Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2011, on 6 October 2011, the day after Steve Jobs died, though the article does not mention his death. Its present-tense references, such as Tim Cook now taking over, reflect that moment.
A great inventor or visionary would get nowhere without principles or guidelines. The secret of Steve Jobs’s success lies not only in the way he ran his company, but in the way he acted and in his constant search for balance. Here are some of Steve Jobs’s main commandments:
1. Small teams
Among Steve Jobs’s quirks, or principles, was not hiring more people than you can remember by name. Jobs set his limit at 100 people while he was designing the Macintosh. If he needed to bring in one more worker, that was a sign that another worker wasn’t meeting their targets, so he would hire a new employee but fire another. Steve’s hand didn’t shake when it came to firing someone; in fact, he was well known, and feared, for constantly inviting people to leave the company at moments of pressure.
2. Hire the best
A person’s success in business lies in the quality of the people they surround themselves with. A company doesn’t go far unless it has real professionals in the field. Jobs has managed to bring together the best engineers, programmers and managers in one company. Part of this great businessman’s success lies in his four musketeers. From now on, responsibility for the company will fall to another great professional groomed by Jobs: Tim Cook.
3. Market research isn’t necessary
The star piece of advice for any businessperson is to do proper market research before launching a product. For Jobs, this was an optional requirement he rarely paid attention to. As he used to say, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
See also: Six serious mistakes Tim Cook has made as Apple’s CEO
4. Getting people to talk about your company gives you free publicity
Apple appeared day after day in the press around the world, because keeping secrets was part of Apple’s policy. Jobs would announce that a product was coming out in three months, but nobody knew what it would be like. The tech press speculated constantly, which kept consumers on tenterhooks. As we discussed in our article The CEO inside the genius, the secrecy measures inside the company were similar to those of the CIA.
5. Don’t launch a good product: launch a perfect product for the consumer
Jobs demanded perfection from his team. Perfection in every detail, because it was the only way to explain to consumers why they should choose it over similar products on the market. It didn’t matter how long his team had worked on something. If Jobs found the slightest aesthetic flaw or any effect that could be improved, he wouldn’t hesitate to throw the product in the bin and start again. “The customer must never be deceived. You have to give them the best, and we can give it to them.”
6. Simplify everything
Simplicity in teams, in work tools, in processes and, of course, in the product. At first, the iPod came loaded with buttons and keys. Jobs made his design team remove every key and every button that wasn’t necessary, and today we can see the result.
7. There’s no turning back
On the road to success, you set out on a path along which difficulties appear. Once you have started down that hard road, look for only one way out: success.
These are some of the principles that have made Apple the company we see today. For all its virtues and flaws, it would never have got where it is without Jobs’s personality, often criticised but necessary in the face of fierce competition in a market that is far from easy. As a person, Jobs left a message to new graduates at Stanford University, a speech capable of motivating anyone who feels lost along the way and showing them the right path.
In essence, his message was this: follow your heart and never live other people’s lives. Death is the best thing you will find in this life, because knowing it exists will help you live more intensely and pursue what you really want.
Featured image: JD Lasica from Pleasanton, CA, US, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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