In 2 amazing minutes, Steve Jobs reveals eight simple principles for running a great company.
The Eight Principles:
- Organize like a startup
- Empower leaders with clear & purposeful responsibilities
- Focus the top team on managing the “whole company”
- No delegation to committees
- Effective teamwork based on deep trust
- Lots of fast/frequent communication
- Embrace constructive conflict
- Run by ideas, not hierarchy
Transcript:
Walt Mossberg: What do you do?
Steve Jobs: One of the keys to Apple, is Apple’s an incredibly collaborative company. And so, you know how many committees we have at Apple?
Walt Mossberg: No
Steve Jobs: Zero. We have no committees,
Walt Mossberg: No committees.
Steve Jobs: We are a very, we are organized like a startup. One person’s in charge of iPhone OS software. One person’s in charge of Mac hardware. One person’s in charge of iPhone hardware engineering. Another person’s in charge of worldwide marketing. Another person’s in charge of operations. It’s, we’re organized like a startup. We’re the biggest startup on the planet. And we all meet for three hours once a week.
And we talk about everything we’re doing. The whole business. And there’s tremendous teamwork at the top of the company. Which filters down to tremendous teamwork throughout the company. And teamwork is dependent on trusting the other folks to come through with their part, without watching them all the time, but trusting that they’re going to come through with their parts.
And that’s what we do really well. And we’re great at figuring out how to divide things up into these great teams that we have and all work on the same thing, touch bases frequently, and bring it all together into a product. We do that really well.
And so what I do all day is meet with teams of people and work on ideas and solve problems to make new products, to make new marketing programs, whatever it is.
Walt Mossberg: And are people willing to tell you you’re wrong?
Steve Jobs: Yeah.
Walt Mossberg: I mean, other than snarky journalists, I mean, people that work for you.
Steve Jobs: We have wonderful arguments.
Walt Mossberg: And do you win them all or?
Steve Jobs: Oh no, I wish I did. Oh, see, you can’t. If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win; otherwise, good people don’t stay.
Source: 2010 D8 Conference
Marketing Is About Values