Interest in leadership increased during the early part of the
twentieth century. Early leadership theories focused on what qualities
distinguished between leaders and followers, while subsequent theories looked
at other variables such as situational factors and skill levels. While many
different leadership theories have emerged there are nine famous theory of leadership.
Leaders are born and not made.
Great leaders will arise when there
is a great need.
Early research on leadership was
based on the the study of people who were already great leaders. These people
were often from the aristocracy, as few from lower classes had the opportunity
to lead. This contributed to the notion that leadership had something to do
with breeding.
The idea of the Great Man also
strayed into the mythic domain, with notions that in times of need, a Great Man
would arise, almost by magic. This was easy to verify, by pointing to people
such as Eisenhower and Churchill, let alone those further back along the
timeline, even to Jesus, Moses, Mohammed and the Buddah.
The 'great man' theory was
originally proposed by Thomas Carlyle.
Gender issues were not on the table
when the 'Great Man' theory was proposed. Most leaders were male and the
thought of a Great Woman was generally in areas other than leadership. Most
researchers were also male, and concerns about androcentric bias were a long way
from being realized.
It has been said that history is
nothing but stories of great men. Certainly, much has this bias, although there
is of course also much about peoples and broader life.
Behavioral Theory
Assumptions
Leaders can be made, rather than
are born.
Successful leadership is based in
definable, learnable behavior.
Description
Behavioral theories of leadership
do not seek inborn traits or capabilities. Rather, they look at what leaders
actually do.
If success can be defined in terms
of describable actions, then it should be relatively easy for other people to
act in the same way. This is easier to teach and learn then to adopt the more
ephemeral 'traits' or 'capabilities'.
Discussion
Behavioral is a big leap from Trait Theory, in that it assumes that
leadership capability can be learned, rather than being inherent. This opens
the floodgates to leadership development, as opposed to simple psychometric
assessment that sorts those with leadership potential from those who will never
have the chance.
A behavioral theory is relatively
easy to develop, as you simply assess both leadership success and the actions
of leaders. With a large enough study, you can then correlate statistically
significant behaviors with success. You can also identify behaviors which
contribute to failure, thus adding a second layer of understanding
Participative Leadership
Assumptions
Involvement in decision-making
improves the understanding of the issues involved by those who must carry out
the decisions.
People are more committed to
actions where they have involved in the relevant decision-making.
People are less competitive and
more collaborative when they are working on joint goals.
When people make decisions
together, the social commitment to one another is greater and thus increases
their commitment to the decision.
Several people deciding together
make better decisions than one person alone.
A Participative Leader, rather than
taking autocratic decisions, seeks to involve other people in the process,
possibly including subordinates, peers, superiors and other stakeholders.
Often, however, as it is within the managers' whim to give or deny control to
his or her subordinates, most participative activity is within the immediate
team. The question of how much influence others are given thus may vary on the
manager's preferences and beliefs, and a whole spectrum of participation is
possible, as in the table below.
< Not participative
|
Highly participative >
|
Autocratic decision by leader
|
Leader proposes decision, listens
to feedback, then decides
|
Team proposes decision, leader
has final decision
|
Joint decision with team as
equals
|
Full delegation of decision to
team
|
There are many varieties on this
spectrum, including stages where the leader sells the idea to the team. Another
variant is for the leader to describe the 'what' of objectives or goals and let
the team or individuals decide the 'how' of the process by which the 'how' will
be achieved (this is often called 'Management by Objectives').
The level of participation may also
depend on the type of decision being made. Decisions on how to implement goals
may be highly participative, whilst decisions during subordinate performance
evaluations are more likely to be taken by the manager.
Discussion
There are many potential benefits
of participative leadership, as indicated in the assumptions, above.
This approach is also known as
consultation, empowerment, joint decision-making, democratic leadership,
Management By Objective (MBO) and power-sharing.
Participative Leadership can be a
sham when managers ask for opinions and then ignore them. This is likely to
lead to cynicism and feelings of betrayal.
Situational Leadership
Assumptions
The best action of the leader
depends on a range of situational factors.
Style
When a decision is needed, an
effective leader does not just fall into a single preferred style, such as
using transactional or transformational methods. In practice, as they say,
things are not that simple.
Factors that affect situational
decisions include motivation and capability of followers. This, in turn, is
affected by factors within the particular situation. The relationship between
followers and the leader may be another factor that affects leader behavior as
much as it does follower behavior.
