By all accounts, Steve Jobs was the kind of guy who you didn't want to work with. To put it bluntly, he was a perfectionistic pain in the butt, the Boss from Hell for whom good was never good enough. Yet that intensity was driven by a vision that has transformed technology in the past decade.
Many successful businesses make their fortune by carefully calculating how much people can spend and squeezing every bit from them via tricks, gimmicks, and sometimes even outright lies. Advertising and marketing create demand for a product that is often much different than it appears to be. When people find out that the reality doesn't match what they were promised, the outcome is bitterness and anger towards the company that deceived them.
Jobs was different in that he figured out what people really wanted--so often in sync with what he really wanted--and gave it to them. He seemed to figure it out not by focus groups or statistical analysis of consumer trends, but by a gut feeling that was in tune with the public's inner desires. For Apple the product itself, not the advertising, inspired good feelings. Those products are often defined by what they don't have, a Zen simplicity that lets their essential qualities shine through.
Plenty of companies take one idea and ride it for years, making only small tweaks to the formula. Not so with Jobs. He had no problem branching out from Apple's core business of personal computers. First with the iPod, then the iPhone and iPad, Jobs put his company into markets against established players and blew them out of the water. He dived headlong into markets left for dead after multiple attempts by competitors who had nothing to show but a crimson balance sheet. He reminded us that a great product is the best foundation for a great business strategy.
Clearly, Jobs was not the only one responsible for Apple's past decade of incredible success. To his credit, he never claimed he was. In a "60 Minutes" interview, Jobs said, "Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people." Yet he provided a successful vision the company could follow, and--to their credit--one they did follow.
Jobs passionately knew what he wanted, and wasn't happy with the people around him delivering anything less. Yet passion by itself isn't a recipe for success, especially when it creates such tension in the organization. Jobs was effective not just because he was passionate, but because the ideas behind his passion were so often proven right. No doubt there were stressful times inside Apple given Steve's style. In the end, however, everyone must be deeply satisfied with the success of the products they created under his leadership.
Many successful businesses make their fortune by carefully calculating how much people can spend and squeezing every bit from them via tricks, gimmicks, and sometimes even outright lies. Advertising and marketing create demand for a product that is often much different than it appears to be. When people find out that the reality doesn't match what they were promised, the outcome is bitterness and anger towards the company that deceived them.
Jobs was different in that he figured out what people really wanted--so often in sync with what he really wanted--and gave it to them. He seemed to figure it out not by focus groups or statistical analysis of consumer trends, but by a gut feeling that was in tune with the public's inner desires. For Apple the product itself, not the advertising, inspired good feelings. Those products are often defined by what they don't have, a Zen simplicity that lets their essential qualities shine through.
Plenty of companies take one idea and ride it for years, making only small tweaks to the formula. Not so with Jobs. He had no problem branching out from Apple's core business of personal computers. First with the iPod, then the iPhone and iPad, Jobs put his company into markets against established players and blew them out of the water. He dived headlong into markets left for dead after multiple attempts by competitors who had nothing to show but a crimson balance sheet. He reminded us that a great product is the best foundation for a great business strategy.
Clearly, Jobs was not the only one responsible for Apple's past decade of incredible success. To his credit, he never claimed he was. In a "60 Minutes" interview, Jobs said, "Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people." Yet he provided a successful vision the company could follow, and--to their credit--one they did follow.
Jobs passionately knew what he wanted, and wasn't happy with the people around him delivering anything less. Yet passion by itself isn't a recipe for success, especially when it creates such tension in the organization. Jobs was effective not just because he was passionate, but because the ideas behind his passion were so often proven right. No doubt there were stressful times inside Apple given Steve's style. In the end, however, everyone must be deeply satisfied with the success of the products they created under his leadership.
Comments