Decoding Steve Jobs

trust the art, not the artist"

Is it not more worthy to have changed civilization than the fortunes of a few?

But a leader should aspire to do more. A leader should claim to have left a legacy not just on their company but on all companies.

In a rare reflective moment Steve Jobs, after the launch of the iPad, mentioned Apple's DNA. He said:

"Technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that makes our hearts sing.

Nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices...that need to be even easier to use than a PC, that need to be even more intuitive than a PC; and where the software and the hardware and the applications need to intertwine in an even more seamless way than they do on a PC.

We think we are on the right track with this. We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon but in the organization to build these kinds of products."

This brings us to the third lesson: that likeability is not a prerequisite to power. While being liked can increase your influence, the equation works more reliably the other way around: being powerful will get you liked. As my colleague Robert Sutton has pointed out, Jobs's management style leaves much to be desired. One person in management told me that Jobs fired him one day. (At Apple this is apparently called "being Steved.") As he was cleaning out his office later that day, Jobs came by and asked him what he was doing. "Preparing to leave," was the reply. "Oh," said Jobs, "I didn't really mean it, I was just upset. You're rehired." Mercurial, demanding, occasionally demeaning—why do people put up with such behavior? Because Apple is a success, and we love to bask in reflected glory, because Apple's stock price is going up and there are material rewards, and because being treated badly by an icon is at least being noticed by that rock star.

The next lesson to be learned is that power can come through the projection of an image of strength that may not yet be the reality. For devices such as computers or cell phones to be of great value to users, developers have to be interested in writing application software. But no one is going to write software for a product they perceive as going nowhere. They only want to develop applications for hot products. Jobs's ability to create a sense of inevitability about Apple's products is legendary. Even those who accuse him of having a "reality distortion field" manage to find themselves talking about his devices. Even when Apple was sort of a footnote to the computer industry, he was able to get enormous media and industry press. Unfortunately for Apple's shareholders today, the same sense of can't-do-without-it also attached to Jobs himself. Even though no one could call his reputation spotless — stock options issues swirled around him, he could be hot-tempered, and he's been blamed for not disclosing material information about his health — he is seen as an industry visionary and the clearly defined voice and soul of Apple.

The fact that Jobs came back and took Apple to new heights makes him a fascinating study in power. I take three lessons away from it. The first is the most inspiring: it's that power can result from sheer drive, persistence, resilience, and the ability to tolerate conflict. Does anyone remember the first mobile device, the Newton? It was a big failure. For that matter, how did the Lisa, another nonstarter, get resurrected as the Macintosh? Jobs persisted, sticking with his same focus on the user interface, his fundamental vision of ease of use and cool design, but also learned from the setbacks. Note that when he left Apple he was a rich man — he'd been wealthy by most people's definition of wealth for decades. But he didn't retire to the beach or even to the world of nonprofits. He founded NeXT Computer. Then, with the sale of it to Apple, he returned to unseat Gil Amelio, the National Semiconductor veteran who had taken the helm at Apple. Forget all that and just look at how he has kept going through his health crises; this is a man who is hard to slow down.

Great world leaders have often lost power, struggled, then returned as better leaders; Nelson Mandela's 27 years in prison are an extreme but instructive case. Perhaps corporate leaders also need time away from a company they begin with, in order to open their minds to new possibilities. Perhaps the pause button should be turned into a career accelerator.