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Founders

#349 How Steve Jobs Kept Things Simple

Founders

David Senra

History, Entrepreneurship, Business, Technology

4.82.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What I learned from reading Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success by Ken Segall.  ---- Learning from history is a form of leverage. —Charlie Munger. Founders Notes gives you the super power to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.  You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.  A few questions I've asked SAGE recently:  What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs? Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)  How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent? What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors? Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- (1:30) Steve wanted Apple to make a product that was simply amazing and amazingly simple. (3:00) If you don’t zero in on your bureaucracy every so often, you will naturally build in layers. You never set out to add bureaucracy. You just get it. Period. Without even knowing it. So you always have to be looking to eliminate it.  — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234) (5:00) Steve was always easy to understand. He would either approve a demo, or he would request to see something different next time. Whenever Steve reviewed a demo, he would say, often with highly detailed specificity, what he wanted to happen next.  — Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. (Founders #281) (7:00) Watch this video. Andy Miller tells GREAT Steve Jobs stories.  (10:00) Many are familiar with the re-emergence of Apple. They may not be as familiar with the fact that it has few, if any parallels.When did a founder ever return to the company from which he had been rudely rejected to engineer a turnaround as complete and spectacular as Apple's? While turnarounds are difficult in any circumstances they are doubly difficult in a technology company. It is not too much of a stretch to say that Steve founded Apple not once but twice. And the second time he was alone.  —  Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation of Appleby Michael Moritz. (15:00) If the ultimate decision maker is involved every step of the way the quality of the work increases. (20:00) "You asked the question, What was your process like?' I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the 'Walt Period' of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes. We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park, a Disneyland. So we're in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything. We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions." — Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #347) (23:00) The further you get away from 1 the more complexity you invite in. (25:00) Your goal: A single idea expressed clearly. (26:00) Jony Ive: Steve was the most focused person I’ve met in my life (28:00) Editing your thinking is an act of service. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0

Okay, so the book I'm going to talk to you about today is insanely simple, the obsession that drives

0:04.7

Apple's success, and it's written by Ken Siegel.

0:07.8

This book is a little different from the books that you and I normally talk about.

0:11.3

It is not a biography, but it is a fascinating look into how it was working with Steve Jobs because Ken Siegel was the ad agency creative director of the firm that Steve used when he was at next and then when he came back to

0:25.3

Apple to lead that turnaround. And so at this point I've made I don't know 10 episodes on Steve Jobs

0:30.1

I've read as many books on him as I can find and yet there was stories in this book that I have found nowhere else and it's because Ken worked with Steve intimately for over a decade.

0:40.8

Steve had no problem calling Ken at midnight to debate a single word in the ad copy.

0:46.2

And so one of the things that Ken noticed that was different from the other clients that he had was that Steve

0:50.4

his dedication to simplicity was almost religious in nature and you would see that

0:55.8

religious-like dedication to simplicity throughout the entire way that Steve ran

0:59.7

his business to the way he communicated internally with his employees to the way he communicated internally with his employees, to the way he communicated

1:03.9

externally to his potential customers, to how he organized his team, to how he built his

1:08.8

products.

1:09.8

And so Ken noticed that Steve had a tool to do this and he calls it the simple stick which is one of my favorite stories.

1:15.0

This is the second or third time that I've read the book and considering I reread my highlights all time

1:20.0

it's like the 10th time I read the book and for some reason I failed to make an

1:23.4

episode on it before so I'm rectifying that mistake here but the simple stick the

1:27.4

reason I bring that up is because from the very first time I read the book

1:30.0

you know probably eight years ago something like that this idea of the simple stick always

1:33.7

stuck in my mind so the simple stick is just a tool that Steve Jobs used to keep his team

1:38.6

from over complicating things if an idea was not distilled down to its essence, Steve

1:44.4

would reject it. If an idea took a turn when it should have traveled in a

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