Creating Great Products w/ Glenn Reid
We all know the saying “Everyone loves a winner.” It’s a notion that applies to sports and business. When things are going great for a team or a company, everyone wants to be a part of it.
When I was running Cree and we were being praised for our breakthrough products, everyone wanted to be on our team. The number of people applying for jobs went through the roof.
But that also created a problem for us: How could we tell who really wanted to do the work to solve the hard problems, and who just wanted to tell people they were on a winning team?
To get past this, I would often ask interview candidates: “Is your job title important to you?” It was an open-ended question that people generally reacted to in one of two ways. Some would respond that they didn’t care what the title was, while others made it clear that the title was important for them to effectively do their job.
It was a way for me to see if the person wanted to join our team for the right reasons, and I never made an offer to someone who was worried about their title.
On this episode, I talk with Glenn Reid who has spent the last 30 years solving some of those really hard problems, including developing iPhoto and iMovie, while working for technology companies like Apple and Adobe. He is now working on his next venture, bringing innovation to your laundry room through his company Marathon Laundry Machines.
Glenn encountered some of the same challenges around hiring good people once the companies he worked for became famous. His philosophy was
“Are you making a withdrawal or are you making a deposit. And a lot of people want jobs where they are making withdrawals ...as opposed to what can I bring into your company and do?”
Glenn has seen the power of innovation first hand and worked directly with some of the greatest innovators like Steve Jobs.
He’s solved enough difficult problems to understand what it really takes and shares some incredible insight with us, such as:
“Innovation at its core means something new. And not everything new is good. I’m actually anti-innovation in some ways...being thoughtful about what you are changing and why is an important piece of innovation”
“Epic failures happen if you cling too long to an idea that wasn’t good and it takes you a long time to realize it”
And
“You don’t need more than 3 people to do anything...you don’t want lots of mediocre people, you want 3 good people”
Please check out the episode in the above link. If you have an opinion on these topics, please feel free to email us through the contact page. The best ideas often stem from the intersection of different points of view. The episode is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you listen to podcasts. Enjoy!
