Teambuilding Case

Contents

1. "It's so secret I can't even tell you what that project is. I can't tell you who you will work for...' Is this a good approach to team building?

This approach that Steve Jobs use is neither a good nor bad approach to a team building but it is a different yet effective approach to team building. This different approach of Steve Jobs came with secrets, which I think is not an ideal way to approach to team building. It is normal to hide the identities of the employee/employer, this happens from time to time all over the world, but Steve clouded the eyes of his employee with a veil wrap around his "secret" project, so how can an Apple engineer do their job if they don't know what to do? The team member need goals, guidelines that they must acquire in a long term working. However, with the results that iPhone have brought, it is quite obvious that Steve Jobs's different approach was taking effect in terms of product development, marketing, sales.

2. 'What I can tell you is that if you accept this project . . . you will work nights, you will work weekends, probably for a number of years.' Is this a healthy way to build a team spirit?

To some extent, this is not a healthy way to build a team spirit. Mentally speaking, no one wants to hear about the amount of work at the beginning of the project, even though they know it but still people don't like it especially if those condition violate the rules and the rights of employee.

On the other hand, this approach does have some positive sides that somehow make the team members feels that there are no secret between the project manager and the team itself therefore the team member are more commit to what they will do in the future. Moreover, this approach will be the filter for Steve Jobs "dream team", because Steve Jobs is a very unstable person, so his team must have the ability to endure and work under pressure with this characteristic of his.

3. "It smelled something like pizza, and in fact on the front door of the Purple Dorm we put a sign up that said 'Fight Club' - because the first rule of that project was to not talk about it outside those doors." Do such rules work well for a team?

It is a smart choice using rules that fit to the secrecy nature of the project. The Russian have a saying: "A silence person walks, and a talkative person talks", and "Fight Club" stands out as the best rule to keep all the information about Apple's products under secret and protect the idea from the hands of the competitors. It is crucial to any team that they should stay silent and prove it by the final results; it is by far, the most effective way to work in a large organization.

4. 'We're a pretty maniacal group of people," What does mean in the team building context?

In this term, we can understand "maniacal group of people" as: group of geniuses. Originally, maniacal is define as madness in some way. But in terms of team building the "maniacal" have a completely different meaning. In the past, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci are consider to be the most intelligent people ever walk on Earth, their creation are fundamental to almost every nowadays hi tech based products. But on the flip side, they also suspected to have maniacal problem like Isaac Newton with his high level of depression, Leonardo Da Vinci with his "hard to read" and mirror writing problem. But these problem is not a barrier to their creativity. So I think 4 Steve wants people to understand the positive meaning of this term through his team or group of people works.

5. What were the characteristics of the original iPhone team as you saw them?

In my opinion, the first team that set up the concept, as well as the software team for iPhone was including many characteristics that are hard to figure out in short period of time. For hardware team, they are:

* Desire for something new, they want to change the world with something new in their own way.

* Maniacal/Courage: for their creativity, they dare to stand against the rest of the world in terms of designing; they dare to go on the very new way as the creator.

And for the software developers:

* Desire: They also desire something that only them can develop for their future designs only and most of all the UNIQUE.

* Distinct/Creative: when iPhone first launch, the world were frozen. They are frozen because of what this small piece of art can do and how customer friendly they are.

6. How important or unimportant was such a team approach to Apple's success?

Steve Jobs wanted to redefine the design of mobile phone, which make the "5 years" plans of mobile phone from Apple's competitors looks like