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Lick-worthy!

Steve Jobs offers us this definition of terrific design: "You know a design is good when you want to lick it." (From Design: Intelligence Made Visible, Stephen Bayley & Terence Conran)

My "lick-worthy" candidate: my Western Digital 160 gigabyte external hard drive. It is sleek and black and austere—and though I haven't licked it, I have indeed fondled it.

(And hats off to Mr Jobs and company for stupendous earnings reported the day before yesterday. The company has been loved for "cool" and excoriated for not doing as well financially as Microsoft, a direct result of Steve's often unpleasant "I want it my way" mantra. Now Microsoft and Dell have a bushel of problems—and no obvious solutions since innovative leaps have not been their forte. Apple has stuck to their absurdly high new-product standard for decades, except in Jobs' absence, and, despite barbs and arrows and bad spells, it has paid off. Moreover, if innovation is your forte, when trouble arises your "fallback" is your forte.)

(Is my tribute to Jobs-innovation contrary to my tribute to Coach Schembechler-execution? Sure. So what? Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Bob Waterman found that one, and we used it as a chapter epigraph in In Search of Excellence. In Thriving on Chaos, I claimed that the #1 trait of a successful leader is "managing paradox.")

Tom Peters posted this on 10/24/07.

Comments

Hi Tom,
Great post on the innovation/execution paradox, and the Fitzgerald quote has always been a favorite.

You've been my reading inspiration recently beginning with your iconic books The Black Swan, Fooled By Randomness, and Gould's Full House. With all that I had to read In Search Of Excellence in honor of the 25th anniversary. The best complement after 25 years is to still be relevant, and I found it be quite relevant. The connection of work to MEANING is timeless.

After 25 years, do you still think of Ernest Becker's work? I noticed several references to it.

Thanks,
Rich

Posted by Rich at October 24, 2007 11:02 AM

â€œThe test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

I love that

Some of my favourite paradoxes that brilliant leaders seem to manage easily:

*Listen but donâ€™t listen
*Delegate like crazy â€“ work yourself out of a job
*The best way to gain power is to let go of power
*Recruit people who are smarter than you

Posted by Trevor Gay at October 24, 2007 5:41 PM

Well, all of us try and survive around wicked problems â€“ problems that have incomplete, contradictory & dynamic requirements and solutions to them are often difficult to recognize because of complex interdependencies for eg: economic, environmental & political issues. If you extrapolate this to business, it gets even worse because stakeholders have radically different views and frames for understanding the problem, leave alone the solution!

Posted by K.Sriram at October 25, 2007 5:27 AM

Love this concept! If decision makers spent as much time coming up with creative alternatives that encompass most (if not all) the benefits of opposing ideas, rather than advocating for "their side", their companies would be so much better off. This is truly at the heart of innovation.

Posted by Scott at October 25, 2007 7:32 AM

talking of apple am I the first here to post In an airport from an iPod touch?

Posted by Mark JF at October 25, 2007 7:34 AM

No paradox at all with Apple regarding innovation versus execution. They are doing BOTH right now exceedingly well.

Posted by Sam at October 25, 2007 10:09 AM

I quite like the paradox between execution and innovation. It seems to me that we too often want resolution, not realizing that it is in the tension between two things that things move forward. Management says, "da da da ..." and employees say, "dum!" (Of course, they more often pronounce it "dumb!" but it nonetheless moves things forward.) Tension resolution - works in music, art, and work.

Posted by Ron Davison at October 25, 2007 2:05 PM