One day, before Apple opened its first store in May 2001, Johnson was riding with Steve Jobs to a weekly planning meeting about the store Johnson was charged with designing. Johnson told his boss, “Steve, I’ve been thinking. I think the store’s organized all wrong. We’ve organized it like a retail store around products, but if Apple’s going to organize around activities like music and movies, well, the store should be organized around music, and movies, and things you do,’” Johnson recalls. “And he looked at me and he said, ‘Do you know how big a change that is? I don’t have time to redesign the store.’” Then, 10 minutes later, at the meeting, Johnson recalls, “Steve walks in and the first thing, he looks at the group and he says, ‘Well, Ron thinks our store is all wrong.’” Jobs then added ‘And he’s right, so I’m going to leave now and Ron, you work with the team and design the store.’” That lesson, of not doing it fast, but doing it well, “carried through to so many things I’ve done,” Johnson says. “It’s not about speed to market; it’s really about doing your level best.”
Former Apple Retail Chief addressed Stanford’s Graduate School of Business students. It is a great talk, worth watching.
While I was reading this post I remembered conversation with one entrepreneur. After I explained him what I created and in which way and how this is complete, well rounded and robust offering that is solving as much as possible in advance, before it comes to the market because it has to be in it’s best possible form, multiple value points, etc., his reaction was:
“Oh, the old way.”
On another occasion I got question: “How do you know this will work?”
This one puzzled me for a moment, as my slow answer was: “It is my job to know.”
Gentleman’s whole body immediately disproved such possibility.
User centricity should not be an option. Giving genuine value to the customer in as many ways as possible will be returned with their trust.
Great lesson: its not about doing it fast….but well. Thanks for sharing!