The leaders' perception of the
follower and the situation will affect what they do rather than the truth of
the situation. The leader's perception of themselves and other factors such as
stress and mood will also modify the leaders' behavior.
Yukl (1989) seeks to combine other
approaches and identifies six variables:
·
Subordinate effort: the motivation and actual effort expended.
·
Subordinate ability and role clarity: followers knowing what to do and how to
do it.
·
Organization of the work: the structure of the work and utilization of resources.
·
Cooperation and cohesiveness: of the group in working together.
·
Resources and support: the availability of tools, materials, people, etc.
·
External coordination: the need to collaborate with other groups.
Leaders here work on such factors
as external relationships, acquisition of resources, managing demands on the
group and managing the structures and culture of the group.
Discussion
Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1958)
identified three forces that led to the leader's action: the forces in the
situation, the forces in then follower and also forces in the leader. This
recognizes that the leader's style is highly variable, and even such distant
events as a family argument can lead to the displacement activity of a more
aggressive stance in an argument than usual.
Maier (1963) noted that leaders not
only consider the likelihood of a follower accepting a suggestion, but also the
overall importance of getting things done. Thus in critical situations, a
leader is more likely to be directive in style simply because of the
implications of failure.
Contingency Theory
Assumptions
The leader's ability to lead is
contingent upon various situational factors, including the leader's preferred
style, the capabilities and behaviors of followers and also various other
situational factors.
Description
Contingency theories are a class of
behavioral theory that contend that there is no one best way of leading and
that a leadership style that is effective in some situations may not be
successful in others.
An effect of this is that leaders
who are very effective at one place and time may become unsuccessful either
when transplanted to another situation or when the factors around them change.
This helps to explain how some
leaders who seem for a while to have the 'Midas touch' suddenly appear to go
off the boil and make very unsuccessful decisions.
Discussion
Contingency theory is similar to situational theory in that there is an
assumption of no simple one right way. The main difference is that situational
theory tends to focus more on the behaviors that the leader should adopt, given
situational factors (often about follower behavior), whereas contingency theory
takes a broader view that includes contingent factors about leader capability
and other variables within the situation
Transactional Leadership
Assumptions
People are motivated by reward and
punishment.
Social systems work best with a
clear chain of command.
When people have agreed to do a
job, a part of the deal is that they cede all authority to their manager.
The prime purpose of a subordinate
is to do what their manager tells them to do.
Style
The transactional leader works
through creating clear structures whereby it is clear what is required of their
subordinates, and the rewards that they get for following orders. Punishments
are not always mentioned, but they are also well-understood and formal systems
of discipline are usually in place.
The early stage of Transactional
Leadership is in negotiating the contract whereby the subordinate is given a
salary and other benefits, and the company (and by implication the
subordinate's manager) gets authority over the subordinate.
When the Transactional Leader
allocates work to a subordinate, they are considered to be fully responsible
for it, whether or not they have the resources or capability to carry it out.
When things go wrong, then the subordinate is considered to be personally at fault,
and is punished for their failure (just as they are rewarded for succeeding).
The transactional leader often uses
management by exception, working on the principle that if something is
operating to defined (and hence expected) performance then it does not need
attention. Exceptions to expectation require praise and reward for exceeding
expectation, whilst some kind of corrective action is applied for performance
below expectation.
Whereas Transformational Leadership has more of a 'selling' style,
Transactional Leadership, once the contract is in place, takes a 'telling'
style.
Discussion
Transactional leadership is based
in contingency, in that reward or punishment is contingent upon
performance.
Despite much research that
highlights its limitations, Transactional Leadership is still a popular
approach with many managers. Indeed, in the Leadership vs. Management spectrum, it is very much towards
the management end of the scale.
The main limitation is the
assumption of 'rational man', a person who is largely motivated by money and
simple reward, and hence whose behavior is predictable. The underlying
psychology is Behaviorism, including the Classical Conditioning of Pavlov and Skinner's Operant Conditioning. These theories are largely based
on controlled laboratory experiments (often with animals) and ignore complex emotional factors and social values.
In practice, there is sufficient
truth in Behaviorism to sustain Transactional approaches. This is reinforced by
the supply-and-demand situation of much employment, coupled with the effects of
deeper needs, as in Maslow's Hierarchy. When the demand for a skill
outstrips the supply, then Transactional Leadership often is insufficient, and
other approaches are more effective.
Transformational Leadership
Assumptions
People will follow a person who
inspires them.
A person with vision and passion
can achieve great things.
The way to get things done is by
injecting enthusiasm and energy.
