No encomium so powerfully captures the Steve Jobs mystique as the Paul Anka song, My Way.
When the personal computer was still locked out of the IT department, Jobs launched into orbit although at the time how far he would go was not given even scant recognition. Later, IBM decided he was onto something, but unlike his 1955 birth year brethren, Bill Gates, Jobs refused to play ball and did it his way, sticking with a closed operating system. Despite some early success, Apple couldn’t withstand the onslaught of the clones and the Windows/Intel dominance—people forget that for years Apple ran on Motorola chips, again proving that if there is a right way to do something, there was also a Jobs way.
Photo Illustration/Photo of Steve Jobs: Associated Press
After being summarily removed by his board, he left Apple for 12 years. No Moses ever spent more time in the wilderness looking for the Promised Land. He created Next Computer and picked up a small asset called Pixar for $10 million from George Lucas’ ILM studios, who was losing it in a divorce settlement. Jobs spent many miserable years fussing with Pixar until something called Toy Story was launched for Disney. He returned to Apple more than a decade later when the company was written off and no longer relevant except to a few educators and graphic designers. It was a signal moment for a company in the new, new world of Silicon Valley. Michael Dell famously wondered why Apple even continued to exist. Jobs accepted a $1-per-year salary, part of his arrangement to turn things around. What happened then is something we refer to as history. Jobs slowly and quietly began building the transformation that would become the Apple of today, the largest or second largest company in America, focused on the only true infinite resource—communications and entertainment. By some strange calculus, it also was to become the most renowned, admired, emulated and envied company in the world.
What happened? What can we learn from him?
The secret to Jobs’ success is, well, jobs. That is, he made working for Apple a mission and found bright, talented teams who were willing to endure his rants, which were legendary, and his fixation with details and perfection. His team knew Jobs’ wallet was guided by his heart, and that he was not in it for the money, but for the glory of building something great and everlasting, or to use the more common cliché, sustainable.
When you visit Silicon Valley, you see lots of bright young people attending company social events, Friday afternoon pizza parties and the like. Most of them are talented beyond description. That’s the problem. They know what’s happening to their companies before the companies know it. What commands their attention is hot technology that is changing the world now and tomorrow. To keep the young and restless from becoming the old and restless, companies must give these incredibly valuable folks a reason to stay. When you work as hard and long as the average engineer in Silicon Valley—really they’re the equivalent of artists in a Medici studio—and the stock options run south, it means years of hard work are now lost to the entire generation working for the company at the time. So the star engineers, creative designers and sales people, not to mention executives, leave and those remaining are demoralized. It becomes impossible to make a workforce move under duress, find innovations during tough times, and stick with a plan that may take time to work. That’s why Google is getting long in the tooth, and why Cisco and Yahoo are having trouble, and why Microsoft is always fiddling with another round of dividends.
Technology has a loyalty depletion problem because the new is not invented in the same place as the ‘old new.’ Options are to Silicon Valley a drug that cures job angst for a period of up to four years, the typical start-up cycle for venture-backed companies. Once they reach that level of maturity, it’s not fix or fold, it’s fund or fold and when funding dries up and options are under water, there is always another start-up down the road.
Jobs managed somehow to withstand this inexorable cycle, and he found a way to keep employees focused and fixated on building great products simply because he made them believe they could do something great. His creation is really about knowing how to motivate people, not just create technology. Nothing like this turnaround has happened before in Silicon Valley. Steve Jobs proved that human capital is at the center of all value creation. It’s a simple lesson, hard to learn.
Jeff Cunningham writes about leadership and business, boards and corporate governance. He is the founder of Directorship Magazine and currently serves as managing director and senior advisor to NACD. Previously, he was president of internet venture firm, CMGI, publisher of Forbes Magazine, and managing partner of the U.K. private equity firm Schroders. He has served as an independent board chair or director of 10 public companies.
Beautifully written, Jeff!
What a great challenge for every Corporate Director to see who can follow Steve Jobs’lead!
totally agree, it is not technology genius or product roadmap but his ability to inspire a group of talented people to dream big, believe in themselves and provide all the support they require to create something lasting is his legacy.
I agree. He made people IMAGINE BIG. JFK did it in a speech about landing on the moon. John Lennon did it in a song. Steve Jobs did it in creating technology. I guess a good question would be to do a forensic on the board that fired him to determine what they didn’t see in him when they let him go? If Steve did not change [he did it his way] , then I think that it would be a great study in how did the board get it wrong [perhaps] the first time and then get it right the second time [for sure]. What was the difference? What lessons can we all learn from this, or as Steve would say to “Think Different”?