The Steve Jobs Guide to Terrible Management
We wrote sometime ago about the folly of companies trying to imitate Apple in an attempt to follow their success.
As it turns out, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson feels the same way about business leaders trying to emulate the legendary CEO.
In a fascinating book talk last night, Isaacson explained how people have been approaching him with statements like, “I’ve read your book, and now I’m going to be meaner to my employees, too, to get the same kind of greatness out of them that Steve Jobs got out of his people.”
Wrong tactic, Isaacson says. “To do that successfully, you have to have the same burning intensity and passionate charisma that Steve had.”
In fact, the running theme of the evening was, “The only way to be like Steve Jobs is to be Steve Jobs.”
He was a unique force in all aspects. Charming, vindictive, overly sensitive, and above all, a true genius. Identifying a few key traits from the biography and trying to mirror them in your own life won’t work. The reason Steve Jobs succeeded was because he possessed all of his traits, many in confusing conflict with one another.
Yes, he would often berate employees; curse them out and demean them. Yes, he would bend the truth to his whims. But employees put up with it because he was also the type of person they were desperate to make proud. And when he bent the truth, he often then tended to bend reality around it until what he said actually was true.
In addition to being a rare visionary, Steve Jobs was successful because he took careful consideration of his gifts and faults and uniquely shaped them into his own management style. If you want to emulate Steve Jobs, do it that way – analyze who you truly are (strengths and weaknesses), and develop your own style around that.
Let us know in the comments: Have you adjusted your business style based on Steve Jobs’s approach? What about the practices or teachings of other figures or books?