“There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business,” Peggy Noonan writes for The Wall Street Journal. “He’s at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to ‘build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.’ Then he turned to the rise and fall of various businesses. He has a theory about ‘why decline happens’ at great companies: ‘The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues.’ So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company’s daily life. They ‘turn off.’ IBM and Xerox, Jobs said, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but ‘they didn’t know anything about the product.’ In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products.”
“Jobs’s theory of decline was elegant and simple as an iPad, and when I asked business leaders about it the past few weeks, they agreed, some with the kind of engagement that suggested maybe their own companies had experienced such troubles,” Noonan writes.
“The theory applies also to our politics. America is in political decline in part because we’ve elevated salesmen—people good on the hustings and good in the room, facile creatures with good people skills—above people who love the product, which is sound and coherent government – ‘good government,’ as they used to say,” Noonan writes. “To make that product you need a certain depth of experience. You need to know the facts, the history, how the system works, what the people want, what the moment demands.”
Noonan writes, “You might say the rise of Barack Obama was the triumph of a certain sort of salesman. He didn’t know the product, but he was good at selling an image of the product, at least for a while.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Excerpts from a BusinessWeek interview with Steve Jobs, October 12, 2004:
Steve Jobs: Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years. That’s a long time. And how are monopolies lost? Think about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly. But after that, the product people aren’t the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It’s the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever. Because what’s the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself? So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy… Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they’re no longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn’t.
BusinessWeek: Is this common in the industry?
Steve Jobs: Look at Microsoft — who’s running Microsoft?BusinessWeek: Steve Ballmer.
Steve Jobs: Right, the sales guy. Case closed.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Obama is certainly not the first facile pitchman to be elected president, just the most recent.
Well, in the Republican field right now, it seems to be playing out. Newt Gingrich, not exactly the most likeable fellow among them, but easily the most informed, is increasingly winning. He’s more the product guy than salesman. It would be inconceivable for him to make the kind of errors of incompetence that Cain or Perry have made of late, even though they’re the archetypes.
Applying a YAM graph from enterprise to politics, you wonder how predictive PEA curves would be for each candidate (+-PBAJ towards BUN). If you believe YAM, Gingrich is the candidate. Otherwise, a BACN analysis would’ve been the way to go.
Newt loves, or at least thoroughly understands, the product (sound and coherent government) – “good government,” in other words.
President Gingrich.
Now for democrat sycophants like TIME Magazine to plaster unflattering photographs of Newt on the their cover again, for SNL to once again rev up the Lib smear campaign, and for the network news to anally examine every Republican while continually excusing/praising Obama.
Will it work another time, so soon after the last charade?
“Smear” campaigns are not limited to “Libs” – you appear to like the diminutive to discredit anyone with an opinion which differs from yours. I have witnessed a great deal of smear from the GOP, nearly all based upon twisted facts, disinformation, and outright lies. You and your cause have no monopoly on righteousness, F10T12. None at all. There is a long political history behind us that yields the sordid truth about both sides. Yes, both sides. Unlike you, I see politics as an equal opportunity criminal enterprise.
There is no doubt that Newt has some savvy. He may be the best of the GOP bunch, although that is certainly not high praise. Perhaps he has even learned from his power grab in the early 1990s…
What I utterly resent is the manner in which the GOP has been acting since Obama was elected. Rather than working in a bipartisan manner, the GOP has consistently obstructed every attempt to effectively govern this country. The debt limit fiasco was the last straw. And the GOP players openly admit that their top priority is to defeat Obama – not to deal with the economic crises across the world, not to deal with the civil unrest, not to deal with the long term issues of energy, strategic minerals, etc. No, the theme is defeat Obama and everything will be wonderful again. Well, that is BS. I would have a lot more respect for the GOP if they had dropped the ultimatums and pledges and actually tried to work with the Democrats to help the country. Diagree – that’s fine. Fight a little – OK. But, in the end, find compromises that work rather than gridlock for the sake of 2010 and 2012 power grabs. That is utterly disgusting.
The budget deadlock occurred because the Democrats punted when it was their responsibility to make the hard decisions.
