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I read this article back in 2011... it always stayed with me. The idea that once you put your idea out there, it's no longer yours. That the vision is a share
by swalsh 11y ago
I read this article back in 2011... it always stayed with me. The idea that once you put your idea out there, it's no longer yours. That the vision is a shared thing. That pot of soup, is a brilliant concept.
Last year I was working for a startup, I was working with a man I greatly respected, and still do, and he's crazy smart. However he was also my boss, which meant that at the end of the day his opinions mattered just a bit more than mine. Which is fine for decisions, but sucked in a collaborative design.
There was this large project going on, we were building some tech that was going to be the core of our business, and together we had been thinking through this problem for a long time. Then one day I came to the office, and he said "I think i got it, now I want you to listen to the whole thing first before you add anything... cause what I have works". It turned out to be the first sentence in a really terrible period between us. All sense of collaboration was gone after that. It was him telling me how things were going to be, and anytime I tried to contribute (add or change something) I was being insubordinate. I started to get very emotional, which lead to him getting emotional... I passionately believed in a few core concepts, and sometimes i'd even get through to him, but then a few days later he'd forget my argument and get really angry at me. If he was just another senior engineer, I think things would have gone much better, but the fact that he was my boss made things crazy difficult. Conversations would end with "because I have 40 years of experience". I felt like I was no longer allowed to contribute if my idea was too drastically different.
My point is, when you're in a position of power having an actual equal design collaboration is hard to accomplish. Everyone is passionate about their own ideas. Reading this article made me respect Steve because if this is true, he accomplished a very difficult task.
- Isamu 11y ago> if this is true, he accomplished a very difficult task. I think this is critically important, and it is clear that people don't get this at all. For Steve, I have seen it described by different people, his ability to change his mind even though he was passionate about his previous position. He could be persuaded. This is key for iteration.
- kbenson 11y ago> This is key for iteration. This is key for everything in life. If you can't or won't change your opinion, you are necessarily stuck with the sometimes poor initial choices you make. Over-investment in the process over the result is problem in many places.
- MCRed 11y agoI'm a guy with 40 years of experience, and I'm working with a 20 year old. I learned a technique awhile back and a strategy that is-- whoever has to implement it gets to make a lot of decisions. So I give advice and suggestions and he does his thing and more than once he comes back and says "You were right". Never gloat, this is how you guide people-- because you can't micromanage programmers, you can give them suggestions or even directions or ideas, but you can't control them. This is the sense I got from Steve Jobs as well- he was passionate and he would say things definitively, but he understood collaboration. He was persuadable. I am persuadable, my biggest lament though is that so few people try. So many people just demand that things be done a certain way- and often with the worst excuse "that's how other companies do it" (or "that's standard practice" or even "best practices" -- which is just saying "I belong to a cargo cult.") That attitude is death to a startup.