Daniel O'Neil

Did Steve Jobs make Apple into a Great company?

2012-01-25T06:47:58-05:00

In Issac Walterson's biography of Steve Jobs, Steve is repeatedly quoted in saying that he has strived to make Apple into an enduringly great company--one that will stand the test of time. Yet so much of Apple revolved around the cult of Steve Jobs and his "reality distortion field" that it is very hard to imagine Apple without him. So what is the chance that Apple will thrive in the post-Steve era?

In Jim Collins book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, he described the seven characteristics that companies who had made the leap from average performance ("good") to exceptional Performance ("great"). Under Steve Jobs, Apple exhibited all but one.

First who than what: Steve was fanatical about hiring the right people. Shortly after his return to Apple, he would hound someone to come to work at Apple if he taught that the person was right for the job. He was equally merciless in firing someone if he thought that the person was not performing. He always struggled to have only A players on his team.

Confront the brutal facts: Steve was brutally honest. Although he had a magical way of getting what he wanted out of a product, he never hid from failure. When products didn't work out (remember "Mobile Me"?) he wouldn't hesitate to kill it.

Hedgehog concept: Steve's greatest strength was his ability to focus like a laser on a few products. At his death, when Apple was one of the largest companies in the United States, its entire product line would fit on an average dining room table. He knew that Apple's success was tied to its ability to make a small number of truly great products.

Culture of discipline: Steve drove his team mercilessly to create the culture that he wanted. His team knew his vision and tried hard to implement it.

Technology as accelerators: Although Apple produced wonderful technologly, they never based their own business systems on cutting edge technology. They adopted web-based ordering only long after others had done it. Their best marketing was through their beautiful stores and traditional ads. They used technology, but did not follow fads.

Flywheel effect: As Apple produced one beautiful product after another, the cumulative effect of the other characteristics was clear.

He did everything right except for one thing. Although he was a Level Five leader that cared more for the company than his (quite oversized) ego, he did not prepare Apple for a successor. He did work closely with Tim Cook and hand the company over to him shortly before he died. However there is no cult of Tim Cook. Steve's hand was in everything that Apple did. The iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad could not have been built under anyone else's leadership. It took a CEO who cared passionately about quality and who had an exquisite sense of taste to make these into the masterpieces that they are. Tim Cook has a reputation for someone who gets things done, not for someone who makes great things.

In the conclusion of the biography of Steve Jobs, he is quoted as he talks about the downfall of other great companies. He claimed that companies such as Hewlett Packard fell apart when they were run by salesmen instead of product people. He said that is what happened to Apple in the 1980’s under Scully. Unfortunately, it seems that he has left Apple is just that type of hands. Bill Gates was quoted as saying that only Steve Jobs could have built a company that offered such complete integreation of software and hardware. When Steve was asked to name another company that so successfully offered the same level of complete integration, he couldn't come up with one.

Without a Steve Jobs to set the tone and vision, how could Apple continue to innovate so beautifully?After the last of Steve's products make it to market, will Apple be able to come up with a worthy sucessor to the iMac-Ipod-Iphone-Ipad family?

What do you think? Is it time to buy or sell Apple stock?

Two years later: a long slow fight

2012-01-12T09:37:06-05:00

photo by Jordan Michael of Red 1 Studios

Two years ago, the ground in Port-au-Prince shook and tens of thousands of buildings collapsed. The January 12^th earthquake was the worst disaster to ever hit the Americas. The early days after the earthquake were unimaginable. When I drive through some of the neighborhoods that I visited that first week, I get terrible flashbacks. Poor Haiti had been in such bad shape before the earthquake, I just couldn’t imagine how it would ever get rebuilt.

As we commemorate the second anniversary of the earthquake, there are lots of stories highlighting what has and has not been done. A lot of articles focus on the apparent slow progress with headlines like Haiti 2 years later: Half a million still in camps. Except that most people are not in camps because they lost their house and are waiting for someone to rebuild it. They are in the camps because they are desperately poor and have nowhere to turn. The Miami Heralds video, Nous Boke: Two Years Later nicely highlights this problem by talking with people living in the distant Corail camp who are desperate for work.

Nou Bouke: Two years later from The Miami Herald on Vimeo.

This desperation existed well before the earthquake. The earthquake made a bad situation much worse. The important question is where should Haiti be today? Given how bad the situation was before the earthquake and how bad the damage was, have we made good progress?