They knew the Republicans would not go for higher taxes, so it is all a game to them.
“What I utterly resent is the manner in which the GOP has been acting since Obama was elected”
For the first TWO YEARS of the Obama Administration, the democrats had a large majority in the House and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. If they had trouble passing legislation is was because DEMOCRATS would not vote for it.
I would have had a lot more respect for Obama if he had dropped the “elections have consequences..” and tried to work with republicans for the good of the country. Instead Obama, Pelosi, and Reid spent the first two ramming through a purely liberal agenda.
As far as the original topic… while you may need to understand the system to keep fix it, you do necessary have to be from the inside. Jobs rework the music industry without ever being a music company exec.
Newt Gingrich: “a stupid man’s idea of what a smart man sounds like.”
You are obviously an Obama supporter through and through.
Logic, history and facts be damned.
Newt is not at the top of my list for President, but at least I can respect him for actually having a reasonable thought.
Wait a minute…..maybe you were joking?
There is little to choose from on the Republican side. The media sifts through the candidates, separates them into 2 piles, cogent and kooks, and promptly sidelines the cogent, and promotes the kooks. There is no excuse for the fact that people know all about wacky pizza chain owner Herman Cain, yet no nothing of the ideas and policies of former governor Gary Johnson.
Huntsman is the only one of the bunch that makes any sense.
Newt Gingrich! Informed? c’mon. This is the guy who pretends to know the historical facts, yet spews them and screws them till they are unrecognizable. Thisis the fellow who just said that child labor laws were unnec essary. Newt is an ass clown.
Please! Love him or hate him, Newt knows history. He received his BS in history from Emory University and an MA and a PhD in history from Tulane. He has been a history professor at West Georgia College and the National Defense University. If you don’t want people to take *you* for a clown, get your facts straight before you start spewing your opinion.
Aren’t commenters here supposed to be informed and intelligent? If Obama was a salesman how did we get Osama, how did we get the healthcare law passed, etc?
Just because Peggy Noonan was able to spin Jobs legacy into something that fits her theory doesn’t mean she is right.
Informed: The “healthcare law” is the worst piece of legislation passed in the U.S. in decades. It is an unconstitutional travesty that will do nothing but hurt the country. If not repealed, we will be dealing with its ill-effects for an untold number of years.
If so, then it stands proudly beside unconstitutional laws and actions led by the GOP such as the so-called “Patriot Act” and torture of prisoners. Watch your self-righteousness, F10T12. It is a thin veneer over the dungheap of political history.
Panetta probably deserves more credit for pushing the operation than Obama for finally (finally!) going along with it. But then Obama, the narcissist that he is, jumped the gun to announce the hit. Had he withheld the announcement to allow intelligence personnel time to analyze the captured documents and computer disks, the US could have taken down more of the organization. Instead, they scattered and the opportunity was lost.
+∞!!!
It’s hard to say who the last US President who wasn’t a huckster.
We Mac people and investors must keep close watch at Apple Inc. especially about March 2013 if any major changes occur to how Apple operates compared to prior October 6, 2011.
Innovations is not enough at Apple as the management with in Apple must protect it and do what has been done since iPod came out!!!
Do it, again!
“America is in political decline in part because we’ve elevated salesmen…”
Anybody, of any political stripe, who is prepared to hand to reins of power to someone because they have “charisma” gets exactly what they deserve.
Stalin had “charisma.” So did Hitler. And other rogues too innumerable to mention.
Isn’t this a bit of “The pot calling the kettle black”? Steve Jobs was in fact “the salesman” of Apple. So my point is that this isn’t always black and white. If the right “salesman” is in charge it can work.
Jobs was not just a salesman. That was just one of his gifts, but certainly not his only discernable talent.
Not quite. Steve Jobs sold what he had a big hand in designing. It was his baby, and he knew way more about why the product was the way it was. He was passionate about the product, not passionate about closing the sale, and so he put himself in front, because no one else could hit the pitch perfect message (or at least his ego wanted to believe that). Make no mistake sjobs had an ego, or else he couldn’t have made his opinions on matters of product and design matter.
