What I learned from reading Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success by Ken Segall.
Okay, so the book I'm going to talk to you about today is insanely simple.
The obsession that drives Apple's success.
And it was written by Ken Siegel.
This book is a little different from the books that you and I normally talk about.
It is not a biography, but it is a fascinating look into how it was working with Steve Jobs, because Ken Siegel was the ad agency creative director of the firm that Steve used when he was at next, and then when he came back to Apple to lead that turnaround.
And so at this point, I've made, I don't know, ten episodes on Steve Jobs.
I've read as many books on him as I can find, and yet there were stories in this book that I have found nowhere else.
And it's because Ken worked with Steve intimately for over a decade.
Steve had no problem calling Ken at midnight to debate a single word in the ad copy.
And so one of the things that Ken noticed that was different from the other clients that he had was that Steve.
Steve's dedication to simplicity was almost religious in nature.
And you would see that religious like dedication to simplicity throughout the entire way that Steve ran his business, to the way he communicated internally with his employees, to the way he communicated externally to his Potential Customers, to how he organized his team, to how he's Built his products.
And so Ken noticed that Steve had a tool to do this, and he calls it the simple stick, which is one of my favorite stories.
This is the second or third time that I've read the book.
And considering I reread my highlights all the time, it's like the 10th time I read the book.
And for some reason, I failed to make an episode on it before.
So I'm rectifying that mistake here.
But this simple stick, the reason I bring that up is because from the very first time I read the book, you know, probably eight years ago, something like that, this idea of the simple stick always stuck in my mind.
So the simple stick is just a tool that Steve Jobs used to keep his team from overcomplicating things.
If an idea was not distilled down to its essence, Steve would reject it.