Inside Apple

INTRODUCTION

In this book we can see how Steve Jobs used to work, we can see that we was a short

temper man, a hands on CEO and even though he was a snob with the “regular”

employees he was also a very engaged employer, and that was a characteristic that

every employee thought was great about him, because they knew that in some point

their work would be looked at by “Steve”.

We also learned that Apple doesn’t work in a typical business school way, on the

contrary they don’t do anything in the way are being taught, Steve was the type of CEO

that didn’t delegate, he didn’t want their employees to give their opinions, he just wanted

them to follow orders and do their job; he also thought that investors, Wall Street and all

that kind of things were just a waste of time and energy, or as he used to say “a

necessary evil”. In simple words we can see that Steve Jobs was a very narcissistic

person but somehow that worked for him in rebuilding Apple.

We also can see how important secrecy is to Apple in every way, not only the external

secrecy which most companies if not all of them have, but the most important the

internal, but this is a good thing because it makes employees to feel part of something

very special. But also they know how to manage all the releases of their products, and

they don’t want that the new release steals attention to the existing products in advance,

because if consumers know exactly what is coming they might hold their purchase.

We learned as well how important is for Apple to really focus in literally everything, and

it mentions the packaging example, in which they spend a lot of time and money in

order to secure the best experience for the consumer when they hold, and open the box

of every single one of their products.

Steve Jobs was very interested in keeping his employees in a start-up mindset because

this help them to work better, he was also very focused in giving only one task to each

person, so that the responsibility so that task will only fall in one person, and this applied

in every area of the company. We also learned what are the core values of Apple (clear

direction, individual accountability, a sense of urgency, constant feedback, and clarity of

mission) and by this we can see why the company that it is now is.

I also realized that one of the main goals of Apple is to hire people who will be truly part

of the company, not just another employee; he was looking for people that would live

the Apple philosophy (which is Jobs’ philosophy) everyday; he also believe in what we

call “practice what you preach”. Apple is a company that plays by its own rules and they

changed then as necessary or in order to keep moving forward.

MY FAVORITE CHAPTER

I know that you said that if we told you that the first chapter was the best for us you

would think that we didn’t read the book, but let me tell you that I did read the book and

in my opinion the first chapter is the best one, why?, well because it shows us the true

personality of Steve Jobs, how this “attributes” helped him to get or to take Apple to

where it is now.

- As a business manager what concepts did you get from the book that you think

you could apply in your future jobs?

To me I think that in the future I could adopt some of his ways of thinking such as being

involved in every part of the process, to have a clear mind and most important to stay

focus on my goal.

- Mention an example (Or a few examples) of a good (bad) management decision

(s) that helped (hurt) the organization(s) in its performance?

In general I really don’t think that there are good or bad management decisions,

because as we saw in this book Apple plays by its own rules

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