Former Apple CEO Sculley: The Brutal Perfection Of Jobs Doctrine

Jobs is a genius who created history. Not only did he create the history of modern PC industry through the creation of apple computer, but in 1997, he returned to Apple Corp in a short span of 13 years, and launched a series of creative products such as iPod, iPhone, IPad and so on, and radically and successfully subverted the market structure of the 4 major industries of PC, music, film and mobile phone, so as to reshuffle the cards.

Last year "fortune" commended Jobs as the best CEO in ten years. "If entrepreneurs can reshape any market, it will be a lifetime achievement, such as Henry Ford's reform of automobile production processes.

However, it can change the 4 existing markets at the same time.

Steve Jobs

It's the first person ever. "

How did he do all this? What kind of wisdom did he continue to create Apple legend?

Recently, Bloomberg TV broadcast biographical films of Jobs, and foreign famous apple information website Cult of Mac also.

Apple's former CEO John Scoli (John Sculley)

An exclusive interview was made.

John Scoli was the first to talk openly about Jobs after leaving apple. The whole interview gave him great admiration and shared Jobs's secret of creating great products with his own experience. He called it Steve Jobs's methodology.

He admits that all his design ideas were Jobs when he was apple CEO, "all of my apple products were credited to Jobs during my tenure."

Based on user experience

When I first met Jobs 25 years ago, he followed the same first principle, which I call "Steve Jobs methodology for creating great products".

At that time, Jobs always liked beautiful products, especially hardware.

Every time he came to my house, he was very fascinated because I had some special locks.

I have studied industrial design. It is industrial design that connects me to Jobs rather than computers.

At that time, I didn't know much about computers, and few people in the world understood them.

At the beginning of the personal computer revolution, all two of us have confidence in the beautiful design.

In particular, Jobs felt that he had to design from the commanding heights of user experience.

He always looks at things from the perspective of user experience.

Nowadays, most of the product marketers will go outside to do consumer surveys and ask "what do you need".

Unlike Jobs, he did not believe in this approach.

He said, "if people don't know what graphics based computers are, then how can I ask them what graphics computers they want? No one has ever seen such a computer."

He thought that showing a calculator to people would not help him to imagine the future computers.

Because this will be a leap.

Steve insists that we should start with user experience, and industrial design is a very important part of user impression.

When he recruited me to join apple, it was also because he believed that computers would eventually become a consumer product. This was a very absurd idea in the early 1980s when people thought that personal computers were just a reduced version of large computers.

That's how IBM looks.

Some people think that personal computers are more like a game machine, and a simple video game that simply connects to the TV has appeared.

But Steve thought of something totally different.

He feels that computers will change the world and will become what he calls "the bicycle of thought", which will provide people with amazing functions that they have never thought of.

This is not a game console, nor is a large computer simply getting smaller.

I remember when Steve and I went to see Polaroid Co co-founder Edwin Rand, Dr. Rand was one of his idols.

At that time Dr Rand was eliminated by Polaroid.

He has his own laboratory in Cambridge.

It was a pleasant afternoon. We sat in the big conference room, and the conference table was empty.

Dr. Lande and Steve kept staring at the center of the table throughout the conversation.

Dr. lander said, "I can draw the look of Polaroid cameras.

It is so real, as if it had already appeared before me before I did it. "

Then Jobs said, "yes, I feel the same way about Macintosh."

All two of them have a discovery rather than a specialty of inventing products.

They all say that products actually exist all the time, but no one can find it.

Polaroid cameras exist all the time, and Macintosh is always there, only when it is discovered.

Pursue perfection.

Jobs has a great judgement of the future, and he also pursues the accuracy of every step.

He is methodical, careful, careful and perfect.

The difference between Jobs's methodology and others is that he always believes that the most important decision you make is not what you want to do, but what you decide not to do.

He is a minimalist.

I remember Jobs had hardly any furniture in his house.

There was only one image of Einstein that he admired, a Tiffany lamp, a bed and a chair.

He does not advocate that he has many things. Once he chooses, he will take care of them.

Just as he is careful with apples.

This is Jobs, from the user experience, I believe that industrial design should give people the feeling of playing jewelry, rather than the mood of tinkering with technology products.

