Comment by omarforgotpwd
8 years ago
Clearly, it made an impression. I wish everyone took software as seriously as Jobs did and shouted at others when a point needed to be made. Say what you will about a shouting boss not being nice or fun to work for, but I think getting shouted at undeniably makes you more attentive to an issue than if steve had tried to instruct him calmly.
It worked for Steve, for sure, but it's definitely not the only way.
There's the famous Tim Cook story where he gets his point across, but instead of shouting, he's just ice cold:
> ...One day back then, he convened a meeting with his team, and the discussion turned to a particular problem in Asia.
> “This is really bad,” Cook told the group. “Someone should be in China driving this.” Thirty minutes into that meeting Cook looked at Sabih Khan, a key operations executive, and abruptly asked, without a trace of emotion, “Why are you still here?”
> Khan, who remains one of Cook’s top lieutenants to this day, immediately stood up, drove to San Francisco International Airport, and, without a change of clothes, booked a flight to China with no return date, according to people familiar with the episode. The story is vintage Cook: demanding and unemotional.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/24/technology/cook_apple.fortun...
That sounds like stupid management. You can say in a similar number of words what you want, but you prefer other people to try to read your mind and guess what you want? Or was that a test (yea but most people would wait till after the meeting even if implicitly they knew that was what he wanted, right?)
I prefer Steve Jobs' shouting, but direct management anytime.
I’ve been in so many meetings where a “someone should...” statement got quietly dropped and never acted on and then forgotten. Establishing that “someone should do X” is an executive decision to be carried out ASAP, in a way that’s clear to everyone in the room, is effective in the long run.
I’m willing to bet everyone else in that room, from that day forward, whenever they heard Tim Cook say “someone should” take charge of a situation that they were responsible for, just said, “I’m on it”, immediately stood up, left the meeting, and made it happen. And that’s a scalable, sustainable, well-oiled machine. The fact that Tim could set that up with a single cold, pointed comment to demonstrate how he expected his staff to respond to him is what makes the story.
The meetings where Tim said someone should do something and someone just did it without any further bureaucracy or follow-up emails about action items or specific allocation of tasks to individual people: those meetings don’t make a good story.
> Does the boss want me to stay through the meeting and get all the information, or does he want me to leap up and get on a plane... so hard to know... if only there was a sign... now I'm not even listening to the rest of the meeting... so nervous... what to do...
I'd argue though that given the current buggy state of macOs and ios, the awful keyboards on the recent mbps, the late release of a decent mac pro that Tim Cook is not demanding enough or doesn't actually get people to produce good work...
Or maybe Apple doesn't care about the desktop anymore.
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The most powerful reaction I've ever seen from others to someone in power was a little old lady that quietly thanked everyone who was doing the correct thing. Which caused deep shame and reflection in all of us not doing the correct thing.
There are ways to be make a point powerfully without screaming or being rude.
That was your own self imposed guilt because she was female and old. Someone of your own age and sex probably would not have the same effect.