Tuesday 4 November 2014

A clip of Steve Jobs talking about how companies with a monopoly can fail has surfaced




It's a great clip. He used Xerox as an example of how a technology company with a monopoly fails when sales and marketing people are in charge, instead of product people. 
 ‘And the product people get driven out of decision making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. It’s the product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position. And it gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it in to a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers.’ 

This really applies to education. When the sales and marketing people (SLT) begin to care only about targets and Ofsted, they lose track at what makes a school really successful - the product people (the teachers). Lose the innovation and you lose the children. 

 Let teachers teach.