Authors: Peter Sander
It makes Apple the largest publicly traded manufacturing corporation in the world. And, while Apple
and oil giant ExxonMobil vie for the honor of being the world’s largest company period, the Apple story is far more compelling. Why? Because Apple produces a
product
—a product that it must sell in a competitive marketplace.
Apple must sell a product that absolutely no one needs, that must be wanted or desired and must be better than the competition’s if the cash register is to ring.
Can we say the same about oil and petroleum products? No way. In fact, the next five companies by market cap produce oil, mine metals, or move money around—but don’t produce anything so intricate or that must pass customer judgment the way an Apple product must.
In fact, moving down the list to number 7, Microsoft, the next company that really makes anything, one wonders whether it meets the same standard as Apple. It seems that few people really
want
Microsoft products, but like oil and its refined products, they must buy and use them. They have no choice: like oil products, they get you where you’re going; they’re an industry standard.
The Apple racehorse passed the Microsoft plow horse at $222 billion in market cap in May 2010. You can see how fast that horse is running, for in late 2011 Apple is at $380 billion, while its longtime rival is stuck at $228 billion. At the time Apple passed Microsoft, Exxon was still number 1 at $279 billion, but it has since managed to hold the place position at $358 billion.
That’s pretty amazing. But the finish, in first place or otherwise, isn’t really the point. What really makes the Apple story so amazing is not just its exceptional products and financial success but the context in which the company has arisen.
Consider that Apple is a mere 35 years old. Although Microsoft too rose quickly through the ranks, how many companies have risen so far and so fast? With no mergers and virtually no acquisitions? None. If you consider that Apple’s valuation was somewhere around $3 billion in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to the helm, and $10 billion in 2003 before the iPod really took off, Apple, under Steve’s leadership, has unquestionably created more value more quickly than any other company in history.
The evidence is indisputable. Although, as we’ll see, Steve Jobs was far from a “textbook” business leader, we know what he brought to Apple in terms of customer savvy, vision, product knowledge, and marketing genius. We’ll share that in this book. We also know what happened when Apple was in the hands of other individuals, which it was more than once during its brief history. It wasn’t pretty.
Innovation consultant Nicholas Webb, in his book
The Innovation Playbook
(Wiley, 2010), offers a list of traits, taken largely from the sports world, that define a
superstar
:
• Superstars are consistently better than the rest.
• You can count on superstars to deliver.
• Superstars are role models; you want to be like them.
• Superstars are good in all aspects of the game, not just one part of it.
• Superstars (usually) have a balanced and accessible personality to go with their talent.
• Superstars are team players, and they make everyone else better.
• If superstars were a culture, you’d be comfortable being part of that culture.
Now, against this standard, Steve does pretty well, right? Indeed, it’s hard not to look at him as the Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky or Willie Mays or Martin Luther King of the business and technology world.
It’s a world that hasn’t produced many superstars, certainly not with the worldwide recognition of Steve. Certainly not deserving of flowered, appled memorials.
We can worship at the altar of Apple, and we can worship Steve Jobs all we want. But I want to be clear about the purpose of this book.
•
What Would Steve Jobs Do?
is not a biography of Steve Jobs.
•
What Would Steve Jobs Do?
is not a history of Apple Inc.
Biographies of Steve and histories of Apple have already been done, and done well. There’s no need for another “me too” book on the business shelf. Several titles can already be found that focus on innovation, how Apple does innovation, and how Steve Jobs supported and led innovation.
The point of
What Would Steve Jobs Do?
is not just to recall or recount the successes of Apple and Steve Jobs. It is to capture the essence of what Steve Jobs has done as a
leader
. It’s about what
you
can take away from Steve’s style and success and apply to
your
organization. Sure, much of Steve’s success was based on innovation, and creating an innovation culture is a major component of his leadership success.
We, as leaders, have a responsibility to manage innovation in our organizations. An organization that doesn’t innovate is dead in the water, ready to be sunk by the progress of technology, the competition, or both. An organization that doesn’t innovate is not responding to its customers, nor is it responding to the outside world.
No doubt, Steve did innovation well. But there was something else, something above and beyond, that got
millions to follow him—millions inside and outside his organization. There was something that got us to tune in to that Stanford address, to leave flowers in front of the local Apple Store, and to pause and reflect on the day he died. There is something above and beyond the “Thomas Edison meets Willy Wonka” image that is occasionally used to describe Steve.
Steve Jobs proved himself to be both a titan of American business and a titan of our personal experience. Nobody else in history has come close to achieving that status.
The world is immeasurably better for his existence.
What Would Steve Jobs Do?
attempts to capture how he did it.
What Would Steve Jobs Do?
has two parts. The first three chapters give some context, a “core” (sorry about that) of Apple’s history blended with Steve’s own personal bio as a foundation for understanding his leadership style. We then examine today’s conventional views of leadership and appraise how Steve was different, arriving at the six-part Steve Jobs Leadership Model.
The remaining six chapters cover the six parts of that model: Customer, Vision, Culture, Product, Message, and Brand. As much as possible, I lay out each critical
piece in Steve’s uniquely “elegant, simple” style, capturing what you can do to “think different” about your business and your organization.
Read on, stay hungry, and stay foolish.
