What Steve Jobs taught me about the importance of focus

The first time I saw Steve Jobs in action was in his role as an advisor to then-Apple CEO Gil Amelio. I was Vice President, Apple Asia Pacific, and had been invited to observe a meeting with Gil and the Apple executive team reviewing several new initiatives with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak present. The marketing team had just presented a new Apple advertising campaign planned for The Wall Street Journal, which claimed, ‘We’re back … with great new products’.

As the marketing executive leading the presentation wrapped up the session, he thanked his team for their great work. Steve, who had been silent to that point in the presentation, raised his hand asking Gil if he could speak. He asked the executive, ‘When you thanked the team just

then for their great work, did you mean great work compared to what Apple has done in recent times, or did you mean great relative to the work Nike is doing?’

Nike at the time was firing on all cylinders as one of the world’s best marketing companies. The executive replied, ‘I meant great work relative to Apple’s more recent efforts.’

‘That’s good, because their work might be great relative to what Apple has recently produced, but it’s important that the team understands that relative to what Nike is doing, it is shit.’

Steve continued, ‘By the way, you are putting a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal which says “We’re back” when every second page in The Wall Street Journal says we are dead. Does that really make sense?’ Suffice to say, the full page with ‘We’re back’ didn’t see the light of day when the campaign launched.

There’s no executive I ever watched who talked more directly than Steve Jobs. At times he was unnecessarily harsh, but in making tough calls he was impressive. The first time I felt that something special might happen under Steve’s new leadership of Apple was during an executive offsite at Pajaro Dunes beach retreat in California in 1997, with about a hundred Apple executives from around the world present. As with all my Steve Jobs encounters, it was extremely memorable. After dinner, as we mingled for drinks, I found myself face to face with Steve and suggested he should visit Australia sometime in the near future.

He just looked at me with a half blank expression on his face and said, ‘Why the f*ck would I want to go to Australia?’ At the time I was a bit offended and told Steve to forget I asked. However, on reflection I realised that visiting Australia was way out of his focus at the time. To be fair, it was not a great suggestion given the challenges Steve was trying to navigate Apple through at the time.

At the Pajaro Dunes retreat Steve introduced the new Apple strategy he described as ‘Swatch’, after the watch company —affordable, friendly, elegant and ultimately disposable technology. Steve and design guru Jonathan Ive unveiled the new, soon to be released (in many colours) iMac prototype. After the presentation was over, Steve and Jonathan continued to collaborate. Hunched over the prototype, they discussed the shape and form of the computer that would ultimately be the first in a long line of home runs that Steve would hit in his second life at Apple.

For the first time in my experience at Apple, clarity and alignment started to emerge from the leader.

Written by Steve Vamos.
Have you read?
World’s Most Fashionable Countries.
Best Non-Native English Speaking Countries In The World.
Countries With The Largest Household Size.
World’s Best (And Worst) Countries For Older People To Live In.