Steve Jobs vs. the Customer

An untold story from Adam Grant's new book, Think Again, with special appearance by Ed Catmull and Rufus Griscom.

Audio Source: https://play.acast.com/s/the-next-big-idea/gid%3A%2F%2Fart19-episode-locator%2FV0%2F8eGHqU6ud87TFzlI-OG-ar2xD8QTim65hR_4cgCWV9c

Transcript

swyx: [00:00:00] I've been listening to Adam Grant, do the podcast book tour with this new book. Think again. And none of them really connected with me until this one. On the next big idea podcast. I think it resonated because he's friends with Rufus, the host. And there's a lot of good ideas in there:

1. Challenge networks
2. Don't let your ideas become your identity
3. Treat arguments like a scientist
4. And some thoughts on opening other people's minds 
   1. by preaching, not prosecuting, 
   2. having fewer points
   3. asking how the other person arrived at their conclusion
   4. doing motivational interviewing. 
   5. complexifying the world avoiding binary bias. 

So a lot of good ideas in there. I recommend listening to the whole thing. 

But the clip that I'm going to show you today is a, an untold story. That's not in the book about how Steve jobs was often wrong and that runs against the typical. Impression that we have a leadership that it needs to be very definitive in certain. So here it goes 

Rufus Griscom: [00:00:58] I think it's so nice to see examples of leaders who are more comfortable with their humility. The examples of the young Steve Jobs and the Barry Dillers of the world have always frustrated me. I feel like a lot of people have a desire to have this kind of obnoxious resolute leader mythology.

Adam Grant: [00:01:17] It's interesting Rufus. I I cut a chapter from the book that just wasn't quite working. It was basically about the idea that. We think of Steve jobs as a visionary thinker. And the story we tell the myth anyway is that it was his reality distortion field, his ability to bend the world to his will, that made up a grade.

And I think if you really study the history of Apple, if. Steve jobs. Hadn't surrounded himself with people who knew how to change his mind, that he might've never changed the world. He, he didn't want to make a music player. He insisted, he swore that he wouldn't make a phone. And it was, it was the team of designers and engineers around him who convinced him to do a lot of rethinking.

I ended up scrapping the chapter from the book because it felt a little bit too tactical, but something really interesting happens just this was week and a half ago now. I got an email from ed Catmull out of the blue and I've admired ed, since I first became aware of Pixar, he invented computer animation, founded Pixar led it.

And I got this note from him saying he was listening to my book on audible and going through the hardcover in between. And I'm just going to read this to you because I thought it was so interesting and he said, As I was listening well, am I spinner a flood of memories came back. I think I worked longer for Steve than anyone else, and I watched him change considerably, but he was always someone who understood viscerally that there's no upside in being wrong.

And that was such an interesting contrast to the, the popular portrayal of Steve jobs. It doesn't mean he wasn't stubborn. But it does mean he was willing to be convinced. And ed said he said, I believe you have the essence, he was rethinking all the time. And I got my way two thirds of the time either because I convinced him or he gave up and let me do it my way.

Interesting. And my question there was, I've heard from so many people that ed Catmull brought out the best in Steve jobs. Steve jobs was kinder that he was more, open-minded more thoughtful when dealing with ed than anyone else. What I'm so curious about, and I'm reaching out to ed to find out what his answer is on this.

Is that just because Steve had so much respect for Ed's intellect or is it because of the strategies that ed used to open his mind or some combination of the two? 

Rufus Griscom: [00:03:28] Yes. Yes and no. I think this is a part of the Steve jobs story that is often ignored, which is. Again, I think we have this attraction to like the asshole, like just incredibly decisive and certain, startup founder who just drives their way forward.

And the fact that Steve jobs famously had this view that people don't know what they want. He was in some sense, it was perceived to be the opposite of the scientific method. He was basically like our consumers don't know what they're going to want in five years. We have to tell them what they're going to want.

But I think there was this evolution of Steve jobs to some degree in that he started off as a pretty, stubborn, difficult character. But you do get the sense reading about him that Pixar, as you say, was this incredible culture of collaboration. And I think that Steve evolved as a leader and precisely because maybe of ed Catmull and that Pixar culture.

Yeah, 

Adam Grant: [00:04:23] I think that culture had a big impact on him from everything I've heard. It seems getting kicked out of his own company or, nudge or force that helped a little bit, failing a bunch of times maturity. But I think one of the things that, that I don't see talked about enough, Is that the whole customer thing I think is also misrepresented.

The what's the apocryphal Henry Ford line, if I asked my customer what they would have wanted, they would have said a faster horse. So you can't talk to the customer. Yeah. I think that's a gross oversimplification of what Steve jobs believed from talking with dozens of people who worked with him closely for years, he was very interested in customers' problems.

The things that drove them crazy, the things that frustrated them, he just didn't trust their instincts about the solution because he thought they weren't thinking far enough ahead, or they didn't have necessarily the technological expertise to figure it out. And so I think that the Apple view of the world, which is maybe a rethinking for some of us is to say, you know what?

You want to do a lot of listening to find out what people's pain points are in the world, but don't always assume that they have the right solution to their own problems.