Steve JobsSean Gallup/Getty ImagesSteve Jobs.




For two years between 1999 and 2001, I had the amazing experience of working with Steve on various projects that included the development of Mac OS 10.0, his worldwide keynote presentations, and strategic partnerships with companies such as Oracle.
Steve was an amazing person. I was never the focus of his frustration and had a great experience with him. But, after watching the latest drama about Steve, I walked away sad. Hollywood seems focused on bending his legacy in an effort to bring in revenue.
Steve Jobs believed everyone has the potential for greatness. I took that inspiration to heart and used it years later as the foundation for my business ventures and the formation of Simulation Studios.
Steve expected greatness no matter what your role at Apple. He believed that everyone should possess the same attention to detail that he had. I saw a person who could be blunt, but it was his frustration with people that he felt were underachievers of their own potential greatness that got him riled.
My experience showed a man who was not only exceptionally decisive and focused, but also a genius who had the humility to ask for clarity if he didn’t "get it."
I was a lowly individual contributor in 1999 when I met Steve. We had a meeting about various topics in relation to Mac OS X.
Multiple times, Steve asked, "What does this mean? What does that mean? What do you think?" He often asked "What do you think?" in a genuine attempt to learn from others. He didn’t always agree, but he valued the input from most anyone.
There are so many "single greatest" lessons one could have learned from Steve Jobs and Apple. Many are useful every day. For example: Create great products, pay attention to details, under-promise and over-delight, focus on what you’re good at, etc. But there are some that I believe deserve attention despite never being in the spotlight.
One huge strength of Steve's was his ability to hire great talent. Steve could hire the right person — the whole person, not just the skill. He knew a person can learn a skill, but it’s hard to develop personality.
Many of the people I worked with at Apple were multi-dimensional. Some of the best engineers were also amazing musicians, many marketing people could code (if they had to), etc. Steve hired people that were dedicated, multi-faceted, and had an amazing commitment to creating fantastic solutions to challenging problems.
In many instances, these people weren't hired based on a core set of skills. It’s an area many corporations fall short of today, because they focus more on filling slots with specific skills instead of recognizing talent.
One of Steve's addtional strengths was his ability to distill complex concepts, thoughts, or problems to their purest and simplest cores. In general, people in a work environment tend to over-complicate almost everything. Steve had an intangible and gifted ability to look at almost anything and distill it down to a few words. It created a rare euphoric clarity. For "Star Trek" fans, getting to this clarity felt like time within the temporal rift.
Most have heard or know about Steve’s exceptional ability to focus. Combining this focus with his ability to create purity created a saying I heard many times, "focus is about saying no." He would say this simple statement, stare people right in the eyes, and then intentionally create deafening silence. In most cases, there was simply no rebuttal, because you knew he was dead on. The only thing you could think or say was, "You’re right. This is out of focus."
I voluntarily left Apple in 2003, partly because my time with Steve lessened. It’s hard to work with such inspiration and then have it taken away. The company started to do better, which resulted in many more employees and greater corporate politics. A company that is doing well attracts a much different employee than a company that is in a turnaround.
I left Apple to start my own small software company. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t apply what I learned from my time with Steve to my current job. This includes everything from creating great products for great customers to only focusing on things that are important: "Creating focus by saying no."
Apple appears to be a very different company today than when Steve Jobs was running the show. I don’t see the results of saying no; the product is still good, but it seems a bit more focused on shareholder value than on customer satisfaction. This was inevitable, and I don’t envy the jobs of current management.
One thing is for sure. When I look at the five-year plaque Steve was nice enough to sign for me, I still miss him and the Apple I was proud to be a part of.
William Hall is vice president of learning and development at Simulation Studios, a boutique corporate training firm that creates highly engaging strategic tools traditionally reserved for Fortune 500 corporations, but tailored for small-medium sized businesses.