At the one year anniversary, I had strongly mixed feelings. On one hand, I was disappointed at the lack of progress. The camp populations seemed enormous. Although the rubble had been cleared from the roads, the wounds seemed very fresh. I wished that we had made greater progress. At the same time, I couldn’t image having worked harder or pushed my team any harder. I found the same reaction when I talked with others working to rebuild Haiti. We wished that we could have done more, but had no idea how we could have gone any faster.

At the second anniversary, I feel far better about the progress. The rubble is gone from most public spaces. The government’s program to empty six camps into sixteen neighborhoods (“6/16”) has emptied the camps that used to occupy Place St Pierre and Place Boyer—two of the most visible camps. As I drive around Port-au-Prince, life seems to be much more normal.

One of the challenges is that change comes slowly. After the earthquake, we all hoped that Haiti could be quickly rebuilt and rebuilt better. We dreamed of modernizing Port-au-Prince to have wider streets, of building modern building, of making Port-au-Prince into a livable city. Two years later, we are still dreaming of this. In Delmas, we are working with an urban planner who has drawn pictures of townhouses on palm tree lined streets. Maybe someday we will get there. However, we have to first finish repairing the existing buildings, clear out the collapsed buildings, and start repairing the streets.

When I left Haiti in May 2010, I did not intend to return. I was proud of what I had accomplished and wanted to try something new. I also feared that if I stayed in Haiti, that Haiti would break my heart. I stayed and it did. But I am glad that I stayed. Brick by brick, micro-entrepreneur by micro entrepreneur, we are helping to rebuild Haiti. It is a long slow fight, but I believe that we are moving in the right direction.

What do you think? Should we be proud of what we have accomplished or should we be embarrased that we have not done more?

Steve Jobs did not wrestle with Uncertainty

2012-01-02T13:40:43-05:00

The beauty of Apple's products was their singular, clear vision. Whether it is the iPhone, iPod, or Macintosh, the product was clearly designed with its purpose--Steve Job's vision of what the product should be. By contrast, Farhead Mohat's biggest complaint about his Android phone is that it seems to be designed by a committee. Although it is "the most powerful phone" on the market, people don't love it because they don't understand its purpose--and that is the beauty of Steve Jobs' leadership. He knew what he wanted and fearlessly pushed for that result. He didn't need focus groups or committees to validate his vision. He did not seem to wrestle with uncertainty. He boldly pushed forward and was right often enough.

I have been wrestling with leading through uncertainty as I read Jonathon Field's book: Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance. I have been fortunate to lead our Haiti office through a time of change as we have tried to move from being a good organization to being a great one. When I preordered the book, I was hoping for suggestions on how to be more certain that the path that I had taken was the right one. I thought the discussion would be on the importance of establishing a strong baseline and clear milestones to be able to track progress. Instead, the book talks about meditating and being comfortable with uncertainty. If I had merely read the book and put it aside, I would not have gotten much out of it.

Fortunately, the preorder deal allowed me to participate in a series of teleconferences and to listen to his interviews with two of the people highlighted in the book. What I learned surprised me. I learned that the ability to work through uncertainty--to neither run from it nor to allow yourself to be immobilized by the fear that it brings--is a rare and valuable skill. A key value that a strong leader brings to an organization is to reduce the uncertainty for the rest of the team by providing a clear vision--in effect absorbing the uncertainty so that others don't have to. After all, any path to great results cannot be a certain one or everyone else would already be walking down it.

I don't have Steve Jobs arrogance, but I find it easier to live with uncertainty knowing that not only is it critical to leading teams in new directions, but it is a service that I am providing to my team.

How do you deal with uncertainty?

Notable books on Haiti

2011-12-10T10:13:31-05:00

Several friends have asked me for recommendations on books about Haiti. The following are books that I have read and would recommend. I have divided them into four categories (fiction, non-fiction, dubious but interesting, and coffee table books). I thought about leaving out entirely the books that I consider a bit dubious, but the all have facinating information. (Note all links are amazon affiliate links)

Fiction

The Comedians by Graham Greene: Classics just never go out of date. This is still a great book about Haiti.

Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende: a moving portrayal of the Haitian revolution told from the point of view of a slave, her owner, and people both sympathetic to the revolutions and fighting against it. Note that the second half of the book takes place in New Orleans.

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat: the story of the massacre of Haitians in the Dominican borderlands in 1939.

Breath, Eyes, Memory also by Edwidge Danticat: fictionalized story of growing up in Haiti.

