In the car this morning, I listened to the 5by5 special podcast Thank You, Steve Jobs with its series of personal stories and tributes to the man. It’s a wonderful collection of reflections.
As I was listening, I was thinking back to the late 1980’s when, through some random combination of events, I ended up spending about a half hour with Steve Jobs one on one. The scene was a conference room at Steve’s then-new NeXT in Redwood City, down by the big salt pile off Seaport Boulevard. His purpose was to show me NeXTSTEP and how easy it was to develop applications in this new environment. I remember being blown away by the demo – just another one of his amazing performances. I never met him again.
Over the weekend, I came across a link to the Pixar home page and their tribute to Steve Jobs. It brought to mind perhaps the most recurring theme I’ve taken away from this man: Make it great. Or, with emphasis, make it insanely great.
A while back I wrote about “is this the best you can do?” Make it great ensures that it is. Great isn’t perfect – but it’s pretty darn close.