Article Review
The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs
(Isaacson, 2012)
Preface:
Walter Isaacson, an American author, journalist and professor, wrote a biography on Steve Jobs, one of the co-founders of the Apple company, after his death in 2011. Steve Jobs is appreciated for his unchallenging leadership in the business field globally and praised as a game changer (Steinwart & Ziegler, 2014). In the biography, Isaacson described 14 leadership practices adopted by Steve Jobs which are considered to be imitated by every leader in any organization. This review is done on the article written by the same author in Harvard Business Review under the topic ‘The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs’ as a narrative interpretation of the biography. In this review, a brief restating of the facts is done, and a critical analysis is carried out to add up a knowledge brick to leadership development and broadly in organization management.
The author mentions four important years to indicate four crucial events of Steve Jobs’ life– cofounded Apple company in 1976, sacked out from the company in 1985, returned to the company in 1997 and died in 2011. Steve was among the great innovators who applied his imaginative capacity to transform the technology and business sector through direct contribution in seven industries related to computers and allied components. The author mentions that the biography written by him on Steve Jobs was perceived differently; some find it meaningful to draw management lessons while many focused too much on rough edges of Steve’s personality. Author criticizes the second group of people as having no experience in entrepreneurship. Steve brought passion, intensity, extreme emotionalism, petulance and impatience in his everyday life that were reflected in the products he created. The author mentions at one point the response of Steve Jobs on his rough behaviour that Steve linked this with the results in place. Steve had a belief that company is expanding well and the staff are also satisfied despite his tendency to be rough on them.
Considering what Steve accomplished, the author identifies fourteen leadership traits in Steve Jobs that can be replicated by other CEOs of different organizations as the keys to success.
1) Focus:
Isaacson claims that focus was ingrained in Steve’s personality and he was trying to avoid distractions. He mobilized his team in the company to focus on only four computers rather than having several versions of Macintosh. Steve used to take a white board to produce focus and completely control the situations. He used to prepare a two-by-two matrix in white board to get ideas on focused items. During 1997 when he returned to Apple company, he wanted to have an assessment with his colleagues to get four great products. He prepared the matrix like below for the process:
|
|
Consumer
|
Pro |
|
Desktop |
|
|
|
Portable |
|
|
He also
used to ask colleagues while in retreat each year to make a list of 10 things
they should be doing next and chose finally only first three things. He had
also suggested the google company to focus which they followed in 2012. The author
here tries to express Steve’s inclination to focus on mission, great outcomes,
priorities and what can be done.
Steve
led Apple company highlighted importance of simplicity, a deep simplicity not
the superficial simplicity. It means to go for a simple technology, we need to
go deeper. Steve wanted simplicity that comes from conquering not from ignoring
complexity. For instance, any product that requires a screw on it, may become a
convoluted and complex structure if the screw is not used. Steve wanted to have
the products that require minimum effort to operate and even a layman could
start it easily. But he was equally conscious on the fact that making something
simple is itself a hard work which needs understanding of underlying challenges
in a true manner and deciding the sophisticated solutions. The final conclusion
on this is that simplicity is required at customer side while detail
investigations and efforts are required at the manufacturing side.
3) Take Responsibility End to End:
Unlike
Google in past years and Microsoft in 1980s allowed their operating systems to
be used by various hardware manufacturers, Steve was a strong believer of
integrating hardware, software and peripheral devices together to make Apple
ecosystem. He was not in favour of using Apple software on another company’s
hardware and using unapproved apps or content to avoid negative effects on
Apple’s fame. As he had a belief that people have no time to integrate their
computers and devices, the company should take the responsibility of end to end
services for long term sustainability of the business though in short run, it
may not be profitable.
Steve
manufactured first the iMac which had problems associated with music as it was
only considered for photos and videos, not for the music. He used his
transformative thinking and prepared iPod instead of upgrading the iMac.
Likewise, when he realized that the mobile phone makers could win the race
adding music players on it, he slowed down the iPod sale by creating iPhone.
The both the cases are examples of leapfrogging or transformation which
eventually made the Apple company successfully run its business. The message
here to others is that an innovative company should not only focus on new ideas
but also should know how to leapfrog or transform when required instead of
simply catching up.
The
author mentions that Steve was more inclined to creating great products than
profit maximization or cost trade-offs. He believed that focus should be making
the product great which eventually gives profits. Unlike his notion, the author
mentions that John Sculley, who ran Apple when Steve was not in the company in
most of the years, directed the company through a different approach which he
adopted in Pepsi company. The approach of profit maximization did not work and
later on when Steve re-joined, he shifted the focus again on to making
innovative products. So, this is also another management lessons to others to
prioritize products rather than profits.
Another
thrilling approach adopted by Steve Jobs in his company is creating demands
rather than focusing only a section of customers or a focus group. He believed
that customers might not have idea about the new products until the products
are shown to them. The conventional approach of market research might not work
for the purpose as the customers would choose a horse instead of a new brand
vehicle if they don’t know about it. Here, Steve focuses on intuition and
instincts obtained through accumulated experiential wisdom. He seemed to take
himself or colleagues as a focus group instead of following conventional market
research guidelines.
Steve
had an attitude of pushing people to do the impossible or speed up the process
so that the existing reality could be changed. He was a believer of performing
extraordinary feats. He used to say, “You did the impossible because you did
not realize it was impossible”. The author gives two examples, interaction of
Steve with the engineer Larry Kenyon for speeding up machine booting and with
the CEO of Corning Wendell Weeks for shipment of “Gorilla glass” in time to
prove that Steve used to ask something extraordinary. In both the examples, the
interacting people once did not have confidence on achieving their goals, but
Steve managed to encourage them to get the required result in time. Montgomery
(2008) insists that as the CEO--properly a company's chief strategist--translates purpose
into practice, he or she must remain open to the possibility that the purpose
itself may need to change.
