Fake Steve Jobs' Top Ten Insights
If you're a fan of the recently-outed Fake Steve Jobs (aka Dan Lyons) -- but not enthusiastic enough to actually purchase his fake memoir, "The Secret Life of Steve Jobs: A Parody" -- rest assured, we've got you covered. Well, GigaOm has you covered, and we're covering that.
After reading the book, blogger Carleen Hawn compiled some "management pearls" in a list titled, "The Ten Commandments of Fake Steve Jobs." Since you're likely chomping at the bit to absorb FSJ's wisdom, here are the top three:
- Never let people know where they stand. Keep them guessing. Keep them afraid. Otherwise they get complacent. Creativity springs from fear. Think of a painter-- he's going to starve to death if he doesn't get his work done -- Same goes for the people at Apple and Pixar. They come in every day knowing it could be their last -- they work like hell; trust me.
- You don't have to hire the best people. You can hire anyone as long as you scare the shit out of them -- Look at the crappy cars that get made in
Detroit, where nobody ever gets fired. Compare that to the stuff that gets made in Vietnamese sweat shops -- We can't literally put our employees lives at risk [but] we never could have made OS X so reliable if our engineers didn't believe [every] time a bug surfaced one man was going to be killed. - Only promote stupid people. But not just any stupid people. You have to find the certain type of stupid people who actually believe they're super brilliant. They make insanely great managers and are incredibly easy to manipulate. It's easy to spot them. Former McKinsey consultants are top candidates.