Anne Morriss

Yeah, no, in our experience, this is not an intellectually difficult idea, but what's hard in execution is to really have the stomach for it.

All right, Frances, let's start this conversation with an example, because I feel like this is an idea that people really need to touch and feel to internalize.

Kids, ask your parents what that was.

But am I hearing this right, Frances?

So Jobs and his team of incredible designers, they imagined this machine that had never existed before, right?

That was the lightest laptop ever with this beautiful design.

And in order...

to deliver on this thing that they wanted most, right?

This radically lightweight, beautiful design.

They had to give up some other things.

Now, the example of the CD-ROM is literally something they gave up, right?

There was no CD-ROM.

But the other provocative part was that there were other things that they had to include.

They had no choice but to include them, like a battery, right, that was good enough, but it wasn't great.

I love that because we, you know, what am I not going to do?

That is like a famous definition of strategy.

But what we hear a lot less about is what am I going to do but not do very well?

And I think that is the emotionally hard part of what you're describing.

It's more difficult, quite honestly.

The other example that brings this to life for me is the impossible triangle.