What Would Steve Jobs Do? How the Steve Jobs Way Can Inspire Anyone to Think Differently and Win (7 page)

 

Steve Jobs turned these traditional models sideways. He did not follow either the structure or the sequence of the typical organizational or corporate approach. His model was not a process, or at least not the kind of process that most of us are used to.

Steve’s style was far more focused, more detail-driven, and more evangelical. It built on a customer and product vision, and a strong innovation culture and mindset to get things done that had already been put in place. The employees in a Steve Jobs organization responded almost subconsciously to his influence and charisma.
That influence and charisma came from a unique ability to visualize the customer and the product, an unusual passion for detail, and a brilliant track record. But Steve didn’t stop at just being a visionary.

Unlike most visionaries, he also took ownership of the project and the products, got into the details, and executed. These latter traits went a long way to establish his
competence
.

Steve started with the customer, created a vision, and built, nourished, and perfected an innovation culture within his organization (Steve Wozniak originally, and a cast of thousands eventually). With that context in place,
then
he defined the task (a product in many cases), built passion in the team and in the marketplace to get it all done, and then sold it.

The strength of Steve’s vision and passion and the innovation culture that was already in place made the generation of group passion, and eventually the task, and ultimately the sale, much easier.

T
HE
“T
YRANT
” P
ART
 

And yes, there was bound to be a little “tyranny” along the way. In most cases, that tyranny appeared to be merely a manifestation of Steve’s passion, used occasionally to keep the creative forces flying in formation. It was rarely, if ever, a raw exercise of power for power’s sake. It
was a tyranny of competence, not a tyranny of power. There’s a big, big difference between the two.

Not only did Steve depend on his own competence, but he went the extra mile to instill that competence, and expect it, in his team. “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and to get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.”

Clearly, this was not a message of self-interest, but one of achievement of a greater good and a greater goal for the organization. It also recognized the importance of vision. But this message and others like it have been interpreted over time as being heavy-handed, “autocratic,” “manipulative,” and “boorish.” Many people who have worked for Steve have related experiences of his being temperamental, mercurial, and unapproachable. But most employees, from top to bottom, found him easy to work with and supportive—if you were with the program and doing the right work.

T
HE
F
LIP
S
IDE
 

Still, there are numerous reports of his dysfunctional or just plain nasty treatment of subordinates. Many of these reports came forth in what amounted to a career eulogy
for Jobs after his departure from Apple, announced in August 2011.

According to
New York Times
reporter Joe Nocera, in comments made upon the departure based on an interview years ago: “He was not a consensus builder but a dictator who listened mainly to his own intuition. He was a maniacal micromanager.” And: “He could be absolutely brutal in meetings: I watched him eviscerate staff members for their ‘bozo ideas.’”

CNN Money
’s Peter Elkind described an almost binary approach to the world: ideas, products, and work were either “insanely great” or “shit”; as an employee, you were either a “genius” or a “bozo,” a frequently used term for someone who didn’t get the program or, worse, got in the way or “tried to push something not in the best customer interest.” And it could change in a flash; these flips were described by Apple employees as his “hero-shithead roller coaster.”

Frederick Allen, writing for
Forbes
and citing Nocera’s comments in an article titled “Steve Jobs Broke Every Leadership Rule. Don’t Try This Yourself,” describes Apple’s “ruthless corporate culture [as] just one piece of a mystery that virtually every business executive would love to understand,” then goes on to ask, “How does Apple do it?”

Allen postulates, quite correctly, that it’s all about vision and genius—competence, that is—with a healthy
dose of charisma thrown in. “Go ahead and behave the way he did yourself, as a CEO—as long as you’ve got all of Steve Jobs’ charisma, revolutionary vision, and innovative genius, along with relentless drive and temper.”

All of this reinforces the “competent tyrant” image.

R
ULE
M
AKER
, R
ULE
B
REAKER
 

The Motley Fool, a popular investing website (
www.fool.com
), has stimulated individual investors’ thinking for years by promoting two simultaneous investing approaches: a “Rule Maker” and a “Rule Breaker” portfolio. The Rule Maker portfolio follows all the standard investment criteria: it takes a value approach, examining the usual things that are aligned with a company’s intrinsic value. Buy a Rule Maker, and you’ll do well over time. But will you get “insanely great” results? Probably not.

The Rule Breakers are stocks that don’t follow the rules, but that have a certain something about them that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. They look ahead. They look over the horizon. They have a story; the intangibles and the certain something about them ultimately create more value than the fundamentals that are already on paper.

Rule Breakers are usually “think different” companies, revolutionary companies that don’t follow the rules
today but will ultimately rule their universe and their markets. They get higher stock valuations (as measured by their price/earnings ratio and other such measures) and aren’t scrutinized so much for their fundamentals because of that—the fundamentals will come later. As companies go, Apple, Google, and a limited handful of others would qualify today, as Microsoft, Starbucks, and others have done in the past.

We’re talking about companies here, but as a leader, naturally Steve Jobs could be described as a Rule Breaker—or as someone who merely followed his own rules.

