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Steve Jobs “the best people [...] are the ones who really understand the content”
Christophe Cazes
Vice President, Global Head of Innovation and Partnerships | Generative AI | CTO | Formerly @Stellantis @ArcelorMittal @Gestamp @Forvia
Steve Jobs “the problem was that we hired a bunch of people from Hewlett-Packard, [...] I remember having dramatic arguments with some of those people who thought the coolest thing in user interface was having soft keys in the bottom of the screen, they had no concept [...] of a mouse, [....] they argued that it will take five years to engineer a mouse and cost 300 dollars to build it. [...] I finally got fed up, I just went outside and find David Kelley Design and ask him to design a mouse in 90 days. And after 90 days, we had a mouse, that we could build for 15 bucks, that was phenomenally reliable. [...]I found that, in a way, Apple did not have the caliber of people that was necessary to seize this idea in many ways. [If] there was a core team who did, there was a larger team, that mostly had come from Hewlett-Packard, that dit not have any clue. [...]
People get confused, companies get confused, when they start getting bigger they wanna replicate their initial success, and a lot of them think, well, somehow there is a kind of magic in the process on how that success was created within the company and they start to institutionalize process across the company, and before very long, people are getting very confused that the process is the content.
That’s ultimately the downfall of IBM. IBM had the best people process in the world but they just forgot about the content.
And that’s so what happened to Apple too.
We have a lot of people who are great at management process, but they just did not have a clue about the content. [...]
In my career, I found that the best people [...] are the ones who really understand the content, and they are pain in the bottom to manage! But you put on with it because they are so great in the content and that they will make great products, [the key thing] is not process it’s content.”
Enabling Engineering Experience for Sustainable Mobility
7 个月So true! People get carried away by following the process to the T, missing the focus on the need, which is contextual to every problem we try to solve!
Curious, energetic, problem solver interested in using business principles to harness untapped potential for a better world.
5 年The importance of understanding deeply - is the 1st point made by E. Burger, and M. Starbird in "The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking" -Please don't ask me about the 4th & 5th ones- in an attempt to understand the book deeply I still am only 1/2 way through ;)
IT Product Manager | ITIL? 4 Strategic Leader, SAFe? 6 Agilist | AI/ML, IT Infrastructure, Cloud, IoT, Digital Transformation
6 年How about applying Design Thinking
Knows a thing or two in Automotive & Finance | Results3 | Views expressed are my own | Footnote ?1? ZB = Zero Bologna
6 年A comment on the concluding statement: “it's not process it’s content”: this is so true.? Not to say that processes do not have a role to play; first at a macro level, with us understanding our role in the context of the larger process to which we contribute; and on the other extreme, using processes as cookie-cutters and to leverage scale in the case of repetitive, deviation-protected, near-uninventive tasks. But everywhere in-between, there are legions who have unfortunately been led to believe that process equals results. Content is the only result, with process as a potential help; always remembering what we try to achieve, and assessing whether the process is the best channel to accomplish this task … not just “following” the process!
I talk and share about Automotive Technologies
6 年But the counter part is that “They are a pain in the butt to manage” I would tend to agree with that ??