Tomorrow morning, Fortune's Adam Lashinsky and I are going to spend an hour at The Churchill Club talking about Apple and what other organizations and leaders can (and cannot) learn from the world's most (economically) valuable company. If you want to attend, I think you can tickets here still available and I understand they are filming our discussion (I will let you know how to see the video when I find out).
Adam is the author of Inside Apple (see my detailed review and discussion here). I don't know nearly as much about Apple as Adam does, but like virtually every other management writer, I've produced various pieces on Apple and Steve Jobs because they are irresistible subjects (such as this piece on 5 Warning Signs to Watch for at Apple).
Part of me believes that Apple and Jobs have much to teach other companies and leaders. But, as I wrote in the new chapter in the Good Boss, Bad Boss paperback, part of me is starting to wonder if what each of us "learns" from Steve Jobs amazing life reveals more about our inner selves -- our personalities, preferences, and personal experiences -- than anything else. Below is the excerpt from Good Boss, Bad Boss where I toy with this argument (I edited it slightly because one sentence doesn't make sense unless you read the whole chapter).
I am writing this epilogue in December 2011, two months after the death of Steve Jobs, the most talked-about boss and innovator of our time. Like many others, I found Jobs’s great strengths, startling weaknesses, and bizarre quirks to be fascinating. For example, I wrote about him in The No Asshole Rule (in the chapter on “The Virtues of Assholes”). Even though Jobs’s nastiness was well documented before Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography was published, I was a bit shocked by tidbits in the book. As his death loomed, Jobs ran through sixty-seven nurses before finding three he liked. Still, there is no denying Jobs’s genius. Even though I would not have wanted to work for him, his design sensibilities, his ability to build great teams, and (in his later years) the way he structured a large organization that moved at the speed of a small one are admirable.
Recently, however, I had two experiences that led me to believe it is difficult for bosses who want to improve
their craft to learn from Steve Jobs. The first came after I had taught a two-hour session on innovation to forty CEOs of midsized Chinese companies. None spoke English and I don’t speak Mandarin, so there was a translator to enable communication. I put up a few Steve Job quotes and had fun figuring out that thirty-eight of the forty CEOs had iPhones. During the question-and-answer period, they seemed obsessed with Jobs.
The most interesting thing happened, however, after I ended the session. As I left, one CEO grabbed the microphone and started hollering into it, and as I walked outside for another meeting, they were yelling at each other. The translator told me they were arguing over whether Jobs was an asshole and whether they should emulate such behavior to be better bosses. When I came back thirty minutes later, the translators ran up to me— laughing—because those CEOs were still arguing over the same thing.
As I was driving home, I started thinking that Steve Jobs (or at least the idea of Steve Jobs) was so vivid, so
complicated, and so idolized that for those CEOs, he was like an inkblot test: they projected their inner beliefs, values, desires, and justifications for their behavior onto him. The conversation was sparked by Jobs, but the content had little or nothing to do with what Jobs was like in life or in the lessons he could teach those CEOs.
Then, a couple weeks later, I went to a party and talked with two people who worked closely with Jobs for years.
They started pretty much the same argument that those Chinese executives had. Although one asserted the good
deeds Jobs had done weren’t emphasized enough in media reports or the Isaacson biography, they nonetheless started arguing (and people who hadn’t worked for Jobs jumped in) about whether Jobs’s success meant it was wise or acceptable to be a jerk and when it was worth tolerating an asshole boss. As I listened, I believed once again that the idea of Steve Jobs was prompting people to make sense of and justify their behavior, personal values, and pet theories.
So I raised my hypothesis: that people couldn’t learn much from Jobs. That he was so hyped, so complex, and
apparently inconsistent that the “lessons” they derived from him where really more about who they were and hoped to be than about Jobs himself. The two people who worked closely with him agreed. And one added another reason why Jobs was and is a bad role model for bosses: Steve had such a weird and rare brain that it simply isn’t possible for another human being to copy him anyway!
I am curious, what do you think? As I re-read this, part of me still believes the argument above and part of me still believes that, well, every boss and innovator can learn something from him (despite the biases we all bring to the table). I also find it easier to think about Apple and its organization and management in a detached way than about Jobs -- perhaps because an organization, even Apple, could never have a personality and presence as vivid and intriguing as Mr. Jobs had.
P.S. The event at the Churchill Club was really fun, in part, because Adam and I didn't fully agree with each other. I especially disagreed with his arguments that Apple was unique in terms of its structure (especially how centralized it is for its size). We agreed on most things. But we had more fun and learned more -- and I think the audience did too -- because we pushed each other to refine or logic and examples. He is a smart and charming guy.
He was an odious little twerp. Remember the king and his new clothes.
Posted by: Mike Biddell | April 15, 2012 at 02:10 AM
Bnt0 has an interesting point, that Jobs was like a "strong man" in a country. This is an apt comparison because Apple could well be thought of as a country. There are probably only about 20 countries that have higher revenues than Apple, so thinking about it as a country is reasonable and provides valid insights. Isn't there value comparing him to Machiavelli's "The Prince"?
You have a great insight in Jobs' uniqueness. He grew up in a particular environment, at a particular time with very peculiar access. Not only was his brain unique, so were his advisers and his ability to open doors. And the pressures Apple would have put him under, must have hardened his outlooks and thinking in ways we cannot imagine.
Maybe people like using Jobs' name because is sounds better then crediting Mom with saying "Work hard, stick to your knitting and don't pick fights you can't win."
Posted by: Andrew Meyer | April 05, 2012 at 01:42 PM
I wonder if being an asshole was a consequence of his obsession with excellence rather then a cause.
If you are trying to do something and believe you're right then you're going to have to compromise your aesthetic for the sake of harmony or deal with the perception that you're an asshole.
I think Jobs did the latter: his perception of being an asshole wasn't because he enjoyed being cruel, it was because he was right, you weren't and you weren't smart enough to recognise that.
In short, he was an asshole because he bruised your ego.
My question from that is: was Steve Jobs really an asshole then? Is he only an asshole because he expressed the fact that you were wrong using foul language and personal insult?
Posted by: James Birchall | April 05, 2012 at 10:49 AM
First, if we give Jobs a pass on being an asshole it doesn’t mean that others are capable of getting away with it. How many among us are as talented, intelligent and unique as Jobs? Few, if any. So if you think emulating Job’s “assholeness” will help you, think again – you ain’t Steve Jobs. This doesn’t mean you can’t emulate his good qualities.
Second, Bob and others have written books and done loads of research on how assholes negatively affect organizations. For every Steve Jobs there are millions of assholes wrecking havoc in businesses across the world. The negative consequences of “assholeness” are well documented. The reality is most people aren’t as talented as Jobs and will never get away with it. So why try?
There are really two questions for each of us to answer:
1) Is being an asshole a prerequisite to success? Clearly not, because there are many, many successful non-assholes.
2) Is it ok to be an asshole if you are successful? Not in my book. I don’t like assholes. Most people don’t.
Posted by: Lou Pepper, Jr. | April 05, 2012 at 10:04 AM
Being Steve Jobs worked for Steve Jobs because that's who he was. It was...well, *sincere*. When he would scream about something sucking and it needing to be perfect, that was what he really believed. When he pushed to reduce the boot time on the original Mac, because it would save enough time to translate into millions of lifetimes, he believed that. When he made the iPhone team change the design from plastic to glass, it was because he *really* hated the idea of scratches.
You can't "act like" Steve and have it work for you, because you'll be insincere. You'll not be doing it because that's what you believe, but because you read it somewhere and thought maybe it would work. That's not going to work.
Now, if you read about Steve, and some of the things he cared about or said resonate with you, *those* things are worth exploring, but not because Steve cared about them, but because you maybe realized that you care about them also. Reading about how much steve cared about design helped me realize why so much enterprise software pisses me off:
It's like it's designed to torture people. But when I get passionate about making software not suck, I'm not "channeling Steve", i'm channeling *me*. The difference is perhaps subtle, but important. You have to care about things because YOU care about them, not because some dude in a book did.
Posted by: John C. Welch | April 05, 2012 at 06:50 AM
To me, this is a "Is the glass half full, or is it half empty" argument. Simply because it depends on one's beliefs and perspective. I'm a glass half full kind of person, and therefore I believe that Jobs had some brilliant beliefs that guided him and Apple well.
For one, his laser-like focus. Jobs could come into a meeting that had been ongoing for hours and within minutes distill it into something that was simple, workable and at times brilliant. For some, Jobs could be criticized for his bluntness. Others could point to his brilliance and how he was able to move the team forward. It all depends.
Personally, it's Jobs guiding principles and beliefs that I can extract and use.
Posted by: Rod Johnson | April 05, 2012 at 06:34 AM
In Jobs' return to Apple, and the way he took over, I saw something akin to a "strong man" situation. When a society has lost its direction, it looks to a "strong man" to take over and impose order. (I say "man" for convenience, but a similar argument could be made for Mrs. Thatcher in the UK in the 1980s.)
You can see this throughout history e.g. the way Julius Caesar was invited to become a dictator, and would have had he not been assassinated, and a decade later Rome had an Emperor anyway. Italy needed Mussolini to make the trains run on time. The Communist revolution Russia was losing its momentum before Stalin took over and imposed his will on the state.The term "cult of personality" was coined by Khrushchev to describe Stalin, after he died.
Isn't it hyperbolic to compare Steve Jobs to political despots? A little, perhaps, but I think all the basics are there: a "strong man" restores order to an entity and becomes the focus of attention himself - possibly too much attention. Since Steve Jobs died while at (or close to) the peak of his popularity, I'm not surprised that his flaws will be overlooked. They came to praise Steve Jobs, not to bury him.
Posted by: Bnt0 | April 05, 2012 at 04:15 AM
Very beautifully captured thought. It has been intriguing me from the time i completed Adam's book. Here is a quick review of mine (http://rajshankar.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/books-and-me-inside-apple/ )
Instead of trying to reduce all the actions and decisions of Steve Jobs & Apple into a set of behaviours that we can emulate - i think its about what made him be what he was which is a bigger learning. It definitely made me introspect and attempt seeing how the unique me can tap my entrepreneurial ability using Steve as an example. Thanks for highlighting that point. I haven't read your book, which i will do so soon to know more on this thought. Thanks!
Posted by: Raj Shankar | April 04, 2012 at 08:31 PM
What we learn as leaders, managers, CEOs or innovators is directly dependent on our personal & corporate values, mission statements, ethics, belief systems, & level of intelligence.
Personally, I take from him the message that a clear, passionate, focused vision will get you very far and perhaps step on a few people along the way.
Posted by: Monika | April 04, 2012 at 07:34 PM