Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs once highlighted the significance of saying “no” to ensure focus and accomplish major objectives, even if it results infuriate some people.
What Happened: During Apple’s 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference or WWDC, Jobs was asked about his opinion on OpenDoc, a component-based framework standard for compound documents.
Jobs said, “I apologize, I feel your pain, but Apple suffered for several years from lousy engineering management.”
In 1997, Apple was in a state of chaos. The company’s holiday sales in 1996 were disappointing, leading to a significant restructuring. Apple laid off a third of its employees and then created a list to determine which projects would continue to be funded.
During the conference, Jobs seemed to hint at the core of the problem at Apple. He said that while engineers were doing “arguably interesting things,” but pulling the company in “18 different directions.”
The former Apple CEO then said that there are too many distractions. “The total is less than the sum of its parts.” So the management under the leadership of Jobs had to decide "what makes sense and what doesn't."
He then famously revealed his strategy for saying “no,” which continues to remain applicable today. However, he did acknowledge that this method could upset people.
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“Focusing is about saying no. You've got to say ‘no, no, no’ and when you say no, you piss off people,” he said. Jobs then addressed the original question saying that OpenDoc wasn't a good fit as the "rest of the world isn't going to use" the product.
Why It Matters: Jobs’ philosophy of saying “no” is not unique to him. Previously, other successful individuals, like Warren Buffett, have also endorsed the power of “no.”
Last year, Buffett instructed the CEOs of Berkshire Hathaway-owned companies to decline all requests for him to speak, make contributions, or intercede on behalf of others, according to a memo.
The memo advised them to resist the temptation to agree to requests for introductions to Buffett. Instead, he encouraged them to politely decline these requests, noting that doing so would simplify matters for everyone involved.
Similarly, in 2006, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, now Meta Platforms Inc., famously rejected a $1 billion acquisition offer from Yahoo. He believed Facebook had the potential for greater growth and chose to continue developing the company.
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