The Steve Jobs Way
strategy+business
issue 67 S UMMER 2012
The Steve Jobs Way
Leaders can learn a lot from the late Apple CEO, but not all of it should be emulated.
by JON KATZENb A CH
reprint 12201
Leaders can learn a lot from the late Apple CEO, but not all of it should be emulated. by Jon Katzenbach
S
teve Jobs’s business feats were legendary long before he died in October 2011.
Apple Inc., considered a niche player for much of its history, is the most valuable company in the world by market capitalization as of this writing. Most business leaders would be thrilled to achieve Jobs’s level of market success, but should they aspire to lead like him? Before doing so, they should dig into his management style. Jobs the leader was at once dynamic and controversial, and his success relied heavily on the genius of Jobs the innovator.
Many other prominent leaders leave legacies that become clear only with time; however, we can evaluate
Jobs’s leadership with tremendous clarity already today. This is thanks to Walter Isaacson’s masterful, eponymous biography of the entrepreneur (Simon & Schuster, 2011), a
600-page account that rarely feels flabby or boring. Jobs pursued Isaacson, a former CEO of CNN and managing editor of Time, for five years (the first of many examples of
Jobs’s persistence in the book), and then gave him a free hand (a much rarer occurrence), promising: “It’s your book. I won’t even read it.”
The leader Isaacson portrays could have illustrated the Great
Man theory popular in the mid19th century, with its heroic leaders whose decisions and sheer force of will determined the world’s course.
Steve Jobs was certainly a willful and driven leader, and the products and services he directed his companies to develop and commercialize changed the way many of us live, as well as the course of a diverse set of industries, including computing, publishing, movies, music, and mobile telephony.
At the same time, Jobs’s
issue 67 S UMMER 2012
The Steve Jobs Way
Leaders can learn a lot from the late Apple CEO, but not all of it should be emulated.
by JON KATZENb A CH
reprint 12201
Leaders can learn a lot from the late Apple CEO, but not all of it should be emulated. by Jon Katzenbach
S
teve Jobs’s business feats were legendary long before he died in October 2011.
Apple Inc., considered a niche player for much of its history, is the most valuable company in the world by market capitalization as of this writing. Most business leaders would be thrilled to achieve Jobs’s level of market success, but should they aspire to lead like him? Before doing so, they should dig into his management style. Jobs the leader was at once dynamic and controversial, and his success relied heavily on the genius of Jobs the innovator.
Many other prominent leaders leave legacies that become clear only with time; however, we can evaluate
Jobs’s leadership with tremendous clarity already today. This is thanks to Walter Isaacson’s masterful, eponymous biography of the entrepreneur (Simon & Schuster, 2011), a
600-page account that rarely feels flabby or boring. Jobs pursued Isaacson, a former CEO of CNN and managing editor of Time, for five years (the first of many examples of
Jobs’s persistence in the book), and then gave him a free hand (a much rarer occurrence), promising: “It’s your book. I won’t even read it.”
The leader Isaacson portrays could have illustrated the Great
Man theory popular in the mid19th century, with its heroic leaders whose decisions and sheer force of will determined the world’s course.
Steve Jobs was certainly a willful and driven leader, and the products and services he directed his companies to develop and commercialize changed the way many of us live, as well as the course of a diverse set of industries, including computing, publishing, movies, music, and mobile telephony.
At the same time, Jobs’s