The last part sounds like a classic Henry Kissinger move[1] where he would tell people without even looking at their work "Is that the best you can do?" After which the person spent an entire night reworking the whole thing.. to which Kissinger said "ok I'll take a look now"
This could backfire, looking hard for improvements where there are none leads to change for change's sake where the change might be inferior.
We've all found later versions of stuff inferior to the original, sometimes wildly and publicly so, like the Gap logo redesign, the various experimental efforts of George Lucas to modify Star Wars, windows 8, the new macbook, later versions of winamp, or whatever your personal disappointment has been with a later version of something you loved.
It doesn't take much effort on your part to check that something hasn't been fixed. But it does take a lot of effort to re-do the work you spent much time on because some jerk pulls idiotic tricks.
In a place like NeXT this may have been applicable:
(From 48 Laws of Power):
"In 1502, in Florence Italy there lay an enormous block of marble standing in the church of Santa Maria del Fiore. Everyone had agreed this piece of marble had been ruined and was impossible to sculpt. Friends of the great Michelangelo decided to write to the artist, then living in Rome. They were sure he could do something with the marble. Michelangelo traveled to Florence, examined the stone, and came to the conclusion that he could in fact carve a fine figure from it.
Piero Soderini, Florence’s Mayer, thought this was another waste of time to attempt to sculpt the impossible. Weeks later, as Michelangelo was putting the final touches on the statue Soderini entered the studio to examine it. Likening himself a connoisseur of fine art, he studied the huge work and told Michelangelo that while he thought the piece was magnificent, the nose was too big. Michelangelo realized that Soderini was standing in a place right under the sculpture and did not have the proper perspective. Of course he did not tell him this.
Without a word. He gestured Soderini up the scaffolding. Reaching for the nose he picked up a chisel, as well as a little bit of a marble dust that lay on the planks. Michelangelo started to tap lightly with the chisel letting the little bits of dust he had gathered in his hand fall little by little creating the illusion that he was changing the sculpture. He actually did nothing to change the nose, but gave every appearance of working on it. After a few minutes of this charade he stood aside: “Look at it now.” “I like it better,” replied Soderini, “you’ve made it come alive.
Michelangelo knew that by changing the sculpture and the shape of the nose, he might ruin it. Yet Soderini prided himself on his knowledge of his aesthetic judgement of art. So to offend such a man by arguing over such a thing as ‘perspective’ would be foolish and futile. In fact it would probably put future commissions in jeopardy. His solution was to change Soderini’s perspective (literally bringing him closer to the nose) without making him realize that this was the cause of his misconception. He found a way to keep perfection of the statue intact while at the same time making Soderini believe he had improved it. A genius move.”
A good boss will figure out how to motivate the troops. To me, it sounds like Steve Jobs found someone on the team who was motivated by 'saving the presentation.'
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-you-can-do-henry-kissing...