The Breakfast Test
Jony Ive, Apple’s longtime design head, used cornflakes and coffee to shape one of the world’s most innovative teams
Imagine showing up to work, not at a polished office, but at your colleague’s house. You take off your shoes at the door. Their child’s drawing is pinned to the fridge. The table where you sketch today is also where they eat dinner each night. The lighting is soft, the space smells faintly of coffee and wood, and the atmosphere is warm in a way no conference room can replicate.
What happens when teams move beyond function and embrace the human?
In a rare public appearance on May 6th, 2025, Sir Jony Ive sat across from Stripe founder Patrick Collison at the company's Stripe Sessions event. The legendary designer shared insights into team dynamics and leadership that rarely surface in product mythology.
This is the second essay in a short series I’m writing to unpack ideas from that conversation. If the first piece explored our responsibilities as creators, this one turns to the people we create with: our teams.
Beyond Talent: The Group vs. Team Distinction
Because to make something iconic—like the iPhone, iMac, or iPad—aesthetic vision isn’t enough. You need what Ive called “extraordinary creative teams.” That, he said, was always his real goal.
But building those kinds of teams takes more than talent. Many leaders recruit brilliant individuals and end up with just that—a group of talented people. But not a team. And in my experience, you can feel the difference almost immediately.
Trust is what transforms a group into a team. And Jony Ive discovered that some of the most powerful tools for building trust weren’t strategies at all—they were rituals. Ordinary, almost invisible gestures that softened boundaries and redefined connection. These weren’t once-a-year off-sites or trust falls. They were breakfasts and house visits. Daily cues that rewove the emotional fabric of one of the world’s most innovative teams.
Jony shared two rituals that struck me as so simple, I found myself thinking: how had this never occurred to me?
Making for Each Other
"It’s very good to make things for each other."
-Jony Ive
This quote describes one of the few team strategies at Apple that actually worked. “Make things for each other” is not about productivity—it was about presence. About generosity. About the radical shift that occurs when your daily connection to teammates begins not with status updates, but with the question: What can I make for them?
This small reversal—from inward to outward, from self to team—is where trust begins. In making for each other, team members enter a state of vulnerability and care. You become more worried about others than yourself. And when someone gives you something they made, "that puts you in a lovely place. It makes you vulnerable and it makes them grateful. And that’s a lot, isn’t it?" he said. It doesn’t matter how imperfect it is; it evokes gratitude.
So Ive shared two rituals that I found beautiful.
The Breakfast Ritual
Take breakfast, for example. Every Friday, one member of the design team was asked to make breakfast for the others. It didn’t need to be gourmet. "I’m talking cornflakes and milk," Ive laughed. "We saw dizzying heights of some of the food, and some of it was so shocking. But it all came from the same place in terms of motivation."
This rotating ritual did something that team-building workshops rarely achieve: it leveled the room. Everyone, regardless of seniority, took their turn at the stove or the cereal box. And everyone received the same gesture of care. There was humor—yes—but also humility. The breakfast wasn’t just a meal; it was a shared vulnerability, a cultural glue.
When leaders seek to build culture, they often look to values or mission statements. But values are abstract until they’re enacted. Culture is what we repeatedly do. And here, culture tasted like toast and coffee, served by a colleague who might design the next iPhone.
Designing in Living Rooms
Few people thrive under the hum of fluorescent lights in windowless rooms. Ive recognized it as well, and that’s why he introduced a ritual of hosting: the team would take turns spending an entire workday in one another’s homes. “It was a very powerful way of doing good work and building the team,” he said.
The setup was simple. One week, it might be your place. The next, someone else’s. But each time, the effect was the same. The host felt slightly anxious—self-conscious about their space (imagine inviting some of the world’s most talented designers into your living room!). The guests, meanwhile, behaved more thoughtfully, attuned to the domestic rhythm rather than the sterile cadence of office life.
And this shift mattered. Because as Ive pointed out, when you're sitting on someone’s sofa with your sketchbook on their coffee table, you work differently. You design differently. You think about people differently. The human stakes of the work feel closer, more immediate. You’re no longer in a featureless room of whiteboards and swivel chairs. You’re in a space shaped by actual living.
“If you are designing for people and you are in someone's living room... of course, you think differently, don't you?” Ive said.
That’s the point. Human-centered design requires human-centered environments. When we create space for emotional connection, we create the conditions for more attuned, more generous work.
Trust Is Tangible
I speak to leaders. I hear what they say. I listen to employees, too. And often, what echoes loudest is the absence of trust—not just in what’s said, but in what isn’t. You feel it in the silences, the side glances, the smallest gestures.
If you want innovation—if you want real creativity—you need trust. And chances are, you’ve felt the absence of it. Maybe in your own team.
The data reflects this quiet crisis: 25% of employees don’t trust their employer. 38% don’t trust their coworkers. And 43% say they don’t feel connected to the people they work with1.
If we’re serious about creating for people, we have to begin with trust. That applies not just to teams—but to the technologies they build.
Maybe that’s why, by the time you read this, you’ve already heard about OpenAI’s acquisition of Jony Ive’s new AI company. Because if we’re building intelligence meant to serve all of us, we need more than algorithms. We need extraordinary creative teams—grounded in empathy, care, and connection.
That’s what Jony Ive built at Apple. And he didn’t do it with grand strategies. He did it with simple rituals.
Ive offers a deeply human way to begin addressing the trust gap—not through policy, but through practice. You don’t have to start hosting workdays in your living room. But you can begin with two shifts that matter: make something for someone else. And make it a ritual.
These small acts—breakfasts, shared spaces, gestures of presence—point to a simple truth: trust isn’t a principle. It’s a practice. It’s not built by slogans, but by repetition. By vulnerability. Reciprocity. And the everyday courage to show others they matter.
So ask yourself: What can I make for my team? What ritual could I introduce that reminds people they’re valued—not just for what they do, but for who they are?
Maybe it’s breakfast. Maybe it’s a walk. Maybe it’s a conversation in a less expected place.
Because the most lasting innovation doesn’t start with technology. It starts with trust.
Stay tuned for the next essay in this series, where we’ll continue exploring the subtle, human-centered practices that help creative teams build cultures of meaning—and resilience.
If helping your teams create with meaning, this is what I talk about. In my keynotes, I help leaders and organizations reframe mistakes—not as setbacks, but as catalysts for innovation. Curious to explore how this could help your team? Let’s talk
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Thanks
Nir
https://www.hrdive.com/news/employees-trust-pwc-report/710554
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markcperna/2022/07/19/employees-want-more-friends-at-work-why-arent-they-finding-them