Non-Fiction

Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti by Michael Deibert and Raoul Peck: a great overview of the collapse of the second Aristide government.

Rainy Season: Haiti-Then and Now by Amy Wilentz: a fascinating look into Aristide's role in the downfall of the Duvalier Government. It was written before Aristide's government collapsed and does not look into the darker side of what later happened.

The Immaculate Invasion by Bob Shacochis: the story of the 1994 US occupation told by an embedded reporter. This nicely brings out the rambling, lack of focus that characterized the occupation.

Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American ;the autobiography of Jean-Robert Cade. Tells the story of the abuses that he faced as a child slave in Haiti. Knowing how many kids never escape form this fate makes it a painful read.

Mountains beyond Mountains : Tracy Kidder the fascinating story of Dr. Paul Farmer and the start of Partners in Health.

Dubious facts, but interesting reads

Anything by Paul Farmer: Dr. farmer is a hero for the work that he has done in Haiti and around the world. In his books, he plays fast and free with the facts to back up his own point of view.

The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic by Wade Davis: A supposedly scientific investigation into voodoo. I don’t believe the insights into how voodoo works, but it does have good insights into Haitian rural life.

Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola by Michele Wucker: provides a great, east to read overview of the history of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. However, the central thesis that the island is too small to allow for strong presidents to govern in both countries doesn't really hold up.

Coffee Table/gift books

Paroles et Lumieres-Where Light Speaks: Haiti (English and French Edition), by Hiebert; Phelps; Yates; Cav: A beautiful look at Haiti by two people who love it well.

Hispaniola: A Photographic Journey through Island Biodiversity by Eladio Fernández: A beautiful catalog of the animals on both sides of the island.

What other books would you recommend on Haiti?

Death of a Dominican Hero: Sonia Pierre

2011-12-05T06:28:43-05:00

Sonia Pierre was both lauded and harassed by the Dominican government for her work to protect the rights of people of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic. While the Dominican Government was threatening to revoke her citizenship, her photo was being displayed downtown Santo Domingo as a Dominican Hero.

I worked with her in 2008 as we were preparing a proposal to improve conditions in the the bateyes. I was impressed with her drive and vision as well as with the quality of the work that MUDHA was implementing.

Human rights work is thankless work. The Dominican government knows that it needs to have a clear, coherent policy towards dealing with Haitian migrants, but it is split. There are those who want the cheap labor and those who want to protect Dominican jobs--just as we have in the United States. Haiti has the same split--because Haiti cannot provide jobs or liveable conditions for so many of its citizens, it needs the escape valve provided by the Dominican Republic while at the same time deploring the way its citizens are treated. I saw this as an unsolveable problem and did not focus on it. Sonia Pierre saw this important work and devoted her life to it.

Signs of Progress in Haiti

2011-10-06T22:21:40-04:00

One of the greatest challenges in rebuiding Haiti is fighting the expectations. To some, the picture above is a picture of poverty. Women squatting in the street selling their meager wares surrounded by poor buildings. I fear that a lot of journalists would look at this image and see it as proof that Haiti is not being rebuilt.

But I know that this is a great victory. I wrote of my visits to this neigborhood last March. At that point, we had just started the rubble removal. I was thrilled to see how our work had transformed the neighborhood. And that is the challenge. If your starting reference is the scene below, the picture above is a beautiful success.

I am guilty of having written against the idea of just rebuilding the chaos. Now I recognize that reconstruction has to go through steps. Just removing the rubble was a huge victory. Getting the unstable houses demolished and the damaged ones repaired was another huge victory. We have to help people rebuild their lives before we can help them to build a new neighborhood.

We are continuing to move forward. We are working with the local leaders and the mayor to build a better Delmas 32. Little by little, the bird will build its nest.

Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance

2011-09-26T12:24:21-04:00

In anticipation of his book launch, Jonathon has challenged us to write of "a time where you danced with uncertainty…and won." As I wrote in January of last year, my life changed in an instant when the earthquake devestated Port-au-Prince. Within 24 hours, I had crossed the border from the Dominican Republic into Haiti. I had no idea what I would find nor what would happen next. I knew that I needed to jump. I took over management of our Haiti office and went from running a small program to a large, chaotic one in the middle of the worst crisis in the Western hemisphere.

I knew that I was in way over my head and trusted that I could make my mistakes as quickly as possible and move our operations in the right direction. I leaned in, worked closely with my team, made lots of mistakes, and kept moving forward. The first few months are still a blur. Even a year later, the wild ride continues.