8) Impute:
‘Impute’
term became the key doctrine of Steve Jobs throughout his life which was
suggested by his early mentor. Two statements “people form an opinion about a
product on how it is presented and packaged” and “people do judge a book by its
cover” signify the importance of imputing. Steve was very much sensitive on the
design aspects of the Apple products. He had been involved himself in the
designing process to impute a signal rather than to be only functional,
designed for signs and symbols than actual use. He had prioritized the
imputation work even though increase in production costs.
Steve
believed on perfection so used to go back to the drawing board if something
wasn’t perfect. Several events are discussed in the article to prove his
inclination towards perfectionism. For instance, before launching the Apple
store, his team slowed down every process to reorganize layouts of the stores.
Likewise, Steve directed his team to redesign iPhone which was initially
prepared taking entire nine months but was unsatisfactory to Steve due to
compromised display design. Similar case happened with iPad as well. This trend
of perfectionism in Steve’s life had inherited from his childhood when he was
working in his backyard with his father. He tried to keep the things not so
perfect in backyard fencing mentioning that nobody would see backyard. However,
his father gave him important lesson through an example that a great carpenter
is not going to use lousy wooed for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody
is going to see it. Steve was inspired from this and utilized the experience to
fine tune Apple II and Macintosh to make it look nice from every aspect.
As
stated earlier, Steve was tough with the colleagues working around him which
was not due to his bossy nature rather his passion and desire for best work. He
described his rough and tough behaviour as a natural phenomenon of a
middle-class which did not have much ideas on formality. People around him used
to claim that the way Steve behaving was not necessary but agreed that such
behaviour from Steve helped to track their work in a right and efficient way.
Steve was also inspirational which helped the employees to maintain abiding
passion to create better products and habituated them to have a belief that
they could accomplish every impossible task. Despite challenges, top employees
tended to stay longer under the leadership of Steve. He believed that expecting
great things from employees only gives great outcomes meaning that the
employees should be sound in their related field of expertise.
Steve
was strong believer of face-to-face meeting as he was fully aware about the
potential isolation using digital technologies. He was believing that the ideas
can’t be developed by email and iChat. He reportedly involved in the Pixar
building design to promote collaboration and face-to-face unplanned encounters
among employees of the company as he had a belief that the encounters would
eventually foster innovations.
Likewise,
Steve did not promote power point presentation which is an inevitable tool in
current days’ office business. He preferred thinking instead of using slides
presentations and engage instead of showing presentations.
Some
leaders are great at vision, and others know that the details are more
important. Steve had a capacity to deal with both large and miniature issues
with passion. He came up with great visions in 2000 and 2010 to enhance digital
technologies but at the same time, he was deliberately looking into fixing
shape and color of the screw inside the iMac, which indicated that Steve was
considering both macro and micro level activities.
This
is another characteristic of Steve Jobs that is somehow peculiar. He tried to
connect the humanities to sciences, creativity to technology, arts to
engineering. He mentioned that both poetry and processor could go together
which would eventually bring innovation. He believed that creativity can occur
when humanities joined together with sciences. Creativity and insight are essential to
forging a compelling organizational purpose; analysis alone will never suffice
(Montgomery, 2008). He used to end up every presentation at the product
launch program by showing the sign of intersection between liberal arts and
technology.
Perhaps
the most famous line of his lessons is stay hungry, stay foolish which means we
should not be satisfied but should keep striving. The author describes Steve
Jobs as a product of two great social movements, counterculture of hippies and
high-tech and hacker culture of Silicon Valley. He embraced both the culture
becoming a hippie, a rebel, a spiritual seeker, a phone phreaker, and an
electronic hobbyist. The phrase “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” is an inspiration to
keep a state of learning and open state of mind, perhaps like a child that
isn't ruined by a rigid mentality. If you're "hungry" and
"foolish," you are willing to learn. So, Steve was telling
people always be willing to learn new things.
Summary:
Through
the intense study of the article devoted to Steve Jobs’ leadership skills, it
is concluded the fourteen points of leadership lessons are crucial for the
leaders especially the CEOs of the different organization. As Steve Jobs
rightly pointed out that the people should be crazy enough to change the world,
the thinking perspective should also be different. The leadership lessons like
focus, simplify, when behind leapfrog, put products before profits, push for
perfection, know both big picture and the details, and stay foolish, stay
hungry can be applicable in any organization all the time as they are broadly
covered leadership lessons. However, leadership lessons like take
responsibility end to end, don’t be a slave to focus groups, bend reality,
impute, tolerate only “A” players, engage face-to-face and combine the
humanities with the sciences can be applied depending on the circumstances. For
instance, engage face-to-face may not always be applicable as in case of COVID
pandemic. Moreover, slide presentation would help to comprehensively cover topic
of discussion and prevent missing of any important areas of interest as it must
be planned earlier. The power point presentation might be easier for the
audience to understand the subjects with more clarity as more graphics can be
inserted which is not possible in face-to-face talk. Likewise, there may be some cases when a
target should be a focus group. In that case, the leadership lesson ‘Don’t be a
slave to focus group’ may not prevail. Further, his impatient, petulance and
rough behavior may not always helpful in every organization. So, his
leadership lessons should be considered carefully while leading the
organization depending upon the organizational set up, type of work, type of
product, and based on the circumstances.
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