{"id":1100,"date":"2011-05-13T02:12:55","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T06:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/?p=1100"},"modified":"2011-05-13T02:12:55","modified_gmt":"2011-05-13T06:12:55","slug":"steve-jobs-on-excuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/steve-jobs-on-excuses\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Jobs on Excuses"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1101\" style=\"width: 470px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/technology\/apple\/5585696\/Apple-boss-Steve-Jobs-has-liver-transplant.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1101\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1101 \" title=\"steve-jobs_1420657c\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/steve-jobs_1420657c.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"288\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/steve-jobs_1420657c.jpg 460w, https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/steve-jobs_1420657c-150x93.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/steve-jobs_1420657c-300x187.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1101\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Jobs by Getty<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B004ZNFXFK\">Inside Apple<\/a> by Adam Lashinsky:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn\u2019t have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why\u00a0something\u00a0went wrong. Senior people do not. \u201cWhen you\u2019re the janitor,\u201d Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, \u201creasons matter.\u201d He continues: \u201cSomewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.\u201d That \u201cRubicon,\u201d he has said, \u201cis crossed when you become a VP.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This makes sense.<\/p>\n<p>A junior employee at the bottom of the chain of command (such as a janitor) can have a legitimate excuse for why something was not done. It&#8217;s plausible that the janitor does not have the authority to get the key he needs, so it is not the janitor&#8217;s fault.<\/p>\n<p>Whereas a member of management (such as a VP) has no excuse. If the key is missing, the VP has authority to find the person with the key, force open the door, hire a locksmith, etc. The VP needs to problem solve and cannot explain away things that were not accomplished as the VP has sufficient authority to get it done.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting to note that Jobs is quoted using the term &#8216;reason&#8217; and not &#8216;excuse.&#8217; The former being legitimate and the latter being a scapegoat. That is, the former is only available to people at the staff level who are not sufficiently authorized\/empowered.<\/p>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macstories.net\/news\/inside-apple-reveals-steve-jobs-anecdotes-apples-little-known-facts\/\">MacStories<\/a> via <a href=\"http:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/\">HN<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky: Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn\u2019t have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[380,761,759,756,259,760,758,379,757],"class_list":["post-1100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-tech","tag-apple","tag-authority","tag-excuse","tag-janitor","tag-management","tag-reason","tag-responsibilities","tag-steve-jobs","tag-vp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1106,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions\/1106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}