When Macintosh first appeared in front of me, it was just a series of parts on the test circuit board, but Jobs was able to find the person he thought the cleverest to support him.

He is very charismatic, persuading people to cooperate with him, and even without developing products, people can trust him.

When I first met him, the Mac development team was very small, with an average age of 22, and when I saw the Mac team again, they had developed to 100.

These people apparently never made commercial products before, but they believed in Jobs and his vision.

He can coordinate many levels of work.

The first level of these layers is "changing the world", while the other level is actually making exquisite products, designing software, hardware, systems and peripheral related accessories.

For every development, he collects the best people he can find in the field, and personally recruits development teams, so that no one else will be responsible for recruitment.

One thing about Jobs is that he has no interest in large organizations.

He believes that those organizations are bureaucratic and inefficient.

He called the organization he did not like "bozos".

Jobs has a principle that the Mac team will never exceed 100 people.

Therefore, if we want to add new members, it means that someone will quit.

This is the typical Jobs: "I can't remember the names of the employees beyond 100 people. I just want to work with people I know.

So if more than 100 people, it will become a different form of organization, I can not work.

The way I like to work is that I can take care of everything. "

When I was working in apple, he also divided departments so.

Steve might say, "the organization can be bigger, but the Mac team can not."

The Macintosh team was established as a product development department.

Apple has a centralized sales department, centralized management, legal departments, there are centralized manufacturing departments, but there is no specific development of the actual Department of a product.

This is a fact in the field of high-tech products, not that many people can develop good products.

Generally speaking, you can only see a few engineers developing an operating system.

People may think that hundreds of people should work together to develop an operating system. In fact, this is not the case.

This is like an artist's studio. Jobs is a master of art. He examines and judges other people's work. He makes judgments in most cases.

I remember countless nights when we worked until 12 or 1 in the morning, because engineers only appeared after lunch, and then worked until late at night.

An engineer will show Jobs the software code he just wrote. Jobs looked at it and threw it back to him and said, "not yet."

He has been constantly forcing everyone to improve their expectations. The reason why developers can produce masterpieces beyond their imagination is that most of the reason is that Jobs inspired them with high charm and made them feel so great. On the other hand, he ruthlessly rejected the work of the big family until he thought the product had been perfect enough.

That's what he asked for Macintosh.

Steve is very methodical.

He always put a white board in his office.

He has no painting skills, but he has extraordinary taste.

This is the difference between Jobs and others, such as Bill Gates.

Bill is also a genius, but he is never interested in high quality. He is always more interested in how to seize the market.

Jobs never did.

Jobs pursues perfection. He is willing to seize any opportunity to try new products, but always from the designer's point of view.

Many CEO are great, some of them are fantastic financial experts, some are smart trading negotiators, others are inspirational motivators, but Jobs is an extraordinary designer.

Everything in apple can be interpreted through design.

Last year, a friend of mine came to apple and Microsoft Corp on the same day.

He first entered the apple conference room, when Apple designers walked into the conference room, and everyone stopped talking because designers were most respected in apple.

Everyone knows that designers can represent Steve because they report directly to Steve.

Only in apple can designers report directly to CEO.

After that, my friend also went to Microsoft Corp.

He walked into the Microsoft conference room where everyone was talking, and no designer came in at the beginning of the meeting.

All the technicians sit there and put forward their own ideas for the design of the product.

It was a disaster.

Microsoft has hired the most intelligent people in the world.

As is known to all, Microsoft has given quite a challenging test to applicants.

But the problem is that intelligence and talent are not the key.

In apple, the designer is the highest class in the company, led by Steve himself.

But in other companies, designers are not at the top, buried under bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy lies in the fact that many people have only the right to say "no" but not the right to "yes".

So the products produced are all compromised.

This is contrary to Jobs's philosophy: the most important decision is what you decide not to do, not what you decide to do.

This is his minimalist thought.

Whether it's design or user experience, or industrial design or system design, or even how to put the main board on display, these must be beautiful in Jobs's eyes. Though he doesn't want users to destroy anything inside, Macintosh users themselves do not have to open the chassis to see the inside.

The perfection of his request is that even if ordinary customers can't see anything, everything must be aesthetically pleasing.

