I’ve become spoiled. I love being able to look at the art and have somebody explain to me what’s going on. This started in college when I went to a Picasso exhibit with my grandfather. Picasso is quite difficult to understand without the background. I just saw a lot of random shapes. However, when I learned what Picasso was trying to do, combine the best shapes of each object and combine them onto a single canvas, the art made a whole lot more sense.
How does a leader create things? I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that a leader can have an idea and then get a group of people together and create something new. Something didn’t exist, and then magically it does. In 2006 there wasn’t an iPhone and then, magically, in 2007 there was. How does that happen? In this post, I’ll look at different models of leadership and how the best leaders don’t seem to be leading at all.
This has been an extremely hard year for us Jews. On October 7th over 1,200 were killed and over 200 were taken hostage in the most brutal attack on our people since the Holocaust. Jews were attacked in their homes and at a peace-loving music festival. Survivors were dragged from their homes, tortured, and taken to Gaza, where they faced months of terror in captivity.
I never thought of Warner Bros as a Jewish studio, but then I learned the brothers’ names—Harry (Hirsz), Albert (Aaron), Sam (Szmul), and Jack (Itzhak). These four Jewish brothers, who immigrated from Poland in the late 1880s, were a case study of Jewish success early in the movie business.
I used to wonder if my local paper, the New York Times, was biased. This would happen when the paper was to far right, or left, of where I thought it should be. I felt that the paper was twisting the facts to get its viewpoint across. I thought, “Why didn’t they just tell the truth?! Why not just tell me the facts?!”
As I was sitting on the Royal Caribbean Liberty of the Seas, one of the world’s most luxurious cruise ships, I found myself immersed in the stillness of the morning. I like to meditate in the morning and wait for the world to wake up. The peacefulness of that time is transcendental, and it’s during these moments that I’ve come to appreciate the sunrise.
My grandfather Barney Liebman owned a drug store in Brooklyn. He went to pharmacy school and opened his own shop. He was always at the store, to make sure that everything was going well and also to make sure that all of the customers had a great experience when they ordered their malted milkshakes.
I used to love Honest Tea. It made me feel so good. The company was the brainchild of Barry Nalebuff and Seth Goldman. It was based on an idea that we could have healthy, great-tasting, and ethically sourced tea. They even wrote up the history of their company, Mission in a Bottle, as an engaging graphic novel.
When they were bought by Coca-Cola in 2008, I thought, “Good for Seth and Barry. They made some money, and Coca-Cola will take the company forward.” I didn’t pay attention to the company for a while, thinking that Coca-Cola was being an attentive steward to the brand. After all, Coca-Cola had the resources to expand Honest Tea’s reach and keep the company alive. That’s why I was so surprised to see the brand Just Ice Tea on the shelves looking exactly like Honest Tea. And when I looked at the back of the bottle, I saw the same message from Seth and Barry I used to see on Honest Tea.
In every industry, companies want to be tech companies. Citibank loves quoting John Reed, CEO from the 1990s who said, “Citibank is not a bank with technology. It’s a technology company with a banking license.” Even McDonald’s and Chipotle are now saying they’re technology companies. Technology companies are cool. Technology drives efficiency, innovation, and customer engagement. But there’s one person who doesn’t want his company to be a technology company: Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks. It’s because he knows what it means for technology to take over a company.
I tried to build the iPhone twice. Everybody knows about the second time. The time we succeeded. Few people know about the first.
Tony Fadell (Creator of the iPhone)
Many people assume that the precursor to the iPhone was the Apple Newton, but there’s a much more direct predecessor: the General Magic Pocket Crystal. I recently watched a fascinating documentary about it called The General Magic Movie.
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