Steve Jobs very rare MIT Speech: Explaining his Management Style at Apple & NeXT

Transcript:

Good question I’m not sure I learned this when I was at Apple but I learned it based on the data when I was at Apple and that is I now take a longer-term view on people in other words when I see something not being done right my first reaction isn’t to go fix it it’s to say we’re building a team here and we’re gonna do great stuff for the next decade not just the next year and so what do I need to do to help so that the person that’s screwing up learns versus how do I fix the problem and that’s painful sometimes and my and I still have that first instinct to go fix the problem but that’s taking a longer-term view on people it’s probably the biggest thing that’s changed and then I don’t know that’s you know maybe the part that’s biological yes management what’s our management style how do we resolve conflict I’ve never believed in the theory that if we’re on the same management team and a decision has to be made and I decide in a way that you don’t like and I say come on buy into the decision you know buy into it look we’re all on the same team you don’t agree but buy into it let’s go make it happen because what happens is sooner or later you’re paying somebody to do what they think is right but then you’re trying to get him to do what they think isn’t right and it ends sooner or later it outs and you end up having that conflict so I’ve always felt that the best way is to get everybody in a room and talk it through until you agree now that’s not everybody in the company but that’s everybody that’s really involved in that decision that needs to execute it and so that’s how we try to run next the way we run next is we have a team at the top we call the policy team there’s eight people mike is on it I’m on it we have six other people on it and the key this we have two things we try to do one is we try to differentiate between the really important decisions and the ones that we don’t have to make and the really important ones we work on it till we all agree because we’re paying people to tell us what to do there’s I don’t view that we pay people to do things that’s easy to find people to do things what’s harder is to find people to tell you what should be done right that’s what we look for so we pay people a lot of money and we expect them to tell us what to do and so when you when that’s your attitude you shouldn’t run off and do things if people don’t all feel good about them and and the key to making that work is to realize there’s not that many things that any one team really has to decide and we might have 25 really important things we have to decide on a year know

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