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<spoiler>I’m often asked about my management style, especially since I gave that amazing commencement speech at Stanford and everyone realized what an incredibly deep thinker I am. I’ve seen those Internet rumors about how I didn’t really write that speech, how I hired some ghostwriter. All I can say is: Please. The guy fixed some grammar errors and punched it up a bit. But I’m the one who spent half a day in Longs Drug Store reading Hallmark cards to gather material.
Like everything else at Apple, my management approach is a little bit different. I never subscribed to the conventional wisdom of the East Coast management experts like Jack Welch. For example, Welch says do a lot of reviews and always let people know where they stand. I say, No way. In fact, quite the opposite. Never let people know where they stand. Keep them guessing. Keep them afraid. Otherwise they get complacent. Creativity springs from fear. Think of a painter, or a writer, or a composer working furiously in his studio, afraid he’s going to starve to death if he doesn’t get his work done. That’s where greatness comes from. Same goes for the people at Apple and Pixar. They come in every day knowing it could be their last day. They work like hell; trust me.
Because you know what? Fear works. Look at the crappy cars that get made in Detroit, where nobody ever gets fired. Compare that to the stuff that gets made in Vietnamese sweatshops. Or to the bridge in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Please don’t say that bridge was awesome because the Brits were such amazing perfectionists. Come on. I love the Brits, but these are not people who are known for the quality of their workmanship. Ever owned a Jaguar? Enough said. No, what motivated those lazy, stupid Brits was their fear of the efficient, vicious Japanese. You put people’s lives in danger, and they do their best work.
Obviously we can’t literally put our employees’ lives at risk. But we have to make them feel that way. This requires a lot of psychological manipulation on our part. But look at the result. We never could have made OS X so reliable if our engineers didn’t believe in their hearts that every time a bug surfaced one man was going to be killed.
Which leads me to my next management tip. You don’t have to hire the best people. You can hire anyone, as long as you scare the shit out of them. That’s the key. The fear. This applies not only to assembly line and factory workers but to all of your staff, including top executives and even the board of directors. A corollary to this rule is this: Only promote stupid people. But not just any stupid people. You have to find the certain type of stupid people who actually believe they’re super brilliant. They make insanely great managers and are incredibly easy to manipulate. It’s easy to spot them. Former McKinsey consultants are top candidates.
The MBAs say you should set high standards, let people know what’s expected of them, and hold them to that. I do a little twist on that and say, Hold people to an impossibly high standard, but here’s the twist—don’t tell them what that standard is. And fire them if they fall short. You know what that does to people? Makes them crazy. And guess what? Crazy people are more creative. And more productive. Every shrink in the world knows this.
Another MBA rule that I never follow is where they say a CEO or manager should be consistent and predictable. I say the opposite. Be inconsistent and unpredictable. Be random. One day say something is great and the guy who made it is a genius. The next day say it’s crap, and he’s a moron. Watch how hard that guy will work now, trying to impress you.
Management gurus also tell you to reward performance, and dole out loads of praise. I disagree. My motto is this: No praise. Ever. You start praising people and pretty soon they start thinking they’re as smart as you are. You cannot have this. All employees must know at all times that you are better in every way than they are. Repeated criticism, in the most humiliating fashion, is one way to accomplish this.
The best way to keep people’s spirits broken is to fire people on a regular basis for no reason. Fly off the handle, shout at people, call them names, then fire them. Or better yet, don’t fire them. Let them believe they survived for a few days. Then, when they’re relaxed, call them in and fire them. It’s all part of creating and maintaining the culture of fear.
Another tactic, but one that should only be used in extreme circumstances, is this: throw tantrums. I mean literally cry and scream and roll around on the floor like a three-year-old, slapping your hands and kicking your feet. This is great when someone won’t let you have your way. It works because it freaks people out to see a grown man crying and screaming. They’ll do anything to make it stop. Brilliant.
Another tactic involves a verbal technique based on neurolinguistic programming. In the middle of a meeting, when someone else is talking, I’ll sit there nodding my head, as if I’m agreeing with everything they say. But then at some point I’ll suddenly stand up and go, “No! No! That’s stupid! What is wrong with you? Did someone drop you on your head when you were a baby? I can’t fucking believe this!” Then I’ll stomp out of the room, slamming the door.
Another trick is I’ll get on the elevator with some Apple employees, and smile, or say hi. They’re usually nervous, and usually they’re so scared that they just don’t talk at all, and I have to admit, I dig that. But sometimes they do carry on a conversation with each other, one that does not include me. When that happens I’ll wait until we get to my floor, and then, as the door opens, I’ll turn and say, “What you just said is completely wrong. You know not whereof you speak. Please go clean out your desk, and turn in your badge at the HR department.”
This freaks people out, believe me.
I’ve described these management techniques in presentations at business schools, and I always get the same blowback. People go on and on, telling me that using fear and psychological manipulation doesn’t work. They say it works better to be nice to people and treat them with respect. Last time this happened was at Stanford and the guy giving me grief was the professor. Perfect. I hate professors. I was like, “Look at Apple. Look at our amazing success. Especially our success since I took over the company. Compare that to the abject failure under my predecessors. Now compare that to whatever company that you built with your bare hands into a multi-billion-dollar empire using your techniques. What’s that? You don’t have a company? You never started a company or ran a company? You’ve never been a CEO? Huh. Okay. So you’re, what, a teacher? In a college or something? Okay. The prosecution rests.”
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