Steve Jobs on Teamwork: Polishing Ideas Together
What Jobs talks about
Steve Jobs uses a childhood memory of polished stones in a rotating drum to describe how strong teams work. The stones rub against each other, make noise, and gradually become beautiful through friction.
He says the same is true of people on a team: if they are passionate and talented, they may argue and fight, but that process can improve the work and the ideas.
He emphasizes that success is not the achievement of one person. Even if people like symbols, he says Macintosh was a team effort.
Jobs speaks throughout.
In his words
“When a team of people is doing something that they really believe in”
“They rub against each other, they argue, sometimes they fight, they make noise.”
“And when they work together, they polish each other and they polish the ideas.”
“It's certainly not the success of one person.”
“In McIntosh, it was a team effort.”
Key points
- Great teams are made of people who really believe in what they’re doing.
- Friction, argument, and noise can be part of creative teamwork.
- Team members polish one another and the ideas through collaboration.
- The result of a strong team is work that is better than any one person could do alone.
- Public symbols can obscure the reality that big successes are collective efforts.
- Macintosh, he says, was a team effort.
Full transcript
We had a lot of great ideas when we started, but I've always felt that when a team of people is doing something that they really believe in, it's like when I was a kid and I met a lonely man on the street. He was in his 80s. He looked a little scary, and I kind of knew him a little bit. I think he might have paid me for cutting his lawn or something like that. And one day he said, come on over to my garage, I'll show you something. And he pulled out an old, dusty, self-made rotating drum. It was a motor, a coffee pot with a winding around it. And he said, come with me. We went to the backyard and we got some rocks.
We put them in a can with a little bit of liquid and a little bit of grit powder. And we closed the can and we turned the motor on. He said, come back tomorrow. And his can was rumbling when the rocks hit it. And I came back the next day, and we opened the can, and we took out some amazing, beautiful, polished rocks. The same kind of stones that had rubbed against each other like this, creating a little bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise. And that's how these beautiful, polished rocks were made. And that's always been a reminder in my head of work for a team where everybody's working really hard, everybody's passionate, everybody's talented.
They rub against each other, they argue, sometimes they fight, they make noise. And when they work together, they polish each other and they polish the ideas. And you get these really beautiful rocks. So it's hard to explain, and it's certainly not the success of one person. People like symbols, and I'm a symbol of certain things. But in McIntosh, it was a team effort.
Transcribed from the audio with OpenAI Whisper. Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.