Jobs's obsession with design is well known.

He ran around in the apple parking lot and was intent on observing all the Mercedes Benz.

He looked at the font, color and format of the print.

Apple will concentrate on the details of each package -- "open me first", the design of the package, folding line, paper and printing...

Its products are like goods bought from fashion brand stores or the most high-end jewelry companies.

At that time, we were looking for a design company to be responsible for the design of a product. We studied the designers in Italy. They would really study the design of the car, observe the accuracy and finish, the material and the color of the car.

At that time, nobody in Silicon Valley was like us.

It seems to be the most distant thing for Silicon Valley in 1980s.

Of course, this is not my idea. Although my background has something to do with it, it is completely driven by Jobs.

I took a lot of criticism after taking over the apple.

People say, "how can they make a computer ignorant person in charge of computer companies?" most people do not understand that apple is not only a computer company, but also designing products, designing marketing, and positioning enterprises.

Design is the uniqueness of apple.

The glass staircase of Apple store is made of specially made glass.

This is Jobs's typical way of thinking.

Everyone around him knows that he is a unique person.

He made a series of standards which are completely different from those of other CEO.

He is a minimalist, constantly reducing his burden to the simplest level - not simply, but streamlined.

Steve is a system designer who simplification of complex things.

If you don't care about these things, you can only achieve simple results.

For example, Microsoft's Zune.

After Microsoft released Zune, almost no one used to take a look at it.

I am sure they (Microsoft) are smart people, but they are different in principle.

Microsoft will not make mistakes until third times.

Its principle is to push the market first and then slowly improve.

Jobs would never do that.

He wants to ensure that everything is perfect before he pushes the product to market.

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Focus on systematic thinking.

The company Jobs appreciates is SONY.

We visited Akio Morita, the founder of SONY, in Japan. He had the same high-end standards as Jobs did, advocating aesthetic products.

Mr. Akio Morita is also obviously one of Steve's idols.

I remember Akio Morita gave Jobs and me a first generation SONY Walkman portable machine.

We have never seen such a product, because no product at that time could match it.

Jobs was deeply attracted by this Walkman.

The first thing he did was to open up his machine, observe every part, and study how it was installed, made and polished.

Jobs is also fascinated by SONY's factories.

In SONY's factory, workers wear different colors of uniform -- green, blue...

What color depends on their functions.

These details were carefully considered and impeccable, which left Jobs with a deep impression.

The same is true of Mac factories.

Although the workers inside do not have the color uniform, every detail of the factory is as exquisite as the SONY factory we have seen.

Steve really wants to be like SONY. He doesn't want to learn IBM and he doesn't want to learn Microsoft. He wants to be SONY.

Jobs studied the book "the future of numbers".

Japanese companies start from the market share of parts, some dominate the inductor market, some companies control the memory market, and others dominate the hard disk market.

Then they will use parts to improve their market competitiveness and slowly pfer to terminal products.

Whoever controls the price of key parts will have the advantage, but this is not suitable for all digital electronic products.

Today, we can see that with the rise of consumer electronics industry, SONY has at least suffered major problems in the past 15 years.

Their departments have completely formed "pipeline type" organizations.

The people in the software department do not communicate with the hardware staff, the hardware department does not communicate with the parts department, and the spare parts department does not communicate with the design department.

There is often controversy among organizations, and they are arrogant and stick to the rules.

Soniben could make iPod, but they didn't, and apple did it.

IPod is a perfect example of Jobs's methodology.

Jobs has always adopted terminal to terminal system.

He is not a designer, but a great system thinker.

Other companies usually concentrate on their work and outsource other jobs.

IPod's supply chain is as mature as the design of the product itself.

The challenge facing the supply chain is not only user design but also a perfect standard.

This is totally innovative.

Jobs considered the design from a systematic point of view and insisted on managing and controlling the whole system.

He believes that if the open system, there will be man-made changes, and these changes will make the user experience greatly reduced, Jobs will not launch a user experience discounted products.

Jobs's design methodology is quite correct. Even 25 years ago, his first design idea focused on several points: he only pegged to Apple's system, never compromise, and compared with the most exquisite jewellery, never comparing with other products.

