Video Debrief of Team MA
Steve Jobs started NeXT with
$7 million of his own money after he was forced out of Apple. The video presented
a brainstorming session with Jobs and eleven people that followed him from Apple
and the McIntosh program. The team was
highly technical and creative and they interacted freely and very
informally. The environment seemed egalitarian,
but of course, everyone knew who was running the show.
It is difficult to try
and place myself in that environment. At
least during the brainstorming session, there was little or no structure. I found myself trying to figure out where
everyone worked. The lack of structure would
be distracting for me at first, but I would eventually quiet my hierarchical
mind and get used to it.
I liked the independence and
the confidence of the team members. They
spoke their minds, voiced their concerns, they were direct, and held nothing
back. Jobs treated each speaker the same,
he was respectful and considerate. I
liked the communication and the forum.
The environment was not threatening, but laid back and everyone was
comfortable. The team interaction and communication fit well with my profile. While it is good that
everyone felt comfortable speaking up, for me it may have been a little too
comfortable. I know it was a
brainstorming session, but everyone interrupting each other made me crazy just watching. I would
have had to stop the interruptions so everyone could be heard. My concern is that it could change the flow
of thoughts and the session would actually become less effective. Jobs handled it better than I would have.
NeXT, of course, is a
start-up. The start-up environment is
full of energy and excitement focused on an idea. The product is a computer ten times more
powerful than a home computer. It will perform
functions that technology does not yet support, running on software that has
not yet been developed (Сергей Петренко, 2012).
However, the goals that the team are trying to set are final product
delivery and price. I am stuck on what
does it look like and what does it have to do.
I cannot contribute or commit to the goal setting activity. How can you set a delivery date for a product
you cannot define or even know if it can be built?
A business venture of
this type has the potential for enormous returns. The cost of this potential is risk. NeXT was very risky from the beginning. I have a low tolerance for risk. Start-ups are inherently risky. The NeXT team has either fully accepted the
risks or is oblivious to them. They
discuss risk items and indicate the importance and the impact if key risk items
are not met, but they do so calmly. At
this point, I would be nervous and regretting leaving a great job where I was a
rock star just to throw it all away… Each
day that passed that did not produce a machine that does what we said it could
do would only serve to make it worse. The
environment that is born from risk and thrives on risk causes me the most
problems. They cause me to lose focus
and would affect my performance. It is
irrational, but real. I do not like to
fail.
Creativity and innovation,
like risk, are deeply embedded in the start-up.
Without creative and innovative thinking product design would never
happen. Those of us that are not creative
or innovative do not see things the same way as those people who do. For example, while the team is building the
product delivery schedule, I still cannot imagine what the product looks
like. I am not creative, inventive, or
innovative. Risk tolerant, creative, inventive,
and innovative are qualities critical to the start-up. I could not contribute to the team and
therefore would become a liability to the team.
I fit in well with the
start-up in terms of recognition. If
they are successful, it will be the team, not the individuals (other than Jobs)
that will be recognized or credited. I
do not need or want formal recognition.
Being recognized as part of a team that achieved something good is alright. Individual recognition generally overlooks
the fact that very rarely does an individual truly accomplish anything
significant alone.
Steve Jobs and his NeXT
team met again after six months. The
feel of the second retreat was different. The energy was dampened and the excitement
level had been turned down a click or two.
They were not where they wanted to be.
Six months of work began to uncover weakness in the schedule, and money
was quickly becoming an issue. Jobs
handled the situation very well. He was
being very hard on himself for the lack of progress, then he said he realized
that the company was only six months old.
He gave them a way to measure things and feel better about progress. Yet,
he did not let NeXT off the hook. He did
this in a way that told everyone that it is not easy, but now is not the time
to slow down or quit (Сергей Петренко, 2012).
I have never been a huge Jobs fan, but this video, if it is true to
character, has changed my perception.
Multi-tasking is most
likely a given in a start-up. It is safe
to say there is more work in a start-up than there are people, at least
initially. At one point in the video
Jobs said he had forgotten how much work a new company creates. NeXT was Jobs and eleven others. There is probably enough work to employ each
of them multiple times. I will assume
that many, if not all, of the team members had multiple things in work that
they had to keep up with and they were working long hours to do that. Multi-tasking as I just tried to describe is
not a healthy activity, but it is necessary in a start up that does not yet
have enough people to do all the work. Good
or bad does not matter. The people will
do what they must do, myself included. I
will help, although it is not my best suited skill set.
It is important to note
that some people can multi-task better than others. Detail oriented people that want to make sure
their work is perfect before turning it in, people who meticulously manage
their time, and people that cannot be interrupted without having to start all
over are poor choices for positions that require multi-tasking (NextSteps
Research, 2018). Two of these statements
apply to me. I will admit, I am not good
at multi-tasking.
At the second retreat, they
discovered that money was an issue; they would run out of money before getting
the product out. There was nothing to
illustrate the problem and no charts that tracked spending. They way they talked it sounded like a
spending free-for-all. They were
searching for $100K buckets of money that was out among the team. They wanted to pull everything back and, I
assume, start over (Сергей Петренко, 2012).
What they were doing does not sound like something that would happen in
a company founded by someone that build a $2B company from scratch. It goes against all I know and is obviously not
the way to manage company funds. I would
need to establish a process to track, control, and account for company
spending.
Without the results of an
assessment, I could have told anyone that I would not do well in a start-up. There are many detail-level reasons, but the
overarching reason is that I am not good at building something where nothing
previously existed. I follow rules
better than I write them. I use
operating procedures better than I create them.
The results of my assessment simply confirmed what I already knew. There is nothing negative about this fact. We all have things we are better at than
others. The key is to understand enough
about yourself…the good and the bad…that you can put yourself in situations that
allow you to perform at your best. It
benefits everyone.
~Pete
References
Сергей Петренко (Publisher)
(2012, January 19). Steve Jobs brainstorms with NeXT team [Video file].
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loQhufxiorM
NextSteps Research (2018,
August 10). Management assessment profile: Alan Boruty. NextSteps Research,
(pp, 1-8). Electronic copy available upon request.
