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?--his guide to committing to making a difference--and the The ShipIt Journal--a workbook for getting a team to committing to completing a project.

As with all of Seth's recent writings, it is really a collection of short essays on why we need to continually try, embracing failure when it comes, and fighting to completion as often as possible.

Seth has given me the courage to continually fight for change--to be willing to openly question what others accepted and embrace the role of being a change agent or linchpin. My favorite quote from his earlier book was one from Steve Jobs, "Real Artists Ship." My favorite quote from this book is actually from his twitter feed, "If you don’t finish, it doesn’t really count as starting, and if you don’t start, you’re not poking."

Seth is a fascinating person to follow because he practices what he preaches. Although he has a string of bestselling books, he turned his back on the publishing business and developed his own publishing company through Amazon. He boldly writes his own rules, tries different strategies ("pokes") to see what works and embraces the risk of failure. He even openly gives away the core story of the book through a free workbook. 

This is a great book for anyone looking to be the change that they want to see in the world.

Notes to a newly appointed Project Director

Dear Newly Named Project Director,

Congratulations on your new assignment. Whether this is your first stint as a project director or if you have done it many times, this is an exciting moment. We are glad to have hired you. You have a chance to make a significant difference in this new endeavor. If it is a brand new project, then you are facing the challenge of coloring in a blank slate. If it is an ongoing project, then you have the opportunity to push it in new directions.

We expect you to do more than to keep the project on track, write reports, and balance the project's checkbook (although you must do these three perfectly!). We selected you because we need someone exceptional to make our work remarkable. To get you off on the right foot, I suggest that you start by focusing on the following challenges:

The “To Do No More” List

My workload changed dramatically on January 12^th when I stepped in to take over the earthquake response in Haiti.  Although I have always felt that I was productive—I set goals based on the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and I managed my workflow through the Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity system. Yet pre-earthquake, my work load was manageable. Those days seem like a lazy vacation in comparison to my situation today.

My biggest challenge when swamped with work is to find the path forward. It is easier to respond to the tasks in front of me than to work on longer term goals. I could easily spend my days responding to emails and phone calls and putting fires out—I suspect that some of the people that have given me tasks that sit in my “@action” folder would rather I did just that. However, I know that my days spent responding to urgent requests brings me no closer to my own goals and just leaves me one day older.

Does the Harlem Children's Zone hold the key to revolutionalizing the world?

My kids class

I recently reread Jared Diamond's excellent book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. It is an excellent overview of how a variety of factors gave some geographic regions the natural advantages that allowed them to dominate the rest of the world. He beautifully shows that, up until fairly recently, where you were born, rather than your lineage or "race" determines how rich your society would be. However, now that the world is flat and everyone has access to the same guns, germs, and steel; why have the differences continued? Why aren't African kids competing on par with European kids?

The question became even more intriguing after I read Malcom Gladwell's book, Outliers: The Story of Success. He looks at successful people from Mozart to Bill Gates and concludes that these people became so successful by spending the 10,000 hours required to master a skill and then being in the right time and place to take advantage of the mastery. This was the case with Bill Gates who, as a high school student, had nearly unlimited access to a mainframe computer when few computer professors did. It was also the case of Mozart, the son of a composer, who was forced to put in his ten thousand hours while still a young child. 

The beauty of putting together the thoughts outlined in these two books is that they make the case that anyone in the world could succeed if they put in the time to master the skill. Except it doesn't work that way. With a few rare exceptions, Africa does not produce many "Outliers."

The best answer that I have found lies in the story behind the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ). As described in the This American Life episode, the HCZ CEO, Geoffrey Canada, was raising his second family in the 1990s are realized that the thinking about childrearing had dramatically changed from his first try at it. The new thinking was that parents had to be involved with their kids from even before the kids was born--eating the right foods, singing to the womb. Once the baby was born, there was a whole new philosophy of discipline and care. He encouraged his social workers to go out into their neighborhoods so see if this new thinking had caught on in Harlem. They found that it had not. Geoffrey then reworked the HCZ strategy to focus on helping the children by creating a "conveyor belt" to take them (and their parents) from baby college to college. The HCZ helps parents to care for their kids and prepare their kids for success. By not waiting until the children are reach the traditional school age, they are able to impact the children when they are easiest to touch.

The results that the HCZ has achieved are nothing short of amazing. They have transformed the neighborhood from one of underachieving kids to overachieving ones. They are proving that it is possible to transform education. The Obama administration is looking to duplicate the success through "Promise Neighborhoods."

What if we could take this idea global? What if we could launch baby colleges and develop conveyor belts to take kids to college? Could this be the missing key that would allow children from poor families from all over the world to finally be able to compete in this global economy? Is the biggest mistake that we make in education that we wait too long to begin educating our kids and thereby deny them the chance to achieve mastery?

A new, excellent primer on poverty

A friend of mine, Rahul Deodhar, has just put out an excellent primer on poverty. He explains beautifully the concepts that I touched on in one of my early posts "The New Thinking on Poverty." The basic idea is that people move in and out of poverty based on what Rahul calls "Snakes" (pitfalls and bad habits that pull them down) and ladders (good habits and actions that pull them out). Rahul provides clear illustrations of how people can cycle in and out of poverty and the high cost of being poor. It's a free ebook and well worth the read. You can learn more about Rahul through his website: http://www.rahuldeodhar.com/