Monday, January 30, 2012

Over Time




In 2007, Steve Jobs decided that the soon-to-be-released iPhone had to have a glass screen instead of the plastic originally planned. "I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks," the article quotes Jobs as saying. it was clear that the only place to get that done was China.

You wouldn't get very far in business if you paused to ask, Why, exactly, was this worth doing? Why couldn't Jobs have had to live with the change taking 10 weeks, or six months, or even a year?

A first answer is that he had a vision, and he wouldn't accept anything less than perfection. And this is supposed to be admirable in every way. Trouble is, when an executive realizes an insanely great vision, the medium—that which is experimented with, molded into strange shapes, stressed with unforeseen tensions—is other people's lives. The executive isn't like a pianist pounding ivories or a sculptor twisting metal. In business creativity, what is pounded and twisted is other human beings.

Same guy? Or harder, less "get the right people, support them, care about them" as the years passed and the pressure to perform grew?



Quote found at BigThink.

No comments: