Interesting Blog Post About Steve Jobs

[Michael Colton]

An interesting blog post by an iOS developer about Steve Jobs. There have been countless articles, posts, and interviews wherein people discuss Steve Jobs - so why I do find this one interesting? It claims that people misrepresent the unique skill of Jobs simply as an excellent marketer, charismatic, etc., but it misses the other main point: the recognition of skill in others to provide oneself with a skilled team.

It always seems odd to me that many of the so-called 'greats' in history are loved by their fanboys as if they operated in a vacuum. In the case of Jobs, people almost gleefully discuss how much of an asshole he was to everyone around him as if it was simply 'Jobs vs the World,' but in reality he had an incredible team of designers surrounding him. This is typically the case when you go back in history and research the big names in various fields. FDR never would have accomplished what he did, whether you love him or hate him, without Louis Howe by his side.

Arguing that Jobs is misunderstood because people are unaware of how obsessive he was over small details is entirely missing the point and just another form of fanboyism, in my opinion. Some of you here have technological knowledge and experience with this particular field, I'm curious what you think.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm not a techie expert but I am a high-level management consultant in my not-writing-space-stories life.

Jobs is fascinating and rewriting management textbooks - I use him a lot as a case study. What we have in him is a spider - centre of a web, focusing on everything in the web, responding to the web's needs, mixed with a charismatic leader* - hence the communication, the ability to gain and keep followers - in a flat organisation. Spiders traditionally struggle in flat organisations as they like to be so central to everything, they are the hierarchy. This is what is so hard to replicate (well that and the leadership skills, which, contrary to what the chap was quoted as saying at the start of the blog, are far from easily transferred or learnt) - the level of control he held combined with the ability to lead in a largely laissez faire basis (in that he was prepared to give autonomy over decisions to those below him, not that he was laid back) in an organisation that ordinarily is hard to hold structurally after a certain size.

Have I bored everyone enough yet?

* which is not an unusual mix

 

[Michael Colton]

Why do you think people so frequently remember the leader without being either aware of or noting their team? Granted, I know much more about political management than I do business, but the notion that the greats surrounded themselves with talent seems to hold true in both spheres.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

It does. If you look at theorists around transformational leadership, eg Kotter, they will tell you that it is essential for the leader to build a guiding team of followers. Covey, too, argues strongly that the leader must seek the strength of others to lead, and to create a synergistic organisation. And Lessons from the Geese is based entirely around the capabilty of a leader to use the strength of the whole.

However, the leader's role is to be visible, the point of attention. They set vision and shape the organisation and, as such, thrust themselves into the position of being the leader, the person intrinsically linked. Indeed, it's so central to a leaders' role, as is the importance of having followers, that for a follower to rise to the point of being the figurehead would put two shapers into the team, and that never works out.

As for us not remembering teams - don't we? We could name Himmler and Goerring, for instance. Those of us in the UK know for Bob Geldof there was Midge Ure. We know the names of Jesus' disciples and something of who they are. With Jobs we know of Tim Cook. Granted it depends on the profile of the team and, indeed, the kind of leader but it doesn't always hold true that we don't know the team.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

He was a egotist, extremely obsessed, a waster of people. He was JUST REALLY REALLY lucky with a few products.
The whole starting in a Garage thing misses fact that it was an ideal time, he had finance and the other Steve's design. AND LUCK. Basically Visicalc saved the Apple II.

Apple Computer Corp. nearly died. Ironically Microsoft rescued them. The Lisa GUI later revamed as Mac was copied wholesale from Xerox.
Lisa Failure.
Pippin Failure.
Newton might have succeeded but Steve Jobs scrapped it.
Mac was 5% to 8% world wide for years.
OS X based on NextStep, Steve Jobs failed project. The OS is derived from BSD UNIX, NOT INVENTED BY NextStep, Jobs or Apple!
They where about #4 to market with MP3 player just as costs got lower and managed to get Record Label support for iTunes. That and hype made it a success.
The iPhone was bought in GUI, long after smart phones. Why was it a success? First time non-business user could get a decent data package! The Hardware was mostly Samsung off the shelf parts stuck into simple case with their Ipod hardware. Then good marketing.
iPad built on top of iPod and iPhone.

There is nothing exceptional about Apple or Steve Jobs except the Myths and their massive profit margins (x3 to x5 the industry due to Market Perception)!

Jony Ives' styling is all 100% a copy of Dieter Rams styles for 1950s and 1960s Braun Electronics. Ives is just a package styler.

Jobs was just a lucky CEO / Manager and occasionally good at picking winning products (About 4) and the marketing strategy. He hindered more than helped develop the actual products!

