John Sculley On How Steve Jobs Got Fired From Apple | Forbes

those are really great questions and they're ones that I've thought about a lot first of all it's always useful to have context I was hired as CEO but I was really recruited to be Steve's partner I didn't know any about building computers Steve didn't at that age know much about running companies Apple had failed with Lisa had failed with the Apple three the Apple 2 was near end-of-life the company needed cash flow in order to finance the development of the Macintosh which wasn't expected to be profitable for several years even after it was launched I came a year before it was ready for the market and Steve focused on creating what Apple was going to be in the future my job was turned the Apple 2 around and get it generating as much cash as possible which we did very successfully the thing that led to the huge disagreement caused it I'm always surprised that people never ask the question how could two individuals like Steve Jobs and I who were supposedly inseparable we were together all the time we were great personal friends how could we end up in one of these amazing celebrated clashes and it was pretty simple I came from a world of public company accountability to a board to shareholders and when the Macintosh office which was the next version of the Mac that was introduced in 1985 failed Steve went into a deep depression over it because this was really important to him and it really wasn't his fault it was all about Moore's law Moore's law is a very predictable consistent law that says that every roughly 12 to 18 months the number of transistors doubles and therefore the performance processing power of a computer doubles and the reality was that the Macintosh office just was not powerful enough but nothing to deal with Apple had to do with the stage of where a microprocessor technology was it just couldn't do very much it was being called a toy it was being ridiculed in the market we did just introduce laser printing to find beautiful fonts it was slow and Steve was discouraged and so Steve came to me and he said I want to drop the price of the Macintosh and I want to move the advertising shift a large portion of it away from the Apple to over to the Mac and I said Steve it's not going to make any difference the reason the Mac is not selling has nothing to do with the price or with the advertising and if you do that we risk throwing the company into a loss and he just totally disagreed with me and so I said well I'm going to go to the board and he said I don't believe you'll do it I said watch me and so we went to the Board of Directors and we each presented our case and the Board met with us each individually and then they assign the vice-chairman third co-founder of Apple Mike Markkula to go and study the question and talk to the various executives and engineers and then come back not to me not to Steve but come back to the board and give his report and Mike Markkula did that in about seven or eight days later he came back to the board he said I agree with John I don't agree with Steve and so the board then brought Steve and me together and they said Steve we want you to step down from running the Macintosh division not get fired you know you're still chairman you're still the largest shareholder but not not get fired now let's put it in hindsight the other part of your question what would have happened if we hadn't have had that showdown what I didn't appreciate at the time I think I do now is how emotional how deeply set the values are of a founder who was on pursuit of a noble cause and absolutely believes passionately believes that they're going to change the world and here is this professional executive coming in and thinking about well how are the shareholders going to react how the analyst is going to react what do we do as a public corporation and I did not have the breadth of experience at that time to really appreciate just how different leadership is when you are shaping an industry as Bill Gates did or Steve Jobs did versus when you are a competitor in an industry in a public company where you don't make mistakes because if you lose you're out so coming from a completely different world that I now understand but I didn't at the time I really blame the board because I think the board understood Apple before I came they understood Steve they knew what my experience was and what it wasn't and I really believe there could have been a solution to keep Steve and me working together because we were very good friends up until that that point and I had no interest to take over his company I'm in fact I said to Steve I said hey Steve this is your company it's not mine you can have it back but I'm not going to stand here is a public company CEO and have us make decisions like that without having the board vote just not going to do it so my sense is that there could have been a different outcome I feel most badly though was after 10 years I was at the company and I wanted to go back to the to New York where I was from and why I didn't go to Steve Jobs and say Steve you know let's figure out how you can come back and lead your company I didn't do that there was a terrible mistake in my part I can't figure out why I didn't have the wisdom to do that but but I didn't and as life has it shortly after that I was fired because I refused to license the Macintosh technologies I thought it would drive Apple towards bankruptcy and so I had the experience of learning about entrepreneurialism about visionary founders and the great talents that Steve had but he was not a great executive back in those early days this great Steve Jobs that we know today is maybe the world's you know greatest CEO of certainly of our era he learned a lot in those years in the wilderness it next and building Pixar into a great company and when he came back to Apple he was obviously a very seasoned you know much more experienced executive and I think that actually in the last 20 years Ronnie said I'm a professional executive actually Ronnie for 20 years I haven't been a professional executive I try to stay off the radar screen but I actually own a number of companies I'm an entrepreneur I don't run any of them anymore but I mentor talented CEOs and I think that those lessons that I got along the way going back to your questions are the ones that have shaped my life for the last 20 years well that's a great question and a great response

Channel: Forbes

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Id: f8V4XhtQ4H8

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 09 2013