RT @LenKendall: Watch Steve Jobs brainstorm (via @yurivictor)

Steve Jobs wasn’t known for his sense of fun, but he was always at the centre of everything Apple did. Over his extraordinary career, he learnt the same lesson I have – that even when you’re successful, it is vital that you don’t solely lead your company from a distance. Walk the floor, get to know your people. Even though I don’t run Virgin’s companies on a day-to-day basis any more, I still find it crucial to get out and about among our staff. No one has a monopoly on good ideas or good advice, so as a leader you should always be listening. Be visible, note down what you hear and you’ll be surprised how much you learn.

‘’Before all else, I learned all these playthings were not mere idle trifles invented by manufacturers and dealers for the purposes of gain.  They were, on the contrary, a little or, rather, a big world, authoritative and beautiful, many sided, containing a multiplicity of things all of which had the one and only aim of serving love, refining the senses, giving life to the dead world around us, endowing it in a magical way with new instruments of love, from powder and scent to the dancing show, from ring to cigarette case, from waist buckle to handbag.  This bag was no bag, this purse no purse, flowers no flowers, the fan no fan.  All were the plastic material of love, of magic and delight.  Each was a messenger, a smuggler, a weapon, a battle cry.’’

Stay hungry, stay foolish people! Naivety about how things should be lets you see how things really could be.

“But I think the one thing that sets apart our stores and Apple, is fundamentally two types of people in the world, in my view. There are believers and there are skeptics. Apple is filled with believers. And believers tend to think of what can be, and they just go do it, and they don’t spend time asking why not. They go and make it happen.” — Johnson, 2004