Leading Apple With Steve Jobs: Management Lessons From a Controversial Genius

The First Day

Another of Steve’s leadership ideas for nurturing creativity grew out of his recognition that new hires need to become quickly integrated into the Pirate way of thinking. Over a couple of months, he and I kicked around a number of ideas for doing this. Following the guidelines we worked out, I set up several tools, beginning with the newbie’s arrival on campus.

The new employees’ orientation program was designed to start implanting the Apple culture from the very first. Apple employees went through the new employee orientation program their first day on the job, with discussions about some of the programs, Apple history, and an inside look at how Apple operates.

The newcomers received the usual sort of information packet, an Apple T-shirt (to some readers that might sound a little tacky, but, as I’ve said, they were very popular), and an Apple sticker.

(I always laughed about those stickers. As a prank, when we took an airline flight, on deplaning we’d leave one on the back of an airplane seat. And as a taunt to IBM, once when I was in Paris on business, my walk from the hotel in the morning would take me past the IBM office building; I’d paste one of the Apple stickers on their door, then check on the following morning to see if it was still there. One time, the sticker remained on the door for four days—leaving me to wonder if the French IBMers were really that unobservant or just didn’t care.)

The second part of the orientation was to understand the products and ...