Do Simpletons Run Apple and Google?

What’s the common thread between Apple and Google?  

Why is it that these two companies have exploded over the last decade?  

The obvious answers are leadership, timing, superiors products, but there’s something more.  

Their tenacious determination to keep things simple for their consumers has been a big part of making them popular and keeping them popular.  

Steve Jobs became famous for insisting that his devices have only one button.  

Google went so far as to create a high level executive position so they would have one person in charge of making their search page simple.  

At Google you have to fight and win many heroic battles to get your new feature, word, or idea added to their main search page. It’s no accident their search page is so clean and simple.  

It’s designed to be that way and stay way no matter how many other things they offer they’re not going to clutter up their primary function.   

The leaders at these companies are simply recognizing reality.  

• They know the world is a complicated place.  
• They know that their customers want results.  
• They don’t need to read a manual.  
• They don’t want to look up instructions.  
• They want to be able to get what they want as quickly and simply as possible so they can get on with their lives.  

Other companies are not that smart. 
They think the public wants features, extras, those are wonderful to have but not if it clutters up and confuses and complicates using the product.  

No one needs more hassle. 
As the great philosopher Chuck Berry once sang “too much monkey business.” People have complicated lives that seem to get more cluttered and complicated every day. Things to do, things to learn, things to get, it never ends. The last thing they need is more confusion and a product that is a frustrating hassle to use. They want to get the main thing done as quickly and simply as possible. It’s great to have the ability to do extra but minor things but it’s not great if it frustrates and confuses getting the main thing done. A simple clean page—one button. These companies get it and they have exploded with success.  

How about your product?  
Your training programs, your system, your service. Are you making the main thing you offer simple and easy to understand, easy to use? The simpler you make it, the more powerful your impact will be. That’s the underlying approach these companies have used with so much success. I wonder if that kind of thinking would pay off for you. Like the leaders at Apple and Google focusing on simplicity doesn’t make you a simpleton it makes you simply brilliant. 

This determination helped make them popular and kept them popular.

They don’t shift the focus off what each products primary, most beneficial, best feature is right in the spotlight.  

Winner's Book Club Selection of the Week: The Steve Jobs Way

WINNERS CREDENTIALS

Steve Jobs is the man who brought us the Macintosh computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad and led Apple to become the Number 1 Company in the world. His journey began as a teenager with a lot of passion and ideas and very little money working out of his parent’s garage. It has resulted in a company that has grown bigger than even MobileExxon with market capitalization of over $350 Billion.

Book Description

In The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation, Jay Elliot gives the reader the opportunity of seeing Steve Jobs as only his closest associates have ever seen him, and to learn what has made him—and the mystique of his management style—capable of creating tools so extraordinary that they have remade three industries and have transformed the way we create, consume, and communicate with each other.

Jay Elliot worked side by side with Steve as Senior Vice President of Apple and brings us his deep insider perspective of Steve's singular iLeadership style—which encompasses four major principles: product, talent, organization, marketing.

Jay shares the lessons that come out of Steve's intuitive approach to show how the creative and technological brilliance of iLeadership can be utilized to drive breakthroughs in any organization, irrespective of size.

About the Author

Jay Elliot served as the Senior Vice President of Apple Computer, responsible for all corporate operations, including HR, Facilities, Real Estate, IT, Education, and Pacific Rim Sales, plus corporate business planning, reporting directly to Steve Jobs, Chairman of the Board. Also, as a member of the Macintosh organization he helped Jobs develop the Macintosh computer from development to introduction. Elliot's articles and interviews have been published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine, and Fortune. He lives in California.

Reader Review

OK, I'll admit it. I am a sucker for anyone who can decipher or decode Steve Jobs. After all, the guy is a repeat Icarus. He has flown too close to the sun not once, not twice, but at least three times and every time has come out better than before. The effect he's had on Apple upon his return has been nothing short of a resurrection followed by a seating at the right hand of the Father. 

Jobs is an interesting, mercurial creature, and I often wonder if he is simply one of a kind, a kind of idiot savant who understands how to tap into our wants and needs, and who has an almost messianic vision that we need to follow. Sometimes I suspect that books about him are probably best read to illuminate how different we are from Steve rather than how we can become more like Steve. >>read more>>