 

AYN RAND MEETS STEVE JOBS
 

Well, I don’t believe such a meeting ever actually happened—but it sure would have been interesting if it had. If you search for a definition of Rule Breaker on the Motley Fool site, you come to a quote adapted from Ayn Rand’s epic novel
The Fountainhead
, adapted by Edwin Locke in his book
The Prime Movers
:

The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time…. Every great new invention was denounced…. But the men of unborrowed
vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won….

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone….

 

The creator—denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited—went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along on his energy.

 

Surely, Steve Jobs is a pretty ideal example of one of these creators. Did he “carry all humanity along on his energy”? Sure seems that way.

A D
EFINITION
S
TEVE
W
OULD
H
AVE
L
IKED
 

We could talk about Steve’s personality, style, and success all day, but that’s not really why you bought this book, is it? The point is to try to get to the essence of Frederick Allen’s question: “How does Apple do it?” Or, more to the point, “How did Steve do it?”

To begin with, I think it helps to get back to what, at its essence, leadership really
is
. Many people have offered complex explanations of what leadership is, what it does, and what personality traits it requires; we could spend a lot of time on it.

Or, we can go with a simple, back-to-basics definition that I think Steve would have liked:

Leadership is getting people to want to, and to be able to, do something important.

It’s worth taking a minute to analyze the three components of this definition. The last phrase, “do something important,” is critical, for people are more likely to rally around doing something important; moreover, if people put a lot of effort into things that turn out
not
to be important, they will quickly stop investing in those efforts.

Many leadership definitions contain the “want to” aspect, the idea that good leaders don’t work through coercion, but rather work through motivation. People who want to do something, whether for psychic or financial rewards or both, are likely to do it better and do it faster.

However, many leaders forget that individuals and teams must be provided with the tools and resources to get it done, and that the leaders must clear the path and
remove roadblocks. Individuals and teams want resources and support, and guidance when they need it.

And many leaders mistakenly rely more on coercion than on motivation to get employees to want to do something. Coercion makes people feel that they
have
to do something, not that they
want
to. When this happens, they rarely feel good about doing something until it’s done, and even that good feeling doesn’t last long. Although Apple employees generally do well financially and have a pleasant work environment, the company generally has not used that kind of incentive to move people and projects. Instead, most employees subscribe to the vision and want to become part of something great.

This idea reached its zenith when the iPod became its own reward—the people working on the project made the extra effort not for stock options and bonuses, but because they wanted one!

The three elements of the definition work in balance: great things happen only if teams are aligned to want to accomplish something important and have the means to do so. Within this definition, Steve did what he could to provide the vision, the tools, and the environment to do something really great.

What would Steve have done? One, figure out something that was really important to do. Two, communicate this vision, provide a solid team environment, and make sure that people share the desire to get it done.
Three, provide the resources and remove the roadblocks standing in the way.

A
CHIEVEMENT
, N
OT
M
ONEY AND
P
OWER
 

Over the years, Steve gained a lot of respect from those inside and outside the company by maintaining a focus on achievement, despite his fame and the fortune he gained through his enterprises. He rarely, if ever, talked about money, and aside from a few pieces of choice real estate, he did not get caught up in the trappings of wealth. Steve was one of the most influential business leaders on the planet, yet for the most part, he didn’t use his power to meddle in politics or in the affairs of other individuals or companies. Except for his product presentations, Steve kept a fairly low profile and lived more like the rest of us than most people with his elevated stature.

This was in clear contrast to most executives and CEOs these days, who seem to favor money and power over plain old achievement.

For Steve Jobs, achievement was the goal. Money and power were the result. That was true both for him personally, and for the company he led.

Are you achievement-motivated? Or are you power-motivated? Think about it.

T
HE
Z
EN OF
R
ESPECT
 

For most effective leaders, what it comes down to at the end of the day is
respect
. Plain old R-E-S-P-E-C-T, as Aretha Franklin sang out so clearly. Leaders who have earned the respect of their followers are far more likely to be willingly followed. Their goals are more likely to be assumed to be important. The means to accomplish these goals are more likely to be put in place. Most of all, the team will be more willing to contribute. Respect breeds trust, trust breeds respect, and the cycle continues.

Respected leaders get chances to fail, because they know that most of their efforts will result in success. They get people to follow them even if those followers don’t 100 percent understand the vision. They get the benefit of the doubt, and the benefit of the doubt can be a huge tailwind when someone is leading a large organization through uncertain waters. Respected leaders also tend to respect and trust their followers. When leaders respect their followers and followers respect and trust their leaders, the gates are open for success.

Steve Jobs was a follower of Zen, and Zen is all about attaining enlightenment, and feeling whole, through the wisdom of experience. Respect is also gained through the wisdom of experience, and Steve Jobs deployed the political capital of respect to its fullest extent.

But as we all know, respect is difficult to achieve, and it is usually not achieved through deliberate efforts, which are typically rebuffed by others as being transparent and self-serving. Respect must come naturally and organically with time.

Here are four of the principal ways in which Steve Jobs obtained the respect of his employees, the tech industry, and the consuming public.

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