He Would Critique the Work, Not Judge the Person
Fadell: What brought out the best in you working with Steve? Pushing you. Relentless on the details. Challenging you for the right reasons. It wasn't bullying. It wasn't demeaning. He would critique the work, not judge the person.
When he would make a decision — when you make the first version of anything revolutionary, there are a lot of opinion-based decisions. Only one or two or three people hold those opinions. And you have to really tell the team the 'why' of those decisions. So they feel part of it and understand the tradeoffs.
It wasn't bullying. He would critique the work, not judge the person. And tell you the 'why' of every decision.
V1 = Opinions. No Data.
Fadell: Most people want a data-driven decision. But with V1s, you don't get data. If you look at most companies who are paralyzed and cannot make new innovations — it's because they're trying to turn opinion-based decisions into data-driven decisions so they don't lose their jobs.
That's what I saw at Philips. That's what management consulting is — taking opinion-based decisions, giving them to someone else to turn into data, so when something goes wrong you can blame the consultants.
Most companies are paralyzed because they're turning opinions into data to avoid blame. That kills innovation.
The iPhone Keyboard: An Opinion-Based Decision
Fadell: The Blackberry was the number one productivity messaging device. It was called a CrackBerry for a reason — people loved the hardware keyboard. The data said all the best sales were with hardware keyboards.
But Steve said: those are productivity devices. Ours is born out of an entertainment device. We need full-screen videos. Apps that take over the whole screen. A full-screen web browser. You don't want half the device to be a keyboard. We want that part of the screen to change based on the tool you need.
The virtual keyboard wouldn't be as good as hardware. That's an opinion. But it was the right opinion for a different type of device.
The data said hardware keyboards win. But this was a different type of device. Full screen. Entertainment. That was an opinion.
The SIM Slot: When Data Overruled Steve
Fadell: Steve said — no SIM slot. I don't want any slots. We're going to make it very pure. Jony Ive was like, of course, no slots. We all looked around and said — that doesn't work.
Steve said: well, why does Verizon not have SIM slots? They showed you can do mobile without them. A few days later, product marketing, engineering — we all came back with data showing how many networks required SIM cards, the trends, the global picture. We showed the data, and that killed the no-SIM decision. The SIM slot showed up on the original iPhone.
Opinion can hold — and data can overrule opinion when data exists. Both happened at the very same time on the same product.
Steve wanted no SIM slot. We came back with data. Data won. Both things happened on the same V1.