I wrote a detailed post here on Apple after reading Adam Lashinsky wonderful Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired—and Secretive—Company Really Works.  Adam is a Senior Editor at Fortune and we've had intermittent conversations and email exchanges over the years about Apple and broader leadership and organizational issues.  Now we are doing it in front of a live audience in Palo Alto on Thursday April 5th at the Churchill Club -- it is at 7:30 AM, bright and early.  Here is the description, but the key thing to know is that Adam and I are planning to have a conversation and, after awhile, to invite the audience to join us:

Adam Lashinsky, Sr. Editor-At-Large at Fortune and author of the new book, Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired—and Secretive—Company Really Works teams up with Bob Sutton, Stanford professor and author of Good Boss, Bad Boss and The No Asshole Rule, to discuss and share insights into the secret systems, tactics and leadership and innovation strategies that made Apple the world's most valuable company. Among the questions they will address: How are Apple's attributes different from other companies? What can companies large and small learn and potentially replicate?

We hope to see you there, although I should warn you that admission isn't cheap ($34 for members and $54 for non-members).  I am looking forward to this because Adam is such a thoughtful guy and, as always, I love thinking and learning about leadership and management issues.

In particular, one of my takeaways from reading Inside Apple was that the company has done a brilliant job of eliminating needless cognitive load on people by giving them focused and clear responsibilities, keeping teams small, and -- weirdly-- by having a culture of secrecy (because members aren't distracted by a whole bunch of information they would get in a more "transparent" company). So the book offers interesting lessons on scaling-up excellence. To be clear, I am not advocating that every leader and company should adopt Apple's ways, but it is intriguing and instructive.