Living Life by Design

The late Steve Jobs shared this analogy about teamwork: “We had a lot of great ideas when we started Apple. But what I’ve always felt that a team of people doing something they really believe in is like…when I was a young kid there was a widowed man that lived up the street. He was in his 80’s…And I got to know him a bit.”

Jobs told the story of visiting the old man who had used a rock tumbler to polish stones. He considered that the ideal metaphor for a team working together. “It’s that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together, they polish each other and they polish ideas, and what comes out are these really beautiful stones,” said Jobs.