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?

 

Two years later: a long slow fight

photo by Jordan Michael of Red 1 Studios

Two years ago, the ground in Port-au-Prince shook and tens of thousands of buildings collapsed. The January 12^th earthquake was the worst disaster to ever hit the Americas. The early days after the earthquake were unimaginable. When I drive through some of the neighborhoods that I visited that first week, I get terrible flashbacks. Poor Haiti had been in such bad shape before the earthquake, I just couldn’t imagine how it would ever get rebuilt.

As we commemorate the second anniversary of the earthquake, there are lots of stories highlighting what has and has not been done. A lot of articles focus on the apparent slow progress with headlines like Haiti 2 years later: Half a million still in camps. Except that most people are not in camps because they lost their house and are waiting for someone to rebuild it. They are in the camps because they are desperately poor and have nowhere to turn. The Miami Heralds video, Nous Boke: Two Years Later nicely highlights this problem by talking with people living in the distant Corail camp who are desperate for work.

Nou Bouke: Two years later from The Miami Herald on Vimeo.

This desperation existed well before the earthquake. The earthquake made a bad situation much worse. The important question is where should Haiti be today? Given how bad the situation was before the earthquake and how bad the damage was, have we made good progress?

At the one year anniversary, I had strongly mixed feelings. On one hand, I was disappointed at the lack of progress. The camp populations seemed enormous. Although the rubble had been cleared from the roads, the wounds seemed very fresh. I wished that we had made greater progress. At the same time, I couldn’t image having worked harder or pushed my team any harder. I found the same reaction when I talked with others working to rebuild Haiti. We wished that we could have done more, but had no idea how we could have gone any faster.

At the second anniversary, I feel far better about the progress. The rubble is gone from most public spaces. The government’s program to empty six camps into sixteen neighborhoods (“6/16”) has emptied the camps that used to occupy Place St Pierre and Place Boyer—two of the most visible camps. As I drive around Port-au-Prince, life seems to be much more normal.

One of the challenges is that change comes slowly. After the earthquake, we all hoped that Haiti could be quickly rebuilt and rebuilt better. We dreamed of modernizing Port-au-Prince to have wider streets, of building modern building, of making Port-au-Prince into a livable city. Two years later, we are still dreaming of this. In Delmas, we are working with an urban planner who has drawn pictures of townhouses on palm tree lined streets. Maybe someday we will get there. However, we have to first finish repairing the existing buildings, clear out the collapsed buildings, and start repairing the streets.

When I left Haiti in May 2010, I did not intend to return. I was proud of what I had accomplished and wanted to try something new. I also feared that if I stayed in Haiti, that Haiti would break my heart. I stayed and it did. But I am glad that I stayed. Brick by brick, micro-entrepreneur by micro entrepreneur, we are helping to rebuild Haiti. It is a long slow fight, but I believe that we are moving in the right direction.

What do you think? Should we be proud of what we have accomplished or should we be embarrased that we have not done more?

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?

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?

Are you a Leader or a Manager?

Exclusive interview with Seth Godin from GiANT Impact on Vimeo for the Chick-Fil-A Leadercast.

There is practical, everyday management. I am not interested in that. Leadership is not practical and it is not everyday. Management and Leadership are totally different things. You think that you are being a leader, but you are probably being a manager. Seth's opening words in the video.

I love how blunt Seth is. We all aspire to be leaders, but leadership is scary. Management is following the rules--good accounting, completing the activities in the log framework, writing complete reports. A good manager can squeeze a bit more impact from a project. Management is safe--we know what we need to do and how to measure our success.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Peter Drucker, and Warren Bennis, as quoted in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) by Stephen R. Covey, p. 101

The challenge with leadership is that you have to be in front. If the path was known, then a leader would not be needed. I know that I am leading when I can feel the pressure. When a coworker says, "You can't do that.", but I know that I can and think that I will succeed. When I am 100% sure of myself, I am managing. When I am pushing in a new direction and pretty sure that it will work (even if though I will act 100% sure), then I know that I am pushing the envelope.

 

Steve Farber tells this beautifully in his free audio series (available through this website) and less well in this video (skip the first seven minutes of selling--the core content start after this introduction). His point is that if you are not scared, if you are not experiencing an OS!M, you are not pushing yourself--you are not really leading.

And this is the challenge. Leading is hard work. It is scary. It is the only way to make a difference. To paraphrase the subtitle of Seth's book Tribes, Lead, because we need you to lead us. So what do you want to do, Manage or Lead?

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.

Playing in Water

 

One of my projects as a Peace Corps volunteer was to build a 12m long bridge in the mountains around Kara, Togo. We worked a couple of days a week with just volunteer labor. Some days the work went fast, others it dragged on.  On one particular day, we had the abutments and central column nearly complete. While others were working on the masonry, I became distracted by the light flow of water through the stream. It wasn’t rainy season, so the stream wasn’t wider than half a meter. I became distracted by the stream and decided to rearrange the rocks to allow the water to flow faster. As I worked on the stream, I convinced myself that this work was important because it would allow the water to flow faster and limit the flooding.

Haiti's reconstruction lessons are found on the other side of the world

I had this article published today in the Miami Herald:

Haiti's reconstruction lessons are found on the other side of the world

As published in the Miami Herald 

BY DANIEL O'NEIL

WWW.IMUNITEDFORHAITI.ORG

As I rushed relief supplies from the Pan American Development Foundation through the streets of Port-au-Prince just after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, I could not fathom how Haiti would recover from the worst humanitarian disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

Nearly a year later and on the other side of the world, I saw what could be Haiti's future.

In October, I traveled to Indonesia with a World Bank study group to see how that country recovered after the post-Christmas 2004 tsunami, which killed in excess of 200,000 and leveled some 139,000 homes, and the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake, which took the lives of more than 5,700 and damaged 175,000 buildings.

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?