On the Firing Line
My 500 Days at Apple
Gil Amelio
With
Having read it
★★★★☆
A measured and insightful memoir of a good person doing a pretty decent job for 500 days – especially given the circumstances and characters involved – that had much spirit, common sense and worthwhile principles which, despite some oversights and bad timing, helped begin the rebuilding of Apple foundations for the twenty-first century!
Not sure what the company does now(!) but it was good to read of those times from the 500-day CEO’s point of view and better understand some of the things I loosely remembered reading about in Mac magazines, back in the day.
Plus, after my own career experiences it was heartening to read the following observation by the author and realise, that despite always trying to hope, not much really changes, does it?
I often think how wasteful it is that those with real capabilities should doubt their abilities, while bunglers seem so damn sure of themselves.
A good passage
I had included the term ‘DSUV’ – Distinctly Superior User Value – in the original strategy White Paper, adapting it from a similar term I had used at National Semiconductor and hoping it would become a catchphrase to express the product values that the company needed to embrace.
I explained DSUV by saying, ‘There are five things we have to do as well or better than anyone else.’ Those five were: User experience – which had to do with stability of the system, product quality, and quality of the service and support. Performance – which would have to be equal to or better than our competitors. Connectivity – meaning how easily the machines could be hooked up into networks, which are becoming the dominant feature of the way people use computers. Industrial design – keeping alive the Steve Jobs ideal of producing great-looking machines. And compatibility – which meant accepting that we lived in a world dominated by another standard, and doing whatever we had to do so that our customers wouldn’t be frozen out when they chose a Mac.
If the company could intensely focus on these five areas, with the goal of being best-in-class in each area, I was sure a comeback and transformation of Apple would be achieved. At the end of my tenure we were only partway there, but the people of Apple had made enormous strides in each of these areas.
With some trepidation, I tapped Cynthia Cannady to run the task force on DSUV – trepidation because this was a highly unusual choice: Cynthia is an attorney, and in the business world, attorneys are not typically asked to do this sort of business assignment. But I had sized her up early on as a high-energy person. Cynthia became convinced that the DSUV concept would be the salvation of the company, and she turned into a single-minded evangelist. That plus her articulate skill as a seasoned lawyer made her very effective as the task force leader.
A second good passage
I also had an issue with the fact that computers are downright ugly. My gut told me that a more attractive machine would sell better. I was and still am convinced that if companies made computers more attractive, more people would want them, and the manufacturers could also get a slightly better price. That still remains my unproven hypothesis.
I found it highly frustrating that I could not get the Apple engineers to appreciate design. They were so tuned in to performance, features, operating systems, and speed that I had more pushback on industrial design than any of the other DSUVs, which frankly surprises me to this day, since Apple R&D is filled with engineers and engineering managers like Jonathon Ive – among the most visual and creative people I’ve ever met.
A third good passage
From Steve[ Job]’s narrow perspective as a salesman and marketer extraordinaire, he probably concluded that most of the major problems facing the company had been solved. I had managed to build up the amount of money in the bank; my insistence on cleaning up the quality issues had resulted in the problems being addressed and set to rights; I had forced a complete retuning of the product line; and due to the NeXT acquisition, Apple had an operating-system strategy most people were genuinely excited about.
To me it was just a beginning, but to Steve it must have looked like the opportune time to make a move toward achieving his primary goal – to take Apple back for himself. He surely realized that in a few quarters I’d have the company making money again. Successful numbers plus quality products, excellent service, and a new operating system would bring cheers, bring customers back to Apple – at which point the board would not be interested in changing management. By forcing the board’s hand when he did, he could achieve his fantasy and make a full comeback.
To someone obsessed, when another person gets in the way, the solution is to roll right over him. It makes no difference who that person is; the fact that it was I who had openly admired what Steve Jobs had done at Apple, NeXT, and Pixar, I who had courageously fought to make an honorable deal with him, was of no concern. The success I was creating threatened to get in the way of his plans. Betrayal, assassination, trashing of reputations are all part of the everyday tool kit of a person obsessed with power, control, or revenge.
I was in Steve’s way and had to be eliminated.