6 key leadership lessons from Steve Jobs

By ROSHAN THIRAN
roshan.thiran@leaderonomics.com

Jobs always saw a future with possibilities. He looked beyond today and saw
something better in everything.

A few months before Steve Jobs passed away, I received a book from publisher McGraw-Hill on
Jobs by communications coach Carmine Gallo. I started recollecting the Think Different Apple ad
campaign. The ad was the starting point in Jobs revival of a company he founded, was fired from
and later brought back to turn it around. The ad was memorable because it was essentially about
Jobs leadership and his desire to change the world. The copy of the ad, read by Richard
Dreyfuss, goes like this:
Heres to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the
square holes. The ones who see things differently. Theyre not fond of rules. And they have no
respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. And the
only thing you cant do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race
forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people
who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.
This campaign featured Thomas Edison, Einstein, Gandhi, Amelia Earheart and other Apple
heroes. Jobs explained that you can tell a lot about a person by who his or her heroes are and
his role models were people who changed the world.

Jobs was the most successful CEO according to Jack Welch, as he reshaped the computer,
entertainment, music, telecommunications and the book industries. Born to Joanne Schieble and
Abdul Fattah Jandali, a Syrian, he was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs who promised his
biological parents that they would send Jobs to college. Jobs did go to Reed College but dropped
out after one semester.
Although he dropped out, he continued attending classes he was passionate about. He worked
briefly at Hewlett-Packard where he met Steve Wozniak, who would later co-found Apple with him,
and then took a job with Atari to save money to go to India to find himself.
He travelled to India and came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional
Indian clothing. Jobs began that trip wanting to change the world but he did not know how.
During his time in India, he realised that maybe Thomas Edison did a lot more to improve the
world than Karl Marx or Neem Karolie Baba put together. Jobs trip to India convinced him that his
purpose on earth was to put a dent in the universe through innovation like his great role model
Thomas Edison.
Studying Jobs leadership, I uncovered that he, like Mandela, Gandhi, Napoleon, Welch and other
great leaders, began their leadership journey in silent retreat finding themselves and their
passion. In fact, interestingly, I found six key steps which enable all great leaders across time to
put a dent in the universe. The steps are as follows:
1 Take time to be with yourself to know yourself. Find out what you truly love to do and what drives
you.
2 Define your vision of a better tomorrow and redefine it till the vision excites you.
3 Sell and excite the world with the message of your vision.
4 Build a plan of execution to achieve this vision, including the mobilisation of people to ensure the
vision becomes a reality.
5 Say NO to distractions and focus relentlessly on achieving the vision.
6 Execute! Execute! Execute! and keep executing flawlessly with high quality, overcoming
obstacles that come your way.
Finding Yourself and Your Passion
Jobs dropped out of college, disappointing his parents in the process. But he was always curious
claiming, the minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didnt interest me,
and dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. He attended a calligraphy class because he
was passionate about typefaces even though he knew that this class had no hope of any practical
application in my life. Yet 10 years later, this calligraphy class was the reason that the Macintosh
had beautiful typography.
Jobs believed his philosophy of following his heart was a key part of leadership adding you must
have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly
want to become.

Then Jobs went to India spending time with the surroundings and the Creator discovering his
calling. In fact, Jobs, in an interview with the Smithsonian, postulates:
I think you should go get a job as a bus boy or something until you find something you are really
passionate about. Im convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs
from the non-successful ones is pure PERSEVERANCE. It is so hard. There are such rough
moments that I think most people give up. Unless you have a lot of passion, youre not going to
survive. Youre going to give up. So, youve got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you
want to right that you are passionate about, otherwise you are not going to have the perseverance
to stick it through. I think thats half the battle right there.
And he was right. You have got to find what you love and are passionate about first.
Define your vision of a better tomorrow
Jobs always sees a future with possibilities. He looks beyond today and sees something better in
everything. He saw computers as much more than dreary productivity tools. He saw the MP3
player as more than a Walkman.
On the iPhone, he remarked, We all had cellphones. We just hated them, they were so awful to
use. The software was terrible. The hardware wasnt very good, and so he challenged his team,
Lets make a great phone that we fall in love with. Were going to do it. Lets try. It was the same
with the iPad. Jobs had a way of seeing a greater future.
In Gallos book, he cited a story where Jobs was recruiting a top talent to Apple 30 years ago. This
talent asked, What is your vision for the personal computer? For the next hour, Jobs painted a
picture of how personal computers were going to change the world. He weaved his vision of how it
would change everything from work, education, entertainment and everything. After hearing Jobs
vision, he immediately signed up to work at Apple, a small start-up then.
Great leaders have vision. According to former Apple leader Trip Hawkins, Steve has the power of
vision that is almost frightening. When Steve believes in something, the power of that vision can
literally sweep aside any objections or problems.
Articulate the Vision
One of the key leadership lessons Jobs internalised is the CEOs role as company evangelist and
vision spokesperson. Leaders can dream big visions, but can they articulate that vision ensuring
its appealing, vibrant, and gripping?
How did Jobs message his vision so perfectly? Firstly, he was passionate about the vision and his
energy flowed from this passion. More importantly, he spent hours practising and preparing,
ensuring his vision was fully understood. A Business Weekarticle notes that Jobs articulation of his
vision comes only after grueling hours of practice. And he communicates by simply allowing you

to visualise the vision. Most leaders have visions but the problem is they dont communicate that
vision effectively.
Mobilising people to execute the vision
A big part about Jobs leadership is his ability to hire people who are inspired to make the dream a
reality (Gallo). Ultimately, people are the key to success as no single idea Jobs had would have
been successful had not others joined his crusade.
Similarly, Martin Luther King and Gandhi did not develop followers just by their inspiring speeches.
Instead, they spent the greater part bonding, building coalitions, and connecting with communities
one person at a time. Their powerful agenda moved forward as they mobilised people together on
a personal level. Great leaders have powerful one-on-one dialogues mobilising people to their
cause.

