> Steve Jobs used to run an annual retreat for what he considered the 100 most important people at Apple, and these were not the 100 people highest on the org chart. Can you imagine the force of will it would take to do this at the average company? [...] Steve presumably wouldn't have kept having these retreats if they didn't work.
Probably, but before we assume that Steve's management style was unabashedly good at scaling... well, it reminded me of this story from a former Apple employee:
There used to be a weekly meeting with Steve Jobs to go over user interfaces and workflows for macOS [...] with the higher ups [...] After this meeting, there would be a “debriefing” where one or more of the attendees of that meeting would report to the underlings. Sometimes that included people like me. [...] What was fun about these debriefings is that they were like a game of telephone.
1. Steve might say something in the weekly meeting
2. Someone would jot down what they think he said
3. The notes might get passed to someone else who would go to the debriefing
4. Someone in the debriefing would relay their version of what was written down
The debriefing was a meeting often consisting of puzzled looks.
One time an icon change was being proposed. The note we got in the debriefing was that Steve said it was “horsey”, which prompted endless discussion:
• What does horsey mean?
• Is horsey good or bad?
• How do we make something less or more horsey?
• Is the horsey-ness something minor that needs tweaking or so major that it needs to be redone?
• Did anyone just ask Steve what the hell he meant?
[...] People would sometimes present the same content [to Steve at next week's meeting] and Steve would magically “change his mind” but I often wondered whether [...] what appeared to be a change of mind was just a message that was garbled in the first place.
There was definitely an element of control as well. Some of the higher ups who had closer access to Steve wanted to exercise more control than perhaps they had. For example, the horsey comment could be tweaked to fit a change someone below Steve felt needed to be made. Since not everyone had speed dial access to Steve, it was easy to take advantage of any ambiguity.
Probably, but before we assume that Steve's management style was unabashedly good at scaling... well, it reminded me of this story from a former Apple employee:
https://techreflect.org/2019/05/horsey/
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There used to be a weekly meeting with Steve Jobs to go over user interfaces and workflows for macOS [...] with the higher ups [...] After this meeting, there would be a “debriefing” where one or more of the attendees of that meeting would report to the underlings. Sometimes that included people like me. [...] What was fun about these debriefings is that they were like a game of telephone.
1. Steve might say something in the weekly meeting
2. Someone would jot down what they think he said
3. The notes might get passed to someone else who would go to the debriefing
4. Someone in the debriefing would relay their version of what was written down
The debriefing was a meeting often consisting of puzzled looks.
One time an icon change was being proposed. The note we got in the debriefing was that Steve said it was “horsey”, which prompted endless discussion:
• What does horsey mean?
• Is horsey good or bad?
• How do we make something less or more horsey?
• Is the horsey-ness something minor that needs tweaking or so major that it needs to be redone?
• Did anyone just ask Steve what the hell he meant?
[...] People would sometimes present the same content [to Steve at next week's meeting] and Steve would magically “change his mind” but I often wondered whether [...] what appeared to be a change of mind was just a message that was garbled in the first place.
There was definitely an element of control as well. Some of the higher ups who had closer access to Steve wanted to exercise more control than perhaps they had. For example, the horsey comment could be tweaked to fit a change someone below Steve felt needed to be made. Since not everyone had speed dial access to Steve, it was easy to take advantage of any ambiguity.