Steve let the product sell itself. Make a great product and they will come. Compare Apple’s commercials to those from competitors – Apple lets the product sell itself. Others are attempting to emulate this approach, but it only works if you have the products to back it.
SJ was involved in all aspects of the company, and took a special interest in the design and function of Apple products and maintaining Apple’s unique vision. Attempting to label SJ as a “salesman” is inaccurate – that was not his primary role.
F10T12 – you got this one right. Good progress!
Steve Ballmer is to Microsoft as Barack Obama is the The United States of America.
Teleprompter skills (and not much else) does not a great president make.
The U.S. got sold a bill of goods by a smooth talker (unless he’s without his teleprompter and then its “uh, uh, uh”) and a complicit media.
Ballmer has no teleprompter skills that I have observed. He rants and screams and sweats from the stage. This is one of your weakest attempts in recent memory, F10T12. Absolutely beneath your regular level of incompetence. Aim higher! You may even rise to the level of political pundit some day. All of the latent skills are there for the honing!
If you like teleprompters check this out,
Bush giving the infamous “Mission Accomplished” speach on the deck of an aircraft carrier. And guess what! He’s reading it from a teleprompter.
1. You forget the mission accomplished banner was ordered by the carriers captain as a celebration of the carriers mission. Oh wait… Bush decided to fly out there later, so of course it was bush’s fault. (you should read more instead of bash)
2. There is nothing wrong with teleprompters, every speaker uses them really. But what you fail to understand is Obama can’t speak coherently without one.
There are 2 pictures that tell the story best, 2 presidents speaking to school children. Bush standing there surrounded by kids answering their questions.
Then Obama standing in a classroom with two secret service behind him, TelePrompTer in front of him and not a kid in sight… And it was a speech TO the kids.
If you take obamas TelePrompTer away he just can’t talk. He reads, he can’t speak.
Navy corpseman… 3 times in same speech.
Visited 57 states… With a few more left to visit…
Memorial day proud of our fallen vets, I see some of them here today..
It goes on.
If bush said ANY of that… He’d be strung up.
Reagan used to shuffle his speech cards before he walked on stage for any speech. Kept him on his toes about whatever he was speaking about. (go research it, it’s true. And newt does the same)
So yes, teleprompters are used by just about all public speakers. And you can tell when someone relies on them.. I forget which one of the big news casters it was, the TelePrompTer died in mid story and he froze. He tried to finish the story and made a fool of himself.
I need to dig up the video.
Typical Rethugs. No accounting for Bush.
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee . . . I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee . . . that says . . . fool me once, shame on . . . shame on you. Fool me . . . . . . . you can’t get fooled again.” – W.
Using SJs analogy is not the total problem and even the example that I am about to use, but it is a part of the problem: Up until 40 years ago, Democrats and Republicans would argue vehemently against each other, but at the end of the day, the Dems and Reps would go out and eat together as friends.
NOW, Dems and Reps Hate each other and this has translated into what the general public sees and hears and they think it is OK to do the same . . . and they DO the same. Civility has gone and total disrespect. Each other may have a good point, but because it comes from the other side, it is hated!
IN a way, as SJ said, the “salesman” brought this on!
A voice of reason! You should post more often!
Yes, the Bush was the previous one. A little balance, Peggy?
The US has had sales guys in charge at least as far back as Reagan. Not that they’re alone in that. Look who we’ve got as our current PM. Cameron the ad-man.
Mind you, he’s better than that tossbag Tony Blair. That one just outright lies.
As a salesman for over 40 years I ask. “How do you get your product & service sold WITHOUT great sales people???
In none of this has it ever been suggested in any way that salespeople be eliminated. Only that they should not be CEO.
Jocko,
It used to be that the salesman sold to the customer’s need. And Apple’s sales staff are trained to do this even if it means a loss of an in-store sale. Apple relies on the product to sell itself. This used to be the way it was many years ago. Today, overall, salesmen are taught to sell the “product” irrespective of the customer’s actual need. I have been in sales also and it bugs me to hear salesmen brag about how they duped a customer into buying more than they needed.
Politics and government has come to this!