 

[willwallace]

I feel Ray is right on target, Apple didn't invent much of anything, as much as package it well, and create a "mystique" about their products. They do make things easy for the average user, and that again is good marketing as much as anything. But there's many products available that are better than Apple's, they just don't have the same cachet. And the walled garden mentality drives me nuts.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

What Jobs did (or what happened under his jurisdiction) was the closing of the loop between product and uploads - so having itunes led to having an apple which led to more apple products and de nada...

But the refutation based on the products isn't the point of the blog - it's about whether or not Steve Jobs could lead. And, based on just about every parameter of what makes a leader*, he could. Being a leader isn't about developing good products. Good leaders often drive their followers mad by being impractical, driving the vision instead of what's realistic. Often, whisper it, they fail miserably in their intent because they've shot for the moon and failed (but they tend not to be the leaders we hear about and yet, if you asked their team, they'd name them as a leader). It's about a set of attributes and behaviours, and yes, someone will them will sometimes get lucky or unlucky - it doesn't take away from whether or not they have them.

*a good communicator, capable of inspiring loyalty and enabling others to follow their lead would be the baseline leadership qualities. There are other nicities that can be added - and he fills a lot of them, too.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

He was poor leader. He had a couple of lucky breaks due to negotiations.

The tech industry is poisoned with poor leaders that run engineers & programmers into ground and mismanage them. I saw no evidence at all 1976 to his death of good leadership. He's a really bad role model. I can't say or explain more without risk of a law suit. But the Cult of Jobs and Apple ought to be past its sell by date.

closing of the loop between product and uploads

Sorry, that's nonsense. What he did was make a successful walled garden to exploit consumers as never before. I believe that is why the Mac Air and eventually the Mac generally will be replaced by models that only run iOS. Or even dropped. They killed the Mac server line and took Computer out of the name already.

A single store per product is Ghastly vendor lock in. That's why Nokia (badly) tried to copy it and Google uses it for Android and MS would love to do the same. iTunes is the worst thing for Consumers of Apps since 1980-1981 backward leap from real 16bit and new OSes to the kuldged 8088 and MS rip off of Digital Research CPM/86, an OS dead end. As a result Computing was held back in Consumer Space for 10 years.

iTunes in providing digital downloads of Music was a step forward. Everything else by Apple since is a disaster for the Consumer.

Apple is also bad for the World & US economy, but that's a separate story.

My first Desktop Computer was an Apple II. Not even an Apple IIe

 

[Michael Colton]

[...] But the Cult of Jobs and Apple ought to be past its sell by date.

While it may fade slightly, I doubt it will ever go away completely. There are very few household names from the business world of that particular generation. It is him and Gates.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I didn't say I liked him, or indeed Apple....

On what counts was he a bad leader, out of interest? Not product reasons, or marketing reasons, but personality reasons? He could certainly communicate and he could certainly gain followers - or why would there be a cult of Jobs and Apple? - and he had charisma in any of the footage I've seen of him. Those are the key traits of a charismatic leader - which is not true and why?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Meanwhile more ARM based CPUs are produced in about a week as x86 / x64 Intel & AMD in a year. A UK development.
Almost nothing outside of PCs/Laptops uses the Intel/AMD.
Not just phones and Tablets, but Routers, Modems, TVs, DVD/BluRay players, Setboxes, even Microwave, Dishwasher and Washing Machines are unlikely to have Intel/AMD but may have ARM CPU.

The USA is Really Big with a culture of Venture Capitalism. So we have Apple, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco. Very few big successes vs size of Company. Many of these people succeed by IP theft, Threats, Bullying and burning up their developers. They are not people to emulate. But China and India are big. When Europe pulls together we get stuff like ESA.
Search what people think of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Darl the CEO of SCO. Or what they think of Intel methods (courts cases) vs competitors.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Again, I didn't say he was to be emulated - many leaders aren't. Hitler is an exceptional example of a leader but I wouldn't be reccommending him as a role model. But you still haven't explained under what criteria Jobs fails as a leader. I'm interested as I use him as a case study - which covers much of the ground you've mentioned, such as his ethics.

Bill Gates is another interesting consideration. In Microsoft I felt he showed few leadership attributes, I'd have seen him as a good manager rather than natural leader. Then I saw him talking about his foundation and he was a different man. I feel he is a leader but was possibly not leading something he was passionate about.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

He could certainly communicate and he could certainly gain followers - or why would there be a cult of Jobs and Apple? - and he had charisma in any of the footage I've seen of him. Those are the key traits of a charismatic leader

Those are rabble rousing externalities. Nothing to do with managing people, making good decisions, ethics, running a company properly. Apple succeeded due to luck, two good deals and not Job's leadership. The charisma etc was excellent for marketing (Reality Distortion Field).