Style
Working for a Transformational
Leader can be a wonderful and uplifting experience. They put passion and energy
into everything. They care about you and want you to succeed.
Developing the vision
Transformational Leadership starts
with the development of a vision, a view of the future that will excite and
convert potential followers. This vision may be developed by the leader, by the
senior team or may emerge from a broad series of discussions. The important
factor is the leader buys into it, hook, line and sinker.
Selling the vision
The next step, which in fact never
stops, is to constantly sell the vision. This takes energy and commitment, as
few people will immediately buy into a radical vision, and some will join the
show much more slowly than others. The Transformational Leader thus takes every
opportunity and will use whatever works to convince others to climb on board
the bandwagon.
In order to create followers, the Transformational Leader has
to be very careful in creating trust, and their personal integrity is a
critical part of the package that they are selling. In effect, they are selling
themselves as well as the vision.
Finding the way forwards
In parallel with the selling
activity is seeking the way forward. Some Transformational Leaders know the
way, and simply want others to follow them. Others do not have a ready
strategy, but will happily lead the exploration of possible routes to the
promised land.
The route forwards may not be
obvious and may not be plotted in details, but with a clear vision, the direction
will always be known. Thus finding the way forward can be an ongoing
process of course correction, and the Transformational Leader will accept that
there will be failures and blind canyons along the way. As long as they feel
progress is being made, they will be happy.
Leading the charge
The final stage is to remain
up-front and central during the action. Transformational Leaders are always
visible and will stand up to be counted rather than hide behind their troops.
They show by their attitudes and actions how everyone else should behave. They
also make continued efforts to motivate and rally their followers, constantly
doing the rounds, listening, soothing and enthusing.
It is their unswerving commitment
as much as anything else that keeps people going, particularly through the
darker times when some may question whether the vision can ever be achieved. If
the people do not believe that they can succeed, then their efforts will flag.
The Transformational Leader seeks to infect and reinfect their followers with a
high level of commitment to the vision.
One of the methods the
Transformational Leader uses to sustain motivation is in the use of ceremonies,
rituals and other cultural symbolism. Small changes get big hurrahs, pumping up
their significance as indicators of real progress.
Overall, they balance their
attention between action that creates progress and the mental state of their
followers. Perhaps more than other approaches, they are people-oriented and
believe that success comes first and last through deep and sustained
commitment.
Discussion
Whilst the Transformational Leader
seeks overtly to transform the organization, there is also a tacit promise to
followers that they also will be transformed in some way, perhaps to be more
like this amazing leader. In some respects, then, the followers are the product
of the transformation.
Transformational Leaders are often
charismatic, but are not as narcissistic as pure Charismatic Leaders, who
succeed through a belief in themselves rather than a belief in others.
One of the traps of
Transformational Leadership is that passion and confidence can easily be
mistaken for truth and reality. Whilst it is true that great things have been
achieved through enthusiastic leadership, it is also true that many passionate
people have led the charge right over the cliff and into a bottomless chasm.
Just because someone believes they are right, it does not mean they are
right.
Paradoxically, the energy that gets
people going can also cause them to give up. Transformational Leaders often
have large amounts of enthusiasm which, if relentlessly applied, can wear out
their followers.
Transformational Leaders also tend
to see the big picture, but not the details, where the devil often lurks. If
they do not have people to take care of this level of information, then they
are usually doomed to fail.
Finally, Transformational Leaders,
by definition, seek to transform. When the organization does not need
transforming and people are happy as they are, then such a leader will be
frustrated. Like wartime leaders, however, given the right situation they come
into their own and can be personally responsible for saving entire companies
SWOT Analysis
Most of company’s they do SWOT
Analysis for any business they will start why we need this Analysis? it will
help us to scan the internal and external environment to start planning the
process for the business environmental factors internal to the firm usually can
be classified Strengths Weaknesses the external firm can be classified the
Opportunities and Threats .
The SWOT analysis provides
information that is helpful in matching the firm’s resources and capabilities
to the competitive environment into which it operates.
Steve Jobs was a human being. He
was driven as few people are, and his many accomplishments will be studied for
decades to come. But in general, day-to-day interactions, working with Steve
wasn't all that different from working with anyone else. He had a great sense
of humour and was interested in talking about topics that had absolutely
nothing to do with the business at hand: politics, education, current events.
