Field test 002 · Actualizer identification
TheSteve JobsTest
Vision is not the enemy. Consequence-free vision is.
Before I teach this to 24-year-old men, I need to issue a warning.
Do not cargo-cult Steve Jobs.
His abrasiveness was not the source of his power. His black shirt was not the source of his power. His impatience was not the source of his power.
The signal was ownership, consequence, scar tissue, and artifacts.
A man can be an asshole and produce nothing. A gentle person can be an extraordinary actualizer.
Do not copy the costume. Learn to recognize the relationship between an idea and the person carrying it into Actual.
Have You Tasted the Banana?
Let me give you a way to recognize an actualizer.
In 1992, Steve Jobs was speaking at MIT when he discovered that some of the students in the room were consultants.
His first response was a joke at their expense. Everybody laughed. Then Jobs explained himself, and the explanation was much more interesting than the insult.
His problem was not that consultants were stupid. It was not that they lacked education. It was not even that their recommendations were necessarily wrong.
His problem was that they often did not own the consequences.
They entered a company, studied something, made recommendations, produced their slides, and left.
Jobs argued that unless you own something over an extended period, carry your recommendations through implementation, make mistakes, recover from those mistakes, and accumulate what he called “scar tissue,” you learn only a fraction of what you could have learned. MIT Sloan preserves the talk and its context.
Then he gave one of the best analogies I have ever heard.
Consulting, he said, can give you an extremely accurate picture of a banana. Then a picture of a peach. Then some grapes. Eventually the walls are covered with pictures.
You can tell your friends that you have worked in bananas, peaches, and grapes.
There is only one problem.
You never tasted the banana.
That is the Steve Jobs Test.
Pictures Versus Scar Tissue
This distinction is much bigger than consulting.
You are going to encounter people for the rest of your life who have extraordinarily sophisticated pictures of bananas.
They know startup terminology. AI terminology. Venture capital terminology. Leadership terminology.
They have frameworks. Decks. Strategies. Visions. Podcasts.
They can explain exactly what should happen.
Ask them one question:
What happened?
Not what should happen.
Not what could happen.
Not what you intend to happen.
What happened?
What did you make? What shipped? What broke? What did the customer reject? What did you change? What mistake cost you six months? What did you believe that turned out to be completely wrong?
Show me the scar tissue.
Now you are talking to an actualizer.
The Idea Had Steve Jobs
I want to use the word possessed very precisely.
Steve Jobs did not merely have an idea.
The idea had Steve Jobs.
We normally say, “I have an idea.”
Reverse it.
An idea has you.
You become its temporary body. Its hands. Its eyes. Its voice. Its ambassador to Actual.
The idea cannot manufacture a phone. It cannot machine aluminum, write an operating system, formulate glass, argue with an engineer, or throw away twelve months of work because the artifact is wrong.
It needs an actualizer.
Jobs became one of those actualizers.
This helps explain why his behavior sometimes appeared irrational to people whose primary concerns were organizational harmony, career advancement, conventional management practice, or quarterly convenience.
He could see the circle.
Everyone else was still drawing it.
The Perfect Circle
Imagine that somewhere in the realm of ideas exists the perfect circle.
Nobody invented it. Nobody owns it. It is simply the idea of Circle.
Perfect.
Now give ten people pencils.
They begin drawing circles.
None of them is perfect.
So they try again.
And again.
And again.
This is actualization.
The perfect circle does not need another presentation explaining circles.
It needs somebody willing to draw.
At Apple, this process could become extreme. A 2008 Fortune profile described the degree of attention required even for details such as the curve of a screw and the apparent weight of a connector door. The same profile documented Apple’s severe focus on a small number of products.
Do not misunderstand the lesson.
Being brutal does not make you Steve Jobs.
Being obsessive does not make you Steve Jobs.
Wearing black does not make you Steve Jobs.
Being rude to engineers certainly does not make you Steve Jobs.
Those are surface characteristics.
The important characteristic was the relationship between the idea and the artifact.
There was always another circle on the table.
Throw Away a Year
Here is the part I want you to notice.
During development of the original iPhone, Apple had spent about a year pursuing an enclosure design when Jobs concluded that he did not love it.
So the team threw the work away.
A year.
Jobs told the team that the most important product they had ever built was wrong and that they would have to start again with less time remaining.
According to Jobs, the team answered: “Sign us up.” Fortune recorded his account in the 2008 interview.
That is not hopium.
That is scar tissue.
That is an idea applying pressure to Actual through a group of actualizers.
The artifact was wrong.
Therefore the artifact changed.
The sunk cost did not get a vote.
A Job Title Is Not a Verdict
Before every consultant in the room gets angry with me, understand this:
Consultant is a job title. Hopium dealer is a behavior.
An engineer can be a hopium dealer.
A founder can be a hopium dealer.
A professor can be a hopium dealer.
An AI researcher can be a hopium dealer.
And a consultant who takes responsibility for implementation, owns the result, stays with the problem, and accumulates scar tissue can be an actualizer.
Do not classify people by profession.
Classify them by their relationship with Actual.
In a 2008 Fortune interview, Jobs put Apple’s product orientation plainly: “We do no market research. We just want to make great products.” The point was not that information is useless. It was that Apple accepted the burden of deciding, building, and discovering whether the result deserved to exist.
Vision Is Not Hopium
There is another trap here.
Steve Jobs obviously had vision.
Extraordinary vision.
Having a vision is not hopium.
The question is what the vision does to you.
Hopium gives you pleasure.
A serious idea gives you work.
Hopium says, “Imagine how incredible this will be.”
An idea that has taken possession of an actualizer says, “Wrong. Again.”
That is an entirely different relationship.
The big idea is not soothing.
It is demanding.
It creates a condition that Actual has not yet satisfied.
Therefore there is work to do.
The Steve Jobs Archive opens its collection of his words with his belief that one way to express appreciation for humanity is to make something wonderful and put it into the world. The archive also records how consistently he returned to results, products, care, and the people who shipped them.
That is why money does not adequately explain the intensity of his behavior. Money was real. It was not the whole engine.
Look for the artifact.
Use the test on people who want your money, your attention, your labor, or your belief. Use it on yourself most of all.
Ask for the event, not the intention.
Find the decision that survived contact with reality.
Look for errors, reversals, consequences, and scar tissue.
Ask to see the artifact that crossed into history.
Do Not Follow the Money
I do not want you studying Steve Jobs primarily because he became extraordinarily wealthy.
That is studying the exhaust coming out of the engine.
Study the engine.
There are billionaires who are extraordinary actualizers.
There are extraordinary actualizers who will never become billionaires.
Wealth is not the test.
Fame is not the test.
Charisma is not the test.
Being a founder is not the test.
Being difficult is certainly not the test.
The test is: What happens around this person?
Do ideas become artifacts? Does language become code? Do sketches become machines? Do concepts become companies? Do hypotheses become experiments? Do problems become solutions?
Does this person continually leave behind evidence that something passed through them into history?
Now you are looking at an actualizer.
Do Not Romanticize Dysfunction
Once you understand this, you will begin noticing the strange ones.
Their hierarchy of concerns can be different. They may care surprisingly little about status, titles, approval, looking smart, being included, winning every argument, or protecting an existing job.
They are occupied.
Something has them.
Be careful here.
Do not romanticize dysfunction.
A person being socially awkward, narcissistic, disagreeable, or irresponsible is not evidence that some magnificent idea has chosen him.
Look for the artifact.
Always return to the artifact.
Where is the circle?
That question will save you from a tremendous amount of bullshit.
Stop talking.
Pick up the pencil.
There is a circle waiting to be drawn.