The Steve Jobs Way

Stories in this book

Things that are in no other account.

The mouse built from a roll-on deodorant and a soap dish — ordered up the same afternoon they drove back from Xerox PARC.
The Macintosh that shipped without a hard drive, because Steve was fixated on beating IBM to market. Jay argued against it and lost. It hurt the product for years.
The hour Steve spent refusing to let Canon’s name appear on the LaserWriter — their engine, his product.
“Pirates, not the Navy” — what the flag over the Macintosh building actually meant, and what it cost the rest of Apple.
The 1998 product line so confused that Steve couldn’t tell a friend which one to buy — and the four boxes he cut it down to.

What this book will teach you

Ten things you’ll take out of it.

Why vision is a discipline rather than a personality trait — and the four questions Steve asked about every product.
The difference between your customer and your user, and why Steve’s real advantage was being the second one.
How passion creates persistence, and what happens to products built by people who don’t have any.
Simplicity as a decision rather than an aesthetic — what has to die for a product to be good.
Why design is strategy, and why the user is the final word on whether it worked.
How to own every inch of the experience, including the parts you assume nobody notices.
Building a culture that protects innovation instead of quietly grinding it down.
Why you can never exceed the quality of your team, and how Steve selected for it.
What it means to make technology serve people instead of the reverse.
How to build something that outlasts you — and why Steve cared about that from the start.

More about the book

Written from inside the room.

Most books about Steve Jobs are archaeology — assembled afterward from interviews with people who were in the building. This one was written by the man who sat next to him.

Jay Elliot was Senior Vice President at Apple through the Macintosh years, in the room for the product reviews, the arguments, the demos, and the decisions that never made it into a memo. The Steve Jobs Way is what he took from it: not a biography, but a working method.

The book moves through what Steve actually optimised for — seeing what nobody else could see, starting from the user rather than the technology, cutting until only the essential survived, owning every inch of the experience, and keeping people near him who would tell him the truth. Each principle is illustrated with something that happened, usually to Jay.

It is a book for the people who have to build the thing, not just admire the person who did.

Praise

“An insider’s account of how Steve led, and what made the way he led different.”

Howard Behar, former President, Starbucks Coffee Company

Who it’s for

Written for

Founders whose product exists but isn’t landing
Product managers who keep losing arguments about scope
Designers who need the business case for cutting things
Anyone who has read the Jobs biographies and wanted the operating manual instead

Not written for

People looking for a tell-all
Readers who want Steve reduced to a villain or a saint
Anyone hoping for a shortcut that doesn’t involve shipping

Contents

Every chapter.

Part I — Product Czar

Passion for the Product
Success Is in the Details

Part II — Talent Rules

Teaming: “Pirates! Not the Navy”
Tapping Talent
Rewards for the Pirates

Part III — Team Sports

The Product-Driven Organization
Maintaining Momentum
Recovery

Part IV — Becoming Cool

Holistic Product Development
Evangelizing Innovation
The Door Opener: Branding
Riding the Retail Juggernaut
Achieving the Definition of Cool: “There’s an App for That”

Part V — On Becoming Stevian

In His Footsteps

Free companion worksheet

The Product Review

Four questions from the book, with ruled lines under every one. Fifteen minutes and a pen, and you’ll know whether you have a marketing problem or a product problem.

Get the worksheet

Get the book

Vanguard Press, 2011 · with William L. Simon

Get it on Amazon

Both books →

About the author

Jay Elliot

Jay Elliot was Senior Vice President of Apple Computer, responsible for all corporate operations and part of the Macintosh organization from development to introduction. During his tenure, Apple’s sales grew from $150 million to more than $3 billion.

For six years he was beside Steve Jobs five to fifteen hours a day, nearly every day. His second book is titled Leading Apple With Steve Jobs — with. Not under, not for. Steve had the vision and the intolerance for anything half-finished; Jay was the one who could walk into a room of engineers who had just been told to do the impossible and get them to do it anyway.

Before Apple he was at Intel as director of California operations, reporting to Andy Grove and Gordon Moore, and before that at IBM, where he designed the BART ticket machines — which he writes became the prototype for the ATMs now standing in every bank in the country.

He is still building. More about Jay →