Before the earthquake, we were doing $10 million worth of work a year. The year of the earthquake, we raised only $2 million--a paultry sum compared to most NGOs, yet we rebuilt our systems, developed new programs, and did $16 million worth of quality work. Next year, we will top $30 million! Not only are we doing twice as much work, but the work is better. My Project Directors are linchpins. We are recognized as leaders in our work. Life is good.

Except I still battle the butterflies every day. With growth come new challenges--can we hire new people as good as our existing team? How do we keep moving forward? How do I sell our programs to new donors? Am I really leading in the right direction.

I thank God for the chance to have helped Haiti in the early days after the earthquake and for the trial by fire that has made me a stronger leader. I also miss those days pre-earthquake when my life was quieter and the fights easier. I preordered Jonathon's book, not because I want to go back, but so that I can do a better job of taming the butterflies.

The 7 Steps to Great Projects E-Book

2011-04-24T16:00:05-04:00

I received a series of great comments on the Linkedin group Chief of Party Exchange to my earlier post Notes to a Newly Appointed Project Director. I reworked the earlier blog post into a free ebook: 7 Steps to Starting a Great Project. It is a six-page essay that focuses on the first seven things that a newly appointed project director should do to ensure that his or her project starts off right and hopefully ends well. It also includes short reviews of six books that every Project Director should read. What do you think? What would include in an expanded version?

Are you a Leader or a Manager?

2011-04-10T23:19:28-04:00

Exclusive interview with Seth Godin from GiANT Impact on Vimeo for the Chick-Fil-A Leadercast.

There is practical, everyday management. I am not interested in that. Leadership is not practical and it is not everyday. Management and Leadership are totally different things. You think that you are being a leader, but you are probably being a manager. Seth's opening words in the video.

I love how blunt Seth is. We all aspire to be leaders, but leadership is scary. Management is following the rules--good accounting, completing the activities in the log framework, writing complete reports. A good manager can squeeze a bit more impact from a project. Management is safe--we know what we need to do and how to measure our success.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Peter Drucker, and Warren Bennis, as quoted in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) by Stephen R. Covey, p. 101

The challenge with leadership is that you have to be in front. If the path was known, then a leader would not be needed. I know that I am leading when I can feel the pressure. When a coworker says, "You can't do that.", but I know that I can and think that I will succeed. When I am 100% sure of myself, I am managing. When I am pushing in a new direction and pretty sure that it will work (even if though I will act 100% sure), then I know that I am pushing the envelope.

Steve Farber tells this beautifully in his free audio series (available through this website) and less well in this video (skip the first seven minutes of selling--the core content start after this introduction). His point is that if you are not scared, if you are not experiencing an OS!M, you are not pushing yourself--you are not really leading.

And this is the challenge. Leading is hard work. It is scary. It is the only way to make a difference. To paraphrase the subtitle of Seth's book Tribes, Lead, because we need you to lead us. So what do you want to do, Manage or Lead?

What would it have felt like to live through the Haitian Revolution?

2011-03-28T04:36:00-04:00

The story of the Haitian revolution is a bizarrely twisted tail. The revolution began as an uprising by the slaves, became a civil war between the French and the mulatos (mixed race, free people) to a slave revolution. General Toussaint Louverture fought first for the French, then for Spanish, then for Haiti. Then when Haiti finally won its independence, its new rulers put the former slaves right back to work on the plantations. I tried to make sense of the convoluted story through a series of posts on the Our Border website. Isabel Allende has done a beautiful job of painting a picture of life during these turbulent times in her book, Islands beneath the Sea.

Island Beneath the Sea is the story of life in Haiti before and during the revolution and later in New Orleans as seen by a handful of different characters. The beauty of the story is how each of the different narrators shows how they view the world and what happens: the slave girl who stays with her master even though he repeatedly raped her because it is best for her daughter; the plantation owner who finds ways to justify owning and even beating slaves even though he knows it is wrong; a doctor who is outspoken against slaves but unwilling to admit that his mistress is colored. I was fascinated watching how each character saw and related to the outbreak and spread of the revolution.

My interest was in what happened in Haiti. I was disappointed when the characters all moved to New Orleans. The book kept me interested, but I was sorry that they never returned to Haiti.

Island Beneath the Sea is a great addition to the fictional narrative of Haiti’s history along with Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones.