Joe: Alright Lewis, I'm going to give you a challenge. Describe the last corporate meeting you were in using only three words. Lewis: Oh, that's easy. "Could've been an email." Why? Joe: Because today we're talking about a man who would've agreed with you... and then probably fired the person who scheduled the meeting. Lewis: (Laughs) Okay, I'm intrigued. This sounds like my kind of leader. Who are we talking about? Joe: We're diving into Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success by Ken Segall. And Segall is the perfect person to write this. He wasn't a biographer watching from afar; he was Steve Jobs's ad agency creative director for over a decade, the guy who came up with the name 'iMac.' He was in the room where it happened. Lewis: Wow, so this isn't a history book. It's a memoir from the marketing trenches. Joe: Exactly. And what Segall saw was that Apple's success wasn't just about beautiful design. It was a "religious-like dedication" to simplicity. And to enforce that religion, Steve Jobs had a weapon. A tool he used to beat back complexity at every turn. Segall calls it "The Simple Stick." Lewis: The Simple Stick? That sounds… aggressive. What exactly is it? Joe: It’s more of a metaphor, but its impact was very real. It was Jobs’s way of forcing ideas down to their absolute essence. If an idea was too complicated, if it had two parts when it could have one, he’d metaphorically hit you with the Simple Stick until it was pure.

Joe: Segall tells this perfect story. The Apple package-design team had been working for weeks on the packaging for two different versions of the same product. They were proud, they go in to present to Steve. Lewis: I can picture it. The pristine white boardroom, the nervous designers, the whole show. Joe: Precisely. They lay out their beautiful designs. And Steve just looks at it, and you can feel the temperature in the room drop. He doesn't critique the font or the color. He just hits them with the Simple Stick. He looks at them and says, essentially, "Why are there two versions of this product? Just make one. Then you only need one box." Lewis: Whoa. So he didn't just simplify the packaging, he simplified the entire product strategy on the spot. Joe: That was the Simple Stick. It wasn't about making things look nice. It was about a brutal, relentless pursuit of clarity. It cut through everything. Lewis: It’s like a corporate Occam's Razor, but with more shouting. But this is where it gets tricky, right? The book was a bestseller, but it also got some mixed reviews. A lot of people read these stories and think Jobs just sounds like a world-class jerk. Is Segall actually praising this behavior? Joe: He is, but he frames it as a necessary tool for greatness. He calls it "brutal honesty." And his own first real meeting with Jobs is the perfect example. Segall had been hired to work on the NeXT account, and he finally meets Steve. Jobs walks up, shakes his hand, and says something like, "Your TV work is great. But your print work is shit." Lewis: (Laughs) No small talk, just straight to the point. "Hi, nice to meet you, your work is garbage." Joe: Exactly! And Segall's reaction is fascinating. He wasn't offended; he was relieved. Because in that one sentence, he knew exactly where he stood. He knew what he had to do to succeed. There was no need to spend weeks trying to decode vague feedback or navigate office politics. The communication was simple, direct, and brutally efficient. Lewis: That makes a strange kind of sense. You're stripping away all the social padding that wastes time. You know immediately if you're winning or losing. Joe: And that was the point. Segall argues that in business, this kind of blunt communication is the simplest form of all. It creates clarity. Everyone knows the standard, and they know the consequences of not meeting it. There’s a story from another former Apple exec who was daydreaming in a meeting. Steve noticed, asked him a question he couldn't answer, and said, "If I ever notice that again, you won't be in the room and you won't be at Apple." Lewis: Okay, that's terrifying. But I guess you'd never daydream in a meeting with him again. Joe: You would not. It was a culture of extreme focus, built on a foundation of communication so simple it was often shocking.

Lewis: Okay, so brutal honesty saves time. But that can't work in a huge company. You can't be brutally honest with 30 people in a meeting. It would be chaos. Joe: Exactly. And that's why Jobs would never have 30 people in a meeting. This brings us to the 'Think Small' principle. Apple, even when it became a global giant, was run like a startup. Jobs famously said, "You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero." Lewis: Zero committees? How does a company that big even function? Joe: By keeping the groups of people making decisions incredibly small and incredibly smart. Segall tells this jaw-dropping story about a regular marketing meeting. The agency team is there, Apple's top execs are there, and Steve walks in. He scans the room and points to a woman the agency guys don't recognize. He just stops everything and asks, "Who are you?" Lewis: Oh no. I'm getting second-hand anxiety just hearing this. Joe: The woman, her name was Lorrie, explains she was invited because she was involved in some of the projects being discussed. Steve listens patiently and then says, completely deadpan, "I don't think we need you in this meeting, Lorrie. Thanks." And just waits for her to pack her things and leave. Lewis: He just kicked her out? In front of everyone? That's mortifying! How is that a good thing? Joe: Because it sent the clearest possible message. As Segall puts it, "Everyone in the room should be there for a reason. There’s no such thing as a 'mercy invitation.'" It’s nothing personal, just business. If you weren't essential to the decision, you were a distraction. You were adding complexity. Lewis: That's a stark contrast to most corporate cultures, where being invited to a meeting is a status symbol, even if you just sit there silently. Joe: It's the complete opposite. Segall contrasts this with his time working on the Intel account. At Intel, they had these formal, bureaucratic processes. They even had a quarterly "report card" system where the agency and client would grade each other's performance. It was all very managed, very polite, and ultimately, very inefficient. It created distance and stifled honest conversation. Lewis: So Apple's approach, while sometimes harsh, was designed to keep the conversation raw and real by keeping the group tiny. Joe: And to make sure the ultimate decision-maker was always in the room. Jobs didn't delegate major marketing decisions. He insisted on being the first person to see the creative work, even before his own marketing executives. He didn't want anyone filtering ideas for him. He wanted to see the raw potential himself. This was his "Top 100" philosophy in action—he believed he could only truly know and trust about 100 people to run the company, and he wanted to be in direct contact with them. Lewis: So it's about minimizing the number of layers between an idea and the person who can say "yes." Joe: Precisely. The quality of work, Segall argues, increases in direct proportion to the involvement of the ultimate decision-maker. Small, smart groups with the boss in the room. That was the formula.

Lewis: Alright, so you have this culture of brutal honesty and small, focused teams. How does that actually translate into a product that I, the customer, would notice? Joe: It translates into things so iconic we don't even think about them anymore. It’s the reason Apple products feel different. Let's talk about the iMac. This was the product that announced Apple's comeback. The company was near bankruptcy, and this was their shot. Lewis: The colorful, curvy computer that looked like nothing else on the market. Joe: That's the one. And the name, "iMac," feels so perfect, so inevitable now. But Segall tells the story of the fight to get that name. He was in the room when they were trying to name this revolutionary new computer. And do you know what Steve Jobs's preferred name was? Lewis: I'm almost afraid to ask. Joe: MacMan. Lewis: (Bursts out laughing) MacMan? Seriously? It sounds like a budget superhero from the 80s! "Here to fight the evil forces of beige-box computing!" Joe: I'm not kidding. Jobs was inspired by the Sony Walkman, one of his favorite products, and he was dead set on "MacMan." Segall and his team were horrified. They knew it was a terrible name. So they went back and brainstormed. They came up with "iMac" – the "i" for internet, individual, imagination. It was simple, elegant, and futuristic. Lewis: And Jobs loved it immediately, right? Joe: He hated it. His exact words were, "I hate them all. ‘MacMan’ is better." He rejected it outright. But Segall and his team believed in the name. They knew it was right. So they did something very brave. In the next meeting, they presented it to him again. They just kept putting it in front of him, arguing for its simplicity and meaning. Lewis: That takes guts, to tell Steve Jobs he's wrong twice. Joe: It does. But eventually, the simplicity of it won him over. He finally relented. And that one simple letter, the "i," went on to define an entire era of technology: iPod, iPhone, iTunes, iPad. It all started with a fight against "MacMan." Lewis: That's incredible. It shows that simplicity isn't the default. It's not the easy path. It has to be fought for, even against the instincts of the genius in the room. Joe: That's the core lesson of the book. It’s the same principle that led to the iPhone having only one button on the front. Or the story of Jobs designing the iDVD software. The engineers had this complex interface, and Jobs walked to a whiteboard, drew a single box with a single button that said "Burn," and said, "That's it. That's what we're going to make."

Joe: So you see the chain, right? The philosophy of the Simple Stick—this brutal demand for clarity—leads to a culture of brutal honesty and small, focused teams. And that culture, in turn, creates the products and marketing that feel so effortlessly simple to us. But as Segall shows, it's anything but effortless. It's a constant, brutal war against complexity. Lewis: It really makes you look at every product differently. You start to see the layers of bureaucracy, or the lack thereof. You see the meetings, the compromises, the fights that must have happened. It makes me wonder, what's one thing in our own work or life that we're overcomplicating, that could use a 'Simple Stick'? Joe: That's a great question for everyone listening. It's easy to admire Apple's simplicity, but it's hard to live it. The natural human tendency, as Segall points out, is to add another feature, another person to the meeting, another word to the sentence. Resisting that is the real challenge. Lewis: It’s a powerful idea. Maybe the first step is just to start asking the question Steve Jobs asked: "Why is this here? Is it essential?" Joe: I think that's the perfect takeaway. We'd love to hear what our listeners think. Find us on our social channels and share one thing you'd simplify. What would you hit with the Simple Stick? Lewis: I'm starting with my inbox. It's about to get a whole lot simpler. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.