" It’ s amazing what happens when you drill down to the real issue or problem."
numerous times with different groups and teams— and in almost every instance, we’ ve arrived at new insights and clearer thinking that ultimately led to confident decisionmaking. the world to take a huge step down as well as a significant pay cut. Unsurprisingly, Sculley declined the offer. But over the years the two became friends, and Jobs would occasionally make the same bold offer.
Innovation and idea generation. Steve Jobs was a proponent of the principle known as shoshin, or“ beginner’ s mind.” With a beginner’ s mind there are many possibilities, but with the expert’ s mind there are only a few. It’ s akin to adopting a mindset called neoteny, the phenomenon of maintaining childlike mental attributes as an adult. Asking purposefully naive questions— even seemingly unintelligent ones— tends to be a gift, not a liability. Kevin Kelly, technologist, author, and cofounder of Wired Magazine, wrote,“ A good question will be the sign of an educated mind. A good question is one that generates many other good questions. A good question may be the last job a machine will learn to do. A good question is what humans are for.”
" It’ s amazing what happens when you drill down to the real issue or problem."
One afternoon, when the two of them were sitting on a balcony overlooking New York’ s Central Park, Jobs turned to Sculley and asked,“ Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Sculley finally agreed. When a question is posed like that, how does one turn down that offer? At its fundamental level, isn’ t business ultimately about listening, making offers, and asking questions?
Troubleshooting. Taiichi Ohno, the mastermind behind the Toyota Production System, helped develop an effective brainstorming exercise called the“ Five Whys,” which helps teams address difficult issues. The concept is simple: for every complex problem, the team would ask why five consecutive times. For example:
Question 1: Why did this project go past schedule? It was much more complex than our team imagined.
Business. Just a few years after he cofounded Apple in a garage in Northern California, Steve Jobs sought out John Sculley to become the company’ s new leader. This was no easy request, as Sculley was CEO of PepsiCo, which at the time was a massive $ 2 billion food and beverage corporation. Jobs would be asking one of the most successful businessmen in
Question 2: Why was it more complex than our team imagined? We had to start over in designing the product several times.
Question 3: Why did we have to start over in designing the product several times? The product was more difficult to use than we realized and confused our customers.
56