The Best Product? A Great Team

But even though Jobs’s style could be demoralizing, it could also be oddly inspiring. It infused Apple employees with an abiding passion to create groundbreaking products and a belief that they could accomplish what seemed impossible. They had T-shirts made that read “90 hours a week and loving it!” Out of a fear of Jobs mixed with an incredibly st... See more

Thinking about team management as a product: - Set up advanced listening mechanisms: help your PMs become better listeners- Keep your feedback loops healthy at all costs: Establish a consistent set of group and one-on-one meetings, ideally early in the week to help set the tone and get the team on the same page.- Your team should have a purpose as ... See more

Toward the end of his life, Steve Jobs told Walter Isaacson, “If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it’s Jony Ive. Jony and I think up most of the products together and then pull others in…he gets the big picture as well as the most infinitesimal details about each product.”

The greatest thing Jobs designed was his business. Apple imagined and executed definite multi-year plans to create new products and distribute them effectively. Forget “minimum viable products”—ever since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying ot... See more