Éamon de Valera was a charismatic leader. He caused more NEEDLESS deaths AFTER the Independence than during the War. Many deaths in the war of Independence were his policies. He then practically Bankrupted Ireland approx 1933 onwards (Economic War) and held back modernisation for 12 years. We still suffer on the whole Island from the legacy of that charismatic leader who unfortunately still inspires people (I'm an Irish Nationalist, but the policies of that man and his followers are aborrant to me). Fortunately Steve Jobs was only a Business man.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

But being a good leader is rarely about being a good manager of people. In the rare person who has both leadership and management skills (and they are very, very rare) things are different. In fact, leaders are often poor in the management skills. Generally they take those skills from the tier below them, their senior management followers if you like.

I think sometimes people confuse leadership with people who make the right decisions, or are the good guys, and Steve Covey is interesting to read regarding that paradigm. They're often not. They're just people who have certain attributes which enable them to be followed. Sometimes that works out well, sometimes not.

I think, looking at this, he's even more certainly in my list of good - ie strong, not that they neccessarily did good - leaders. Thanks for the insights.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Bill Gates wasn't as bad in MS, nor MS as bad as some painted. Not good though. But eventually MS got too big and BG couldn't possibly manage it. His Empire started by him organising his friend to port the Free Dartmouth BASIC (a cut down ForTran) to the 8080 (and later 6502) and selling it to the S100 and other pre-PC makers. Getting the contract with IBM to supply MS-DOS (which they didn't then have!) was an amazing piece of luck and cheek (They bought outright a reversed clone of DR CPM/86). The reason why IBM dealt with Bill and not Gary are shrouded in myth. At the time I was gobsmacked as were the rest of us. That was MS "lucky break".
Sinofsky and Balmer were toxic as managers (and product decisions) and MS may never recover the high point they reached in 2003.

Bill Gates made maybe really few "good" (in sense of madly successful) and very very bad decisions.

Some Successes (some of these bad for Industry):

• BASIC sold to anyone
  
• MS-DOS
• Deal with IBM to develop OS/2 (1985?)
  
• Pulling out (had MS OS/2 product in 1990!) and going alone with NT based on OS/2 and inspired by VAX VMS. That's why first NT is 3.1 in 1993.
• Developing real windows Word & Excel before MS Windows worked, by doing them for Mac!
• Pushing a polished up Win95 which wasn't really 32bit at all and really only Win3.1 with a new Shell instead of NT (People wouldn't pay for the x4 more RAM and HDD needed!) Bad for Industry, but killed off OS/2.
• Win 2000 / XP (same OS, XP is finished NT 5.1, Win2K is unfinished NT 5.0)
• Buying in SQL , Visio

Some Disasters.

• Windows 1.x, Windows 2.0, windows 286, Windows 3.0
• DOS 4, 5 and 6 and Disc Compression. Only Good DOSes were 2.11, 3.3 and 6.22
  
• Buying in Powerpoint!
  
• Win95/Win98 resulted in badly written programs for NT and bad XP Security
• Win ME
• Vista
• Not giving the bug fix free (Win 7 is fixed version of Vista)
• Trying to make WinCE like Win9x
• Trying to make Desktop Windows (8) like the Zune/WinPhone that replaced WinCE (used as Phone and PDA up to Version 5 or 6, I forget)

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Strong, Charismatic and Achieving "Success" is completely separate to being a Good Leader. The Success may only be personal at everyone else's expense, or benefit a chosen few.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Strong, Charismatic and Achieving "Success" is completely separate to being a Good Leader. The Success may only be personal at everyone else's expense, or benefit a chosen few.

But that's exactly what I've been saying. Nor did I list strong or achieving success as the qualities of leadership (although they may be). Communication and gaining followers are the most intrinsic qualities, although there are many more.

Acheiving success does not make someone a good leader. Being charismatic on its own may not make a good leader. The success may indeed be entirely personal and yet have a good leader - provided others buy into it. Look at some of the cults over the years. A good leader isn't judged by the outcome - it's judged by a range of behaviours and attributes, most of which Jobs had.

I'll bow out now. i think we're going in circles. Not liking the guy or his business approaches is one thing, evidencing he's a poor leader something else again.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Exactly how is it useful to have a Leader that is not a good role model, achieving good goals rather than evil and that "uses people up" rather than good leadership? A good leader must at least be competent as a Manager. I think eventually when there is no-one that will sue, the truth of Steve Job's Leadership will come out.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Exactly how is it useful to have a Leader that is not a good role model, achieving good goals rather than evil and that "uses people up" rather than good leadership? A good leader must at least be competent as a Manager.

Not useful at all. And many managers aren't that competent.

I don't make the rules of leadership, I just try to break them down. Not every leader is nice. Not every leader seeks the greater good. Not every leader is to be emulated. But they still share basic characteristics and Steve Jobs (who I don't see as a great evil in comparison to many other leaders - Papa Doc, Stalin) shares those characteristics. Again you're mixing up good as is we should be good to each other with good, as in I am a successful leader. They are not the same thing.

Night!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Having lucky breaks and thus a valuable company is no evidence of successful Leadership.