Apple has long been known for its culture of secrecy – a silo here, a silo there, and another secret silo off to the side – but the company learned how to share a bit in order to create AirPods Pro.
Chris Deaver for Fast Company:
When I joined Apple in 2015 as an HR business partner, I marveled at the technical depth of its genius-level engineers. There seemed to be no problem they couldn’t solve. In a magical way, Apple had somehow brought together the best minds to create the best products in the world. But beyond the focus on innovating, it had a fundamental premise to the work: secrecy. This is a value it held dear, to preserve the “surprise and delight” for customers…
But this culture of secrecy had its dark sides. Hoarding of critical information. Pushing personal agendas. Infighting. As a new HR business partner, I was often pulled into these escalations. And it was usually about “that team not sharing.”
Customers don’t know [the] behind-the-scenes struggles of giving birth to the AirPods; just like most engineers who developed the AirPods didn’t know the AirPods would be such an explosively successful, meme-worthy product for the public, selling millions, and creating an entirely new category. But at what cost? And if we were to take AirPods to the next level, how could we do it in a more seamless, relationship-building way?
MacDailyNews Take: Two quotes:
Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. – Steve Jobs
Creativity is just connecting things. – Steve Jobs
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It’s worth remembering that Steve hoisted a Pirate’s Flag on the building where he worked and it was an offensive statement to other teams noting there was a “battle” going on. Of course, not with true physical battle, but serious in re: to ownership, privacy and superiority.
Steve wasn’t 100% collaboration, 100% of the time.