None of these standards can be imagined.

Others just experienced the evolution of a product.

Jobs believed that he must control the whole system and make every decision by him.

All this is for user experience, user experience throughout the end to end system, whether it is computer desktop or iTunes, are part of the end to end system.

Concept creation reality

The reason why Jobs joined me is not because I understand computers, but because I have both the design background and product marketing experience.

After months of mutual understanding between Jobs and me, I entered Apple Corp.

Steve had no contact with marketing, but if he felt that some information was important, he would try to absorb as much as possible, which is a typical Steve style.

There was one thing he was fascinated by: I described to him how to make Pepsi Cola a symbol for consumers to shape their image by changing people's ideas, so that its sales performance was much higher than that of Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola has been focusing itself on Cola itself.

Pepsi focuses on people who drink cola.

We can make people see that people who ride bicycles, ski, fly kites or glides and do different things will eventually drink Pepsi.

Pepsi is the first company to conduct lifestyle marketing.

With the advent of color TV and 19 inch TV, we began to advertise TV commercials.

We didn't look for television advertising companies because they were making advertisements for small screen black and white TV.

We went to Hollywood to find the best movie actors to shoot us for 60 seconds about lifestyle.

Of course, the purpose of doing so is to create a concept: Pepsi first.

Because unless your idea is the first, you can become the first.

You must act like number one.

Jobs is fascinated by this phenomenon.

We talked about how ideas guide reality. If you want to create a reality, you have to create this concept.

Steve liked this idea very much.

Many of the things we did then and our marketing will focus on when to bring Mac to the market.

He created a high level of expectation and made people want to understand the function of this product.

Mac didn't have many functions at the beginning, all the technologies were used to improve user experience.

In fact, some people say that it is like a toy and can not do anything.

But as technology continues to grow, Mac can achieve many functions in the end.

Steve's gift is that he can try to integrate new discoveries into his design methods, all around design.

When I was in apple, Steve never changed his first principles, but was constantly improving and perfecting.

Jobs once asked me, "how can Pepsi come up with such a good advertisement?" he asked if Pepsi had picked up a good advertising agency.

I tell him the truth, first of all, we must have an exciting product, so that we can have the opportunity to make bold advertisements to present it.

Good advertising comes from good advertisers.

The most creative advertisers want to cooperate with the best customers.

If you don't know how to thank you for your excellent work, do not want to take risks and try new things, and are not excited about creative things, then you are not the best customers.

Many large companies have people in charge of this area.

CEO seldom knows the advertisement of a company before the advertisement is finished.

It's not like Pepsi and apple. I'm sure Steve will not do that now.

He is always stubbornly involved in advertising, design and everything else.

Another example of his talent is Apple's retail store.

Jobs found Mickey Drexler, director of The Gap at the time, joined Apple's director to learn retail.

As a result, Jobs not only learned to retail, but also designed the best retail store in the world. I've never seen a better store than Apple's.

It is not only the highest income shop in every square foot in the world, but also provides customers with extraordinary consumption experience.

Apple stores are always full of people.

By contrast, SONY center and NOKIA store are always left behind.

Other stores only display goods, while in Apple stores, you can touch and feel the merchandise, and there are many people around you shopping.

It shows that people who own Apple products live an enviable way of life.

The experience of using products is not entirely in user experience, but also in how advertising presents product and product design.

Jobs's installation and appearance requirements for products are also a legend.

Only the real designer will pay attention to the minute details of the dividing line and the baffle.

Even if no one else sees anything, Jobs will veto his unsatisfactory plan.

It is precisely because he has such a high standard that people will send out such a sigh: "how did apple do it? How did apple produce such a wonderful product?" {page_break}

John Scoli: Apple's fault

I regret that I made two stupid mistakes. Without these mistakes, today's Apple will be more distinctive.

John Scoli served as Pepsi Cola CEO, and Jobs wanted to invite him to Apple CEO in 1983.

Jobs's words touched him. "Do you want to sell sugar water or change the world for the rest of your life?"

Scully agreed to Jobs as a joint CEO to manage Apple Corp together.

In the meantime, Sculley and Jobs jointly created Apple's early glory.