What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
—Steve Jobs, 1991
Without doubt, the whole Apple story began with the birth and growth of Steve Jobs, whose birth preceded the birth of Apple Computer by just 21 years. His early years were formative and revealing, and are definitely a big part of the Apple story and the development of Steve’s leadership style.
Apple’s early years obviously represented a very creative and entrepreneurial phase in Steve’s life and career. His salesmanship was vital to getting the new product off the ground. His counterculture vision helped the entire enterprise steer clear of the prevailing wisdom of the day: that computers were things that belonged in the data center and were handled only by professionals. Steve saw beyond the status quo, recognized what computers could do, especially if they were combined with the right software, and knew how to sell the idea to the public.
What Steve was leading in this era was essentially a garage enterprise, but he also showed his mettle at managing large groups to produce technical and product accomplishments. While he seemed to know that he needed experienced business leaders alongside of him (“adult supervision”), he didn’t necessarily share their views.
He grew suspicious of corporate-style thinking and bureaucracy, and eventually left Apple in a feud with then-CEO John Sculley and the board of directors, even though many of the directors had been picked by Steve
himself. But did that end Steve’s career as an innovator, entrepreneur, and leader? Hardly. It led to an amazingly successful “rebirth” 10 years later (which will be covered in
Chapter 2
).
Steve Jobs’s entry into the world was anything but mainstream from the start. He was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955, to a pair of unwed 23-year-old University of Wisconsin graduate students. His father, a native Syrian named Abdulfattah “John” Jondali, went on to become a political science professor, while his mother, then Joanne Simpson, became a speech language pathologist. Although the couple would later marry—and produce the novelist Mona Simpson as a biological sister—they placed their first and then unborn son up for adoption.
Adopted he was, by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, California, an emerging suburban community about 45 miles south of San Francisco, 10 miles south of Stanford University, and at the edge of what would eventually become the heart of Silicon Valley.
Now, Steve’s biological parents had one condition for the adoptive parents: that they be college graduates. It’s unclear why this condition was ignored, but neither of his adoptive parents had finished college; in fact, his
adoptive father had never graduated from high school. But they did pledge their life savings to send Steve to college. They were loving parents and supported everything the curious and energetic Steve wanted to do.
And yes, Steve did go to college—to Reed College, an intellectually charged private liberal arts college in the forested southern inner suburbs of Portland, Oregon. He went for one semester, then dropped out.
But before that, Jobs had attended the mainstream local schools, Cupertino High School and Homestead High School, both less than two miles from what is now Apple headquarters. In the early 1970s, the South Bay Area was changing rapidly from fruit orchards to attractive and clean new suburbs with beautiful streetscapes, plenty of trees, and earth-toned homes for everyone.
Not everything was modern; the local landmark Moffett Field had (and still has) two large hangars that were originally built for dirigibles. The major street corner closest to where Apple’s headquarters is today featured a huge prune processing plant. But for the most part, there was a newness and excitement about the area, close to Stanford University, where some of the original research and development that led first to the transistor, then to the semiconductor and printed-circuit board took place. The high-tech boom was beginning.
Steve enjoyed the South Bay Area weather and “vibe” just as any teen would. But he also developed a fascination
with electronics. Before he reached his teen years, he attended a demonstration of computers (really just terminals) at the NASA Ames Research Center, co-located at Moffett Field (the site of the dirigible hangars). From that point on, Steve really thrived on being around the many engineers and professionals in the high-tech business.
While in high school, curious Steve attended after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in nearby Palo Alto (the home of Stanford). In 1970, a mutual friend introduced him to his early partner and tech whiz, Steve Wozniak (known as Woz), who was five years his senior. Woz, who had also gone to Homestead High School, was in college, but also worked at HP. In the summer of 1972, Steve Jobs worked as a summer employee alongside Steve Wozniak.
Steve Wozniak was working as a technician on what would eventually become a minicomputer. Steve Jobs wondered whether a computer on a single printed-circuit board could be made and sold.
But that idea took a long time to bear fruit. Steve graduated from high school and headed off to Reed for that fall semester in 1972. But Steve was a creative guy back then, and he had already adopted his long-serving motto, “Do what you love to do.” College structure really
wasn’t something that Steve loved. He started exploring other possibilities. He wanted something that he could get passionate about.
At that point in his life, he had no idea what that something really was. But it was pretty clear even then that it wasn’t going to fit the mainstream path that most people in that era aspired to: go to college, get a degree, take a job, and rise through the ranks. Steve was different.
Instead, Steve hung on in the Reed area and hung out with friends, reportedly raising cash by collecting soda bottles and getting some free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. He audited a few classes he was interested in. He was what most people at the time would have called a hippie.
Most famously, he audited a calligraphy class. That class piqued his interest in graphic design, especially in the beauty, appeal, and proportion of different type fonts. It was an epiphany in disguise, for later Steve would draw on that experience to define the Macintosh as a graphics-based machine. “If I had never dropped in on that course, the Mac would have never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts,” he shared years later.
By 1974, Jobs had been exposed to a lot of new things, among them the spiritual life and culture of India. He
returned to the Bay Area and, circling back to his interest in electronics, took a job at video game maker Atari, then a booming Valley outfit. His goal: to earn enough money for a trip to India, a spiritual retreat.