(My last line was highlighted and got deleted)
Salesmen have a purpose and when used with integrity, is a VERY necessary part of a company. Unfortunately, integrity has been missing in action in leadership styles for a long while across business, government and organizations.
I had a sales manager who’s mantra was to “get them saying yes” then close the sale. That didn’t go over too well.
Great products sale themselves by experiencing them. I was sold on an iPhone because I used it. Apple set up the experience at there stores. They know someone only has to try it to be sold.
Jocko,
Valid question and WT answered well. Just don’t put them in charge.
I personally was in computer sales from 80 to 85 with the Byte Shop NorthWest up in Seattle. I got out of PC sales at that time specifically because the “suits were taking over”.
Partisan ideolological bull shit from a supreme saleperson herself. She spent years as speechwriter for Reagan, tearing into the very fabric of what makes it possible to innovate in the first place. There are plenty of hucksters in all sides of a political debate.
Government is not business. government does the job that business (for lack of a profit imperative) refuses or is unable to do.
Well, clearly everyone who commented here did not read the whole editorial. Peggy Noonan’s focus was on how Herman Cain (the salesman) and his glib, uninformed comments are helping the Democratic presidential campaign by hurting the Republican campaign.
It’s terrible how the soundbite (in this case the extracted piece from Peggy Noonan’s editorial) presented above caused all of you to make totally uninformed comments. This just points out what is wrong with the USA…today. Ignore the soundbites and investigate the whole story.
You fix government in this country the instant you eliminate the 24/7 news cycle… end of story. Politicians are like American Idol contestants, they want to be famous without doing all that messy work or actually having the talent and competency to do the job. The saddest fact is it’s the American people that fuel the news cycle and keep the idiots at FOX News, CNN and MSNBC in jobs, so it’s all of us who are at fault.
The day politicians get paid an average salary and are not allowed to gain fame and perks through their position you will get a different class of elected official; the kind that has a passion for the job.
Politicians are simply applying for the job….if there was/is ever a decline its the citizens who employ these “salesmen”. The reduction in funding for education and the people’s willingness to believe in hocus- pocus policies, 24hr news pundits and asinine statements made during Presidential debates that play to the baser instincts of the ignorant. You end up with a cluster fuck!
Yes there is a decline and its not the quality of the “Salesmen”. They have gotten better, its the people who have become ignorant, complacent to the “product” being sold and never considered the long term implications of the policies these “products” bring.
For Noonan to blame Obama or any president points to her lacking a key “product”…..reasoning!
Impressive how some people’s comments here are illustrative of Steve Job’s comments on how things don’t work.
Imagine if Apple was the sort of company where everyone had the ability to express their opinion and tell Steve how to run Apple. Where do you think Apple would be? What if Jonny, Scott, and all the others would disagree with Steve and go against his wishes. Where would Apple be? What if the Apple board of directors told Steve how to run his company? Happened before didn’t it and it lead to near failure.
That’s the sort of problem with a greedy corporate America and the part of the reasoning behind the 99%. The 99% is part of America that wants government for the people by the people and not by the 1% who don’t care about anyone but themselves.
People argue about Obamacare but they don’t see that there is the word “care” in that phrase. They only hate it because there is “Obama in that phrase. If you hate Obamacare would you rather have the old way of where your insurance premiums continued to climb, your insurance deductables was high, and you still had to pay for an office visit and your medication? Where insurance companies would refuse to pay for your healthcare and people would suffer or die? Where insuring your family was as much as your mortgage and where people would go without insurance and we would flip their bill or hospitals and care providers would go out of business?
The problem is greed and irresponsible industry. The president made it a priority to fix this because it was good for America. Industry and republicans of course would hate it but hate is their middle name. Dems are not much better but this president has stood out as the one wanting both sides to work together. People should be pissed at them not the president.
Everyone thinks they are entitled to run the country and the one man who is elected as president who has a vision for what is good for America is being challenged just for being the opposing party or for not bending for a particular group.
When you lose faith or loyalty in a president, you are also losing faith and loyalty to your own country.
How can any Republican produce “good government” when they beleive any form of government is bad.