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Coaches are there to help with the business. It’s all about the work: this company, this job, this moment in time. Mentors are more personal. They don’t just help with people’s jobs, they help with their lives, their families. A coach helps because they know the company; a mentor helps because they know you.
Culture arises organically but then needs to be codified to be maintained.
So write down your company values and post them on your physical and virtual walls. Share them with new employees. Make them part of every interview with new candidates. Everyone should know what matters at your company—what defines your culture. If you don’t explicitly know your values, you can’t pass them
Don’t worry about what you’re going to lose—think about what you’re going to become.
Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All.
Getting to the best outcome requires design thinking, even if it’s unconscious.
Not everyone can be a great designer, but everyone can think like one.
You can’t solve interesting problems if you don’t notice they’re there.
The people who notice the problems around them—and then dream up solutions—are mostly inventors, startup founders, and kids.
Keeping your brain young is key. Seeing problems that are glossed over by others is useful. Coming up with solutions to those problems, using the vocabulary and thought process of a designer, is invaluable.
You just have to notice the problem. And not wait around for someone to solve it for you.
Steve Jobs often said, “The best marketing is just telling the truth.”
You balance what they want to hear with what they need to know. [See also: Chapter 3.2: Why Storytelling.]
And the reason for it is simple: the customer needs a voice on the team. Engineers like to build products using the coolest new technology. Sales wants to build products that will make them a lot of money. But the product manager’s sole focus and responsibility is to build the right products for their customers.
Joz always, always understood the context and was able to turn it into an effective narrative. It’s how we were able to convince Steve. And reporters. And customers. It’s how we could sell iPods.
Figuring out what should be built and why is the hardest part of building.
If a product manager is making all the decisions, then they are not a good product manager.
This person is a needle in a haystack. An almost impossible combination of structured thinker and visionary leader, with incredible passion but also firm follow-through, who’s a vibrant people person but fascinated by technology, an incredible communicator who can work with engineering and think through marketing and not forget the business model, the economics, profitability, PR.
The best salespeople are the ones who maintain relationships even if it means not making money that day.
In this job, respect is always more important than being liked.
When Larry told me during acquisition that Google would marshal the team and align their priorities with ours, he was 100 percent telling the truth. But what that looked like at Google was giving the team the skeleton of a plan and letting them fill in the rest as they went. Then they’d have a meeting every so often to ask how things were going. But I had interpreted his words through an Apple lens. If Steve Jobs said he was going to marshal the team, that meant he was going to be there every step of the way—weekly, sometimes daily. He’d assemble everyone, tell them where to go, make sure they
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You can’t assume acquisition will mean acculturation. That’s why Apple doesn’t really buy companies with large teams. They only acquire specific teams or technologies, usually very early in their life cycle when they’re pre-revenue. That way they can easily be absorbed and Apple never has to worry about culture. They can also skip the inevitable duplication of functions between existing teams like finance, legal, and sales, or the painful process of integrating one large team into another.
Facebook famously takes great care of its employees, but it also makes all its money selling customer data to advertisers. If Facebook changed its business model, their profitability would take an enormous hit and all those perks would disappear.
Architect behind Googleplex now says it’s “dangerous” to work at such a posh office.]
In the end, there are two things that matter: products and people. What you build and who you build it with. The things you make—the ideas you chase and the ideas that chase you—will ultimately define your career. And the people you chase them with may define your life.
Success is not a guarantee. No matter how great your team. How good your intentions. How wonderful your product. Sometimes it will all fall apart.
Reading List Here are some of the books and articles that have helped me, my friends, and mentors, in no particular order: Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, Adam Grant In Praise of Shadows, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki The Monk and the Riddle, Randy Komisar Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture, Scott Belsky The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness, Steven Levy Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us
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