"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."
"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith."
Biography of Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24, 1955, to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for adoption. Smart but directionless, Jobs experimented with different pursuits in his early career (such as being a typographer and a video game designer with Atari, a video game company at that time) before starting up Apple Computers alongside with Steve Wozniak in 1976. Apple's revolutionary products, which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now seen as dictating the evolution of modern technology and have changed on the way humans communicate. He died in 2011, following a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Leadership Traits
1. Focus: When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was producing a random array of computers and peripherals. After a few weeks of product review sessions, he shouted, “Stop!” “This is crazy.” Their job, he told his team members, was to focus on four great products. All other products should be cancelled. But by getting Apple to focus on making just four computers, he saved the company. “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” he told Isaacson. “That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.”
2. The Will to Simplify: Jobs’ Zen like ability to focus was accompanied by the related instinct to simplify things by zeroing in on their essence and eliminating unnecessary components. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” declared Apple’s first marketing brochure. During the design of the iPod interface, Jobs tried at every meeting to find ways to cut clutter. He insisted on being able to get to whatever he wanted in three clicks.
3. Taking of Responsibility: Jobs and Apple took end-to-end responsibility for the user experience—something too few companies do. From the performance of the ARM microprocessor in the iPhone to the act of buying that phone in an Apple Store, every aspect of the customer experience was tightly linked together.
4. Being Innovative: The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first. It also knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind. That happened when Jobs built the original iMac. He focused on making it useful for managing a user’s photos and videos, but it was left behind when dealing with music. People with PCs were downloading and swapping music and then ripping and burning their own CDs. The iMac’s slot drive couldn’t burn CDs. But instead of merely catching up by upgrading the iMac’s CD drive, he decided to create an integrated system that would transform the music industry. The result was the combination of iTunes, the iTunes Store, and the iPod, which allowed users to buy, share, manage, store, and play music better than they could with any other devices.
5. Products before Profits: When Jobs and his small team designed the original Macintosh, in the early 1980s; his injunction was to make it “insanely great.” At his first retreat with the Macintosh team, he began by writing a maxim on his whiteboard: “Don’t compromise.” The machine that resulted cost too much and led to Jobs’ ouster from Apple. But the Macintosh also “put a dent in the universe,” as he said, by accelerating the home computer revolution. And in the long run he got the balance right: Focus on making the product great and the profits will follow.
6. Staying humble and life-long learning traits: Jobs stayed hungry and foolish throughout his career by making sure that the business and engineering aspect of his personality was always complemented by a hippie nonconformist side from his days as an artistic, acid-dropping, enlightenment-seeking rebel. In every aspect of his life—the women he dated, the way he dealt with his cancer diagnosis, the way he ran his business—his behaviour reflected the contradictions, confluence, and eventual synthesis of all these varying strands.
Analysis
Steve Jobs and Apple are excellent examples as to demonstrate on the correlation between leadership and management how he has lead the company to its success. Some might say that it was his Autocratic style of management which demanded excellence from his staff and was known for his blunt delivery of criticism towards them. Other might argue that it was his sheer virtuosity, combined with his ability to articulate his vision and onto bringing staffs, investors and customers along on the journey, in addition on the life lessons he has learned during his major career setback, made it work out for him. But one thing that we can all agree on is that it was his charisma that has made what Apple what it is today. As soon as he starts to speak, his presentations informs, entertains and inspires, capturing the audiences and conveying the exact message that he wants you to understand and believe in it. With such a unique style in managing his company, and providing a vision in which everyone could easily relate to, made Steve Jobs one of the most prominent leaders in the 21st century.