Focusing on the journey

Jobs seemed to be all over the place with so many new ideas and innovative products. Yet, he
was extremely focused and clear where his journey required him to go.
Jobs said, the people who are doing the work are the moving force behind Apple. My job is to
create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organisation and keep it at bay. He ensured
that he removed hindrances from the focus.
Focusing on the most important issues means you have to say NO to 1,000 things including
distractions, which is difficult to do. Jobs adds, Apple is a US$30bil company, yet weve got less
than 30 major products. The great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of
products. We tend to focus much more. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that
there are. You have to pick carefully.

Jobs was clearly focused on a few key items that will truly make a dent in the universe adding
Im actually as proud of many of the things we havent done as the things we have done.
Likewise, we too can learn to prioritise and focus on truly value-added vision-related activity.
Execute flawlessly
Its easy to execute on your vision when things go well. Usually, things never go to plan. Jobs
recalled, at Pixar making Toy Story, there came a time when we were forced to admit that the story
wasnt great. We stopped production for five months.
At Pixar, there was a story crisis for every film. And at Apple, according to Jobs, there was a
crisis for almost every single major project or product. But executing flawlessly means overcoming
these challenges and tribulations through discipline, as he claimed, To turn really interesting ideas
and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot
of discipline.
Every Monday, Jobs has a marathon process meeting with his team. He says, what we do every
Monday is we review the whole business. And we do it every single week. Ram Charan, a famous
business guru whom I interviewed recently on theLeaderonomics Show wrote a book on execution.
The key message is the same as Jobs execution is boring and tedious and repetitive. But its
this rigour that ultimately enables organisations to be successful. Jobs understood the power of
ruthless execution.
Finally, every journey will require overcoming obstacles. At 21, Jobs was the charismatic boy
wonder who co-founded Apple. He was worth US$200mil by 25, but was thrown out of the
company he founded by age 30. Jobs lost everything when he was kicked out of Apple and could
easily have given up and thrown in the towel. But he started all over again with NeXT and Pixar not
losing his passion.
Leadership is never an easy journey. It is hard work and filled with challenges. Before his death,
Jobs said remembering that Ill be dead soon is the most important tool Ive ever encountered to
help me make the big choices in life.
No one says leadership is easy but it is definitely worth the journey.

7 LEADERSHIP QUALITIES CEOS CAN

LEARN FROM STEVE JOBS
Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Steve Jobs identifies the leadership qualities of Apples co-founder in
his thoughtful article published by Harvard Business Review. Here are Jobs 7 leadership qualities that
every CEO can try to emulate:
1. Focus: When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was producing a random array of computers and
peripherals. After a few weeks of product review sessions, he shouted, Stop! This is crazy. Their job,

he told his team members, was to focus on four great products. All other products should be canceled.
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 Isaacson. Thats true for companies, and its true for
products.
2. Simplify: Jobss Zen like ability to focus was accompanied by the related instinct to simplify things by
zeroing in on their essence and eliminating unnecessary components. Simplicity is the ultimate
sophistication, declared Apples first marketing brochure. During the design of the iPod interface, Jobs
tried at every meeting to find ways to cut clutter. He insisted on being able to get to whatever he wanted
in three clicks.
3. Take Responsibility End to End: Jobs and Apple took end-to-end responsibility for the user
experiencesomething too few companies do. From the performance of the ARM microprocessor in the
iPhone to the act of buying that phone in an Apple Store, every aspect of the customer experience was
tightly linked together.
4. When Behind, Leapfrog: The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new
ideas first. It also knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind. That happened when Jobs built the
original iMac. He focused on making it useful for managing a users photos and videos, but it was left
behind when dealing with music. People with PCs were downloading and swapping music and then
ripping and burning their own CDs. The iMacs slot drive couldnt burn CDs. But instead of merely
catching up by upgrading the iMacs CD drive, he decided to create an integrated system that would
transform the music industry. The result was the combination of iTunes, the iTunes Store, and the iPod,
which allowed users to buy, share, manage, store, and play music better than they could with any other
devices.
5. Put Products Before Profits: When Jobs and his small team designed the original Macintosh, in the
early 1980s, his injunction was to make it insanely great. At his first retreat with the Macintosh team, he
began by writing a maxim on his whiteboard: Dont compromise. The machine that resulted cost too
much and led to Jobss ouster from Apple. But the Macintosh also put a dent in the universe, as he said,
by accelerating the home computer revolution. And in the long run he got the balance right: Focus on
making the product great and the profits will follow.
6. Dont Be a Slave To Focus Groups: When Jobs took his original Macintosh team on its first retreat,
one member asked whether they should do some market research to see what customers wanted. No,
Jobs replied, because customers dont know what they want until weve shown them. He invoked Henry
Fords line If Id asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, A faster horse! Caring
deeply about what customers want is much different from continually asking them what they want; it
requires intuition and instinct about desires that have not yet formed. Our task is to read things that are
not yet on the page, Jobs explained. The people in the Indian countryside dont use their intellect like we
do; they use their intuition instead, he recalled. Intuition is a very powerful thingmore powerful than
intellect, in my opinion.
7. Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish: Jobs stayed hungry and foolish throughout his career by making sure that
the business and engineering aspect of his personality was always complemented by a hippie
nonconformist side from his days as an artistic, acid-dropping, enlightenment-seeking rebel. In every

aspect of his lifethe women he dated, the way he dealt with his cancer diagnosis, the way he ran his
businesshