I found what I loved

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Steve Jobs

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says: This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005. Stanford News. 

no longer cutting it

One of the biggest mistakes a manager can make is leaving people in positions for which they’re no longer suited. [Jeff Weiner, CEO of Linkedin] uses a sports metaphor to explain his perspective... 

“The most important lesson I’ve learned in the role of CEO is to not leave the pitcher in the game for too long,” Weiner says. “You know, when you’re watching a baseball game, sometimes you’ll see a star pitcher on the mound, they’re having a great game and as the game continues to go on, you can see their arm starting to tire and you can see the opposing team start to hit the ball a little bit harder.”

Whenever this happens in baseball, the manager approaches the mound to check on the pitcher, who inevitably says some variation of: “I’m fine. I got this.” Weiner says the same thing happens in business.

“In 20 years of managing people, not once has anyone ever come to me and said they couldn’t do their job. Not a single time,” he says. “It’s not their job. That’s the role of a manager.”...

With Weiner’s corporate philosophy relying so much on managing compassionately, it may seem unusual to suggest letting go of an employee who is no longer cutting it. But, as he explains, it’s not.

“People just assume ‘compassion’ means not making hard decisions, not making hard choices, not transitioning people out of roles,” Weiner says. “It’s the exact opposite: The least compassionate thing you can do when someone is not equipped to be doing what they’re doing is to leave them in that role.”

When those employees are left in their roles, Weiner continues, it takes a toll on them.

“They lose confidence. They’re losing self-esteem by the day. They’re taking that back to their teams, people are seeing that you’re leaving them in the role ― which is undermining your ability to lead ― and the worst of all is that individual that no longer believes in themselves, that’s losing their sense of self, they take that energy home,” Weiner points out. “They’re taking that energy home to their families.”

There’s only one way to stop this vicious cycle, he says.

“The most compassionate thing you can do in that situation is take that person aside and say, ‘This isn’t working out right now. Here’s where the bar is set. I’m going to do everything I can to get you to the bar or above the bar. And we’re going to set a timetable,’” Weiner says.

In some cases, the employee may need to be transitioned out of the role, but that’s not a foregone conclusion.

“There’s probably a reason you put them in that role, so there may be the potential for them to be able to take coaching and learn how to do the job more effectively,” Weiner says. “It’s a question of how much time you’re going to give them and how much work you’re willing to put in.”

Lisa Capretto

"One Of The Biggest Mistakes A Manager Can Make, According To LinkedIn’s CEO". Huffington Post. Jan. 9, 2017

give people the feedback they need

“There’s a Russian anecdote about a man who loved his dog so much that when the vet told him he needed to cut the dog’s tail off he couldn’t do it all at once, so he did it an inch at a time. Don’t be that kind of manager.”

Giving unclear, infrequent feedback has somewhat of the same effect — though slightly less violent. You end up hurting the person receiving the feedback more, even though you’re just doing what your parents always told you empathetic people do: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.

This is where Scott says she’s seen managers make the most mistakes. “No one sets out to be unclear in their feedback, but somewhere along the line things change. You’re worried about hurting the person’s feelings so you hold back. Then, when they don’t improve because you haven’t told them they are doing something wrong, you wind up firing them. Not so nice after all…”

In order to give people the feedback they need to get better, you can’t give a damn about whether they like you or not. “Giving feedback is very emotional. Sometimes you get yelled at. Sometimes you get tears. These are hard, hard conversations.”

Interview with Kim Scott

"My Management Lessons from Three Failed Startups, Google, Apple, Dropbox, and Twitter" firstround.com 3/19/2014

when buffett fires people

Warren famously invests in management, specifically to avoid firing people. He does not enter companies where a management change is part of the plan.

“One thing I don’t like is when I have to make a change in management, when I have to tell somebody I think somebody else can do a better job.”

That’s an interesting way to phrase it — that someone else could do a better job. Not that the manager is bad or incompetent or doing anything wrong — simply that there is room for improvement and he has a duty to make that improvement. That doesn’t make it easy for him though:

“It’s pure agony, and I usually postpone it and suck my thumb and do all kinds of other things before I finally carry it out.”

It seems like most people are the same way — firing may be the most-procrastinated task in the business world. No one wants to pull the trigger.

When the firing decision is not based on performance, but on infractions of ethical or moral grounds, things are much more clear cut. Here’s Buffett:

“Lose money for my firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm and I will be ruthless.”

 Eric Jorgenson

"How to Fire Someone: How to Decide, When to do it, and How to be Guilt-free" Medium. 5/17/2015

hiring the right people

The best employee development practices start with hiring the right people in the first place – the people who share the firm’s values. Along the way, you’ll find people who don’t meet that standard: let them go sooner rather than later.

While that may sound harsh – maybe even the opposite of taking care of your people – careful hiring and disciplined termination are vital to building an organization where trust is highly valued. You're not showing respect to your employees if, through your inaction, they're forced to put up with co-workers who don't carry their own load or share the company’s values.

Joel Peterson, Professor of Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In A Great Business, People Trump Things. Forbes Magazine. 10/17/2012