But then a series of policy mistakes led Jobs to leave the company, Apple was in trouble, and in 1993 he was forced to leave apple.

In an interview with Cult of Mac, Sculley disclosed the mistakes of Apple Corp and her own year.

In the high-tech industry, I learned that success and failure are just the first line.

In this industry, you need to continue to take risks, especially Apple companies, always on the brink.

In 1980s, Jobs began to solve the problems that should be solved after fifteen or twenty years.

The biggest challenge is ten years ahead, and many times Jobs is ahead.

Looking back on the past, apple hired me to take CEO as a big mistake.

At that time, I was not Steve's first choice. He was the first choice, but the board thought Steve was not ready. He was only 256 years old.

They found many high tech elite as CEO candidates, and finally they found me.

I know nothing about computers.

And that decision was made at that time. Jobs and I worked together as partners.

He is in charge of technology, and I am responsible for marketing.

I said it was a big mistake for apple to hire me to make CEO because Steve himself always wanted to be CEO.

Jobs is chairman of the board, Apple's largest shareholder, and in charge of the Macintosh department, so he is above me and under me.

If a director considers more than how to find a CEO to join apple, but how to ensure that the company can achieve sustained success, I think we may not break it today.

I didn't know much about computers until Steve left apple in 1985.

I decided to save the company first, but I don't know how to save it and how to bring it back to the right track.

Everything we did was Jobs's idea.

I understand his methodology. We have never changed.

So we do not have authorized products, we focus on industrial design.

In fact, we have our own internal design department. We develop PowerBook...

Develop QuickTime.

Everything revolves around Steve's principles, all of which are related to sales, marketing and product innovation.

Of course, all the design ideas were Jobs's, and all Apple products were credited to Jobs during my tenure.

I regret that I made two stupid mistakes. Without these mistakes, today's Apple will be more distinctive.

One mistake is that Apple gave up the Intel -T processor and chose IBM and Motorola processors.

If we cooperate with Intel, Apple will be able to take advantage of a more commercialized component platform, which will bring great changes to apple in 1990s.

Because Intel's processor was strong enough to drive all technologies and software, Microsoft launched its Windows 3.1 at that time.

In order to do well in software and hardware, processor is a very important prerequisite.

Only when the processor is powerful, can computers become commodities, and software can deal with all subroutines that we can not execute on hardware.

My decision was terrible.

Unfortunately, I am not qualified to make technical decisions. I can only listen to others' suggestions.

Another mistake is more serious. If I consider it more carefully, I should be able to save Steve.

After 10 years in apple, I want to leave.

At that time, IBM always wanted to attract me to join, but Apple's board wanted me to stay.

However, I stayed, and then they fired me.

The board decided to sell apples.

In 1993, I was asked to search for Apple buyers.

I tried to persuade AT&T, IBM and other companies, but no one was willing to take over.

They thought the risk was too great, because Microsoft and Intel had done pretty well at that time.

If I had been more sensible then, I would have said, "why not find someone who can create this company and understand it?

Why don't we let Jobs come back and run the company? "But I didn't do that.

I've been blaming myself.

If Jobs were to come back, he would be able to save apple.

One of the reasons for my dismissal is that there are differences within the company regarding the positioning of the company.

A small number of people want apple to become a commercial computer company, open software architecture, external licensing technology.

There are a small number of people, including I want to adhere to Apple's methodology, that is, focus on user experience and related aspects, and start developing the next generation of products, such as "Newton".

However, "Newton" failed and I was fired.

After that, all two CEO technologies were licensed to stop industrial design, and the resulting computers were not Apple specific, and they no longer focused on advertising and public relations.

In this way, they obliterated everything.

Apple quickly became an engineering company, almost destroyed.

I think if Jobs comes back 6 months later, Apple Corp will become history and disappear forever.

What did Jobs do? He let apple go back to its original form as if he had never left.

He put everything back on track.

So in my time, all of our things were done according to Jobs's principles and methodology.

Unfortunately, I am not good at him in this respect.

Time is everything in life.

When Apple failed to create excellent products, it was Jobs who ran into the wall at NeXT.

Jobs and apple came together again.

One thing he did is good: he created a better operating system and eventually integrated it into Apple's operating system.