Since Steve Jobs passed away, I’ve read a great many things about him that really struck me, but I haven’t written anything about it. I’ve been an appreciator of Apple products for over 20 years, and have been a user of them for at least 30. I admired his drive, genius, and passion greatly. But that’s not what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to talk about the need to let other people know that you appreciate their work. I was sort of inspired by this, but I was more inspired by a talk I heard this week.
The talk, presented by Donnie Berkholz, is called Assholes are killing your project. In it, he explains the corrosive effect that negative people have on a volunteer project. It doesn’t matter how productive they are individually, the toll they take on the volunteer community outweighs whatever good work they do on their own. In the talk, he mentions that research shows that on average five good interactions are required to make up for every bad interaction, so it’s very important to get rid of the assholes. What I also take away from that, though, is that we all need to take more responsibility for making up the gap with good interactions.
I will be the first to admit that while I am pretty good about thanking people who do things I appreciate, I’m not so great at handing out praise. I think that’s mostly projection — I’m not the best at receiving praise. But what I’m realizing is that being generous with sincere and meaningful praise is essential. A decision to be more forthcoming with praise puts the giver in a state of mind to be more observant of good things, which has to be good psychologically, and of course receiving praise offsets the negative reinforcement we’re bombarded with on a daily basis.
So, how do we become more liberal with praise? The mechanisms of social software make it easier than ever. You can Favorite things on Twitter and on Flickr. There are Facebook Like buttons and Google +1 buttons everywhere. And of course, you can leave positive feedback in comments or just send someone an email telling them that you appreciate their work. For more on that, I’d recommend Anil Dash’s post All in Favor. In the real world giving people a nice comment is easy enough if you try.
Praise and acknowledgement are not limited commodities. Everyone benefits if we are more generous with them.
Mike Daisey on Steve Jobs
I encourage you to read Mike Daisey’s New York Times op-ed eulogizing Steve Jobs. It is both tough and fair.
For what it’s worth, I think that Apple’s move toward a closed model of computing, which I have discussed before is justifiable as a technical choice. Is it what I would prefer? No. But it provides customers with both benefits and costs, and each of us can choose whether we think the tradeoffs are worth it.
The more damning indictment is that Steve Jobs failed to lead Apple to a more humane and fair labor arrangement when it comes to manufacturing its devices. I’ve written about that before as well. Apple generates huge amounts of cash — if they wanted to move all of their manufacturing to Long Island over the course of a decade, they could. Sure, it wouldn’t be easy, but it would be truly world changing. At a time when other technology companies are importing sweatshop conditions to America, it really would be a way to Think Different.
The death of Steve Jobs is, of course, sad, and is also notable. He is arguably the greatest businessman of his generation. If we’re going to dwell on it, it should be to reflect on which aspects of his legacy we should emulate and which we should discard.