Working with Steve Jobs was a
constant challenge, make no mistake about that. Success one week did not
guarantee any special treatment the next week. I used to tell friends that I
didn't feel the pressure, but this turned
out to be an illusion. The day
after I ultimately resigned to take a New York-based job, I felt
an incredible lightness of being. I realised that during my time
in Steve Jobs' domain, my brain had simply readjusted to a 'new normal' —
and suddenly I was back in the real world.
The personality was
integral to his way of doing business, Isaacson writes, but the real lessons
from Steve Jobs come from what he actually accomplished. He built the world’s
most valuable company, and along the way he helped to transform a number of
industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet
computing, retail stores, and digital publishing. [insert ref="callout-01"]
In this essay Isaacson describes the 14 imperatives behind Jobs’s
approach: focus; simplify; take responsibility end to end; when behind,
leapfrog; put products before profits; don’t be a slave to focus groups; bend
reality; impute; push for perfection; know both the big picture and the
details; tolerate only “A” players; engage face-to-face; combine the humanities
with the sciences; and “stay hungry, stay foolish.”
His saga is the entrepreneurial creation myth writ large: Steve
Jobs cofounded Apple in his parents’ garage in 1976, was ousted in 1985,
returned to rescue it from near bankruptcy in 1997, and by the time he died, in
October 2011, had built it into the world’s most valuable company. Along the
way he helped to transform seven industries: personal computing, animated
movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing.
He thus belongs in the pantheon of America’s great innovators, along with
Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney. None of these men was a saint, but
long after their personalities are forgotten, history will remember how they
applied imagination to technology and business.
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the
world are the ones who do.”
—Apple’s “Think Different” commercial, 1997
In the months since my biography of Jobs came out, countless
commentators have tried to draw management lessons from it. Some of those
readers have been insightful, but I think that many of them (especially those
with no experience in entrepreneurship) fixate too much on the rough edges of
his personality. The essence of Jobs, I think, is that his personality was
integral to his way of doing business. He acted as if the normal rules didn’t
apply to him, and the passion, intensity, and extreme emotionalism he brought
to everyday life were things he also poured into the products he made. His
petulance and impatience were part and parcel of his perfectionism.
One of the last times I saw him, after I had finished writing most
of the book, I asked him again about his tendency to be rough on people. “Look
at the results,” he replied. “These are all smart people I work with, and any
of them could get a top job at another place if they were truly feeling
brutalized. But they don’t.” Then he paused for a few moments and said, almost
wistfully, “And we got some amazing things done.” Indeed, he and Apple had had
a string of hits over the past dozen years that was greater than that of any
other innovative company in modern times: iMac, iPod, iPod nano, iTunes Store,
Apple Stores, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, App Store, OS X Lion—not to mention every
Pixar film. And as he battled his final illness, Jobs was surrounded by an
intensely loyal cadre of colleagues who had been inspired by him for years and
a very loving wife, sister, and four children.
So I think the real lessons from Steve Jobs have to be drawn from
looking at what he actually accomplished. I once asked him what he thought was
his most important creation, thinking he would answer the iPad or the
Macintosh. Instead he said it was Apple the company. Making an enduring
company, he said, was both far harder and more important than making a great
product. How did he do it? Business schools will be studying that question a
century from now. Here are what I consider the keys to his success.
Focus
When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was producing a random
array of computers and peripherals, including a dozen different versions of the
Macintosh. After a few weeks of product review sessions, he’d finally had
enough. “Stop!” he shouted. “This is crazy.” He grabbed a Magic Marker, padded
in his bare feet to a whiteboard, and drew a two-by-two grid. “Here’s what we
need,” he declared. Atop the two columns, he wrote “Consumer” and “Pro.” He
labeled the two rows “Desktop” and “Portable.” Their job, he told his team
members, was to focus on four great products, one for each quadrant. All other
products should be canceled. There was a stunned silence. But by getting Apple
to focus on making just four computers, he saved the company. “Deciding what
not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” he told me. “That’s true for
companies, and it’s true for products.”
After he righted the company, Jobs began taking his “top 100”
people on a retreat each year. On the last day, he would stand in front of a
whiteboard (he loved whiteboards, because they gave him complete control of a
situation and they engendered focus) and ask, “What are the 10 things we should
be doing next?” People would fight to get their suggestions on the list. Jobs would
write them down—and then cross off the ones he decreed dumb. After much
jockeying, the group would come up with a list of 10. Then Jobs would slash the
bottom seven and announce, “We can only do three.”
Focus was ingrained in Jobs’s personality and had been honed by
his Zen training. He relentlessly filtered out what he considered distractions.
Colleagues and family members would at times be exasperated as they tried to
get him to deal with issues—a legal problem, a medical diagnosis—they
considered important. But he would give a cold stare and refuse to shift his
laserlike focus until he was ready.
Near the end of his life, Jobs was visited at home by Larry Page,
who was about to resume control of Google, the company he had cofounded. Even
though their companies were feuding, Jobs was willing to give some advice. “The
main thing I stressed was focus,” he recalled. Figure out what Google wants to
be when it grows up, he told Page. “It’s now all over the map. What are the
five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re
dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to
turn out products that are adequate but not great.” Page followed the advice.
In January 2012 he told employees to focus on just a few priorities, such as
Android and Google+, and to make them “beautiful,” the way Jobs would have
done. Steven Jobs
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs was an American entrepreneur.
He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. Through
Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal
computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer
electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar
Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt
Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.
In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one
of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II
series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox
PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the
Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. He also played a role in
introducing the LaserWriter, one of the first widely available laser printers,
to the market.
After a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs
left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company
specializing in the higher-education and business markets. In 1986, he acquired
the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off as Pixar. He
was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer. He served as CEO and
majority shareholder until Disney's purchase of Pixar in 2006. In 1996, after
Apple had failed to deliver its operating system, Copland, Gil Amelio turned to
NeXT Computer, and the NeXTSTEP platform became the foundation for the Mac OS
X. Jobs returned to Apple as an advisor, and took control of the company as an
interim CEO. Jobs brought Apple from near bankruptcy to profitability by 1998.
As the new CEO of the company, Jobs oversaw the development of the
iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and on the services side, the company's
Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store.The success of these
products and services provided several years of stable financial returns, and
propelled Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company in
2011.The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many commentators as one
of the greatest turnarounds in business history.
In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine tumor.
Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone imbalance, underwent a
liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively thinner as his health
declined. On medical leave for most of 2011, Jobs resigned in August that year,
and was elected Chairman of the Board. He died of respiratory arrest related to
his metastatic tumor on October 5, 2011.
Jobs has received a number of honors and public recognition for
his influence in the technology and music industries. He has widely been
referred to as "legendary", a "futurist" or simply
"visionary", and has been described as the "Father of the
Digital Revolution", a "master of innovation", and a
"design perfectionist".
Steven’s Leadership style
Jobs was a demanding perfectionist who always aspired to position
his businesses and their products at the forefront of the information
technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation
and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at
the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey player
Wayne Gretzky
There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where
the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do
that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.
Steve Jobs announcing the transition to Intel processors in 2005.
Much was made of Jobs's aggressive and demanding personality.
Fortune wrote that he was "considered one of Silicon Valley's leading
egomaniacs". Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in
Michael Moritz's The Little Kingdom, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan
Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon.
In 1993, Jobs made Fortune's list of America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his
leadership of NeXT.
NeXT Cofounder Dan'l Lewin was quoted in Fortune as saying of that
period, "The highs were unbelievable ... But the lows were unimaginable",
to which Jobs's office replied that his personality had changed since then.
In 2005, Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons
from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography,
iCon: Steve Jobs. In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had
"closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad." Jef
Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs "would have made an
excellent king of France", alluding to Jobs's compelling and
larger-than-life persona. Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a
"mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the creative
process of the filmmakers.
Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael
Dell, starting in 1987 when Jobs first criticized Dell for making
"un-innovative beige boxes". On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner
Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he ran then-troubled
Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the
shareholders." In 2006, Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's
market capitalization rose above Dell's. The email read:
Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting
the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell.
Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it
was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve
Steve 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.
What made Steven Jobs famous.
Steve Jobs was not a fan of market research. He famously said
"You can't just ask customers what they want then try to give that to
them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
Instead, he relied on his own instinct for refining existing
technologies, developing new products and packaging them in a way that people
would want to use.
Before the iPod appeared in 2001, there was relatively little
interest in MP3 music players. Those products that did exist were chunky, often
fiddly to use, and were largely bought by early adopter tech enthusiasts.
So appealing were gadgets such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad that
the public quickly engaged with them. That was due, in no small part, to Steve
Jobs' ability as a salesman - explaining his products simply in a way that
everyone c ould understand.
Steven Jobs
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs
was an American entrepreneur. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and
CEO of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic
pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in
the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served
as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board
of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.
In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder
Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of
personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the
commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface,
which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh.
He also played a role in introducing the LaserWriter, one of the first widely
available laser printers, to the market.
After a power struggle with the
board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer
platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business
markets. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm,
which was spun off as Pixar. He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an
executive producer. He served as CEO and majority shareholder until Disney's
purchase of Pixar in 2006. In 1996, after Apple had failed to deliver its
operating system, Copland, Gil Amelio turned to NeXT Computer, and the NeXTSTEP
platform became the foundation for the Mac OS X. Jobs returned to Apple as an
advisor, and took control of the company as an interim CEO. Jobs brought Apple
from near bankruptcy to profitability by 1998.
As the new CEO of the company, Jobs
oversaw the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and on the
services side, the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App
Store.The success of these products and services provided several years of
stable financial returns, and propelled Apple to become the world's most
valuable publicly traded company in 2011.The reinvigoration of the company is
regarded by many commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business
history.
In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a
pancreas neuroendocrine tumor. Though it was initially treated, he reported a
hormone imbalance, underwent a liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively
thinner as his health declined. On medical leave for most of 2011, Jobs
resigned in August that year, and was elected Chairman of the Board. He died of
respiratory arrest related to his metastatic tumor on October 5, 2011.
Jobs has received a number of
honors and public recognition for his influence in the technology and music
industries. He has widely been referred to as "legendary", a
"futurist" or simply "visionary", and has been described as
the "Father of the Digital Revolution", a "master of
innovation", and a "design perfectionist".
Steven’s Leadership style
Jobs was a demanding perfectionist
who always aspired to position his businesses and their products at the
forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting
trends,
at least in innovation and style.
He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld
Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky
There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote
that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.'
And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And
we always will.
Steve Jobs announcing the
transition to Intel processors in 2005.
Much was made of Jobs's aggressive
and demanding personality. Fortune wrote that he was "considered one of
Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs". Commentaries on his temperamental
style can be found in Michael Moritz's The Little Kingdom, The Second Coming of
Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young &
William L. Simon. In 1993, Jobs made Fortune's list of America's Toughest
Bosses in regard to his leadership of NeXT.
NeXT Cofounder Dan'l Lewin was
quoted in Fortune as saying of that period, "The highs were unbelievable
... But the lows were unimaginable", to which Jobs's office replied that
his personality had changed since then.
In 2005, Jobs banned all books
published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their
publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs. In its 2010 annual
earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles
available for the iPad." Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that
Jobs "would have made an excellent king of France", alluding to
Jobs's compelling and larger-than-life persona. Floyd Norman said that at
Pixar, Jobs was a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with
the creative process of the filmmakers.
Jobs had a public war of words with
Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting in 1987 when Jobs first criticized
Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes". On October 6, 1997, in a
Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he ran
then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the money
back to the shareholders." In 2006, Jobs sent an email to all employees
when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's. The email read:
Team, it turned out that Michael
Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market
close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be
different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today.
Steve
Steve 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.
What made Steven Jobs famous.
Steve Jobs was not a fan of market
research. He famously said "You can't just ask customers what they want
then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want
something new.
Instead, he relied on his own
instinct for refining existing technologies, developing new products and
packaging them in a way that people would want to use.
Before the iPod appeared in 2001,
there was relatively little interest in MP3 music players. Those products that
did exist were chunky, often fiddly to use, and were largely bought by early
adopter tech enthusiasts.
So appealing were gadgets such as
the iPod, iPhone and iPad that the public quickly engaged with them. That was
due, in no small part, to Steve Jobs' ability as a salesman - explaining his
products simply in a way that everyone could understand.
References
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2002, ‘Transformational leadership @ Apple’, Strategic Direction, 18, 6, pp.
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2006, ‘Steve Jobs: He thinks different’, available from
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02 April 2007)
Bass,
BM & Avolio, BJ 1994, Improving Organizational Effectiveness through
Transformational
Leadership, Sage Publications
Benezra,
Karen & Jennifer Gilbert 2002, ‘The CEO as brand: their names are
synonymous
with
their companies’ products – and that presets a slew of unique challenges’, The
Chief
Executive, January.
Burrows,
P 2006, ‘Steve Jobs’ magic kingdom’, Businessweek Online, available from
<http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2005/tc2005096_1655_tc210.
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(accessed 02 April 2007)
Chung-Herrera,
BG & MJ Lankau 2003, ‘Grooming future hospitality leaders: a
competencies
model’, Cornell Quarterly, 44, 3, pp. 121-137
Deutschman,
Alan 2001, The Second Coming of Steven Jobs, Broadway Books.
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