One reason we managed to put together an outstanding team to create the iPod was that our team could get relatively outsized stock and bonus plans that they couldn’t get anywhere else at Apple. The other important reason was that we had Steve Jobs fully behind us. Those two things allowed us to recruit amazing people—even though we couldn’t tell them what they’d be working on before they signed on—and survive the internal antibodies. Steve

gave our tiny team an unfair advantage—gave us air cover and dropped bombs if anyone messed with us. There were times when the internal antibodies at Apple tried to expel us from the organization—we’d constantly hear “We have other priorities, we’ll help you if we have time.” Or “Why are we doing this project—it’s not core to our business.” But as long as our team was making reasonable (or unreasonable but important) requests, the teams who were stalling us would get a call from Steve. “If they’re asking for something, then give it to them for Christ’s sake! This is very important for the company!

Part 6: Be CEO

“In 2014, just before the Google acquisition, Nest spent around $250,000 per employee per year. That included decent office space, good health insurance, the occasional free lunch, and fun perks from time to time.

After we were acquired, that number shot up to $475,000 per person. Some of the increase was due to corporate red tape and increased salaries and benefits, but a lot of it was the added perks of free buses, free breakfast, lunch and dinner, tons of junk food, gleaming conference rooms with full A/V setups, and new office buildings. Even IT was expensive. It cost $10,000 per year to connect each employee’s computer to the Google Network and that didn’t even include the price of the laptop.

The Google teams with whom we’d planned to integrate and codevelop technologies and products were reluctant to work with us. They kept asking their execs for more details to figure out if they really had to help us at the expense of their own projects. Why? Why? Why do we have to help a team that isn’t Google? Over the subsequent months, every time we had to clarify yet again for customers that Nest was separate from Google, our internal reputation took another hit.

I should have remembered what it was like at Apple during the very first months when we started building the iPod. It just didn’t occur to me—Nest was so much bigger and more established than my tiny iPod team, I thought this was a completely different situation. But it was exactly the same. Back then Apple’s executive antibodies saw us coming to take their time and draw away their resources, so they tried to block our way and ignore our requests.

That’s when Steve Jobs gave us air cover, dropped bombs on the teams who were slowing us down, forced the issue, yelled sometimes to make sure we got what we needed. Steve Jobs fighting for us was ultimately what allowed us to succeed.

As chapter 5 shows, the Million Hours Campaign led by Pushkala Subramanian at pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca succeeded because it blended the two approaches to free up employees’ time. Top-down changes included adding steps before employees could “reply all” to more than twenty-five email recipients—users had to pause, read a warning, and do an extra click. That little speed bump saved employees from thousands of unnecessary emails.

Venture capitalist Michael Dearing fires up this way of thinking by urging leaders to act as “editor in chief” of their organizations. When Michael was a guest on our Friction podcast, he argued, much like skilled text and film editors, the best leaders are relentless about eliminating or repairing things that distract, bore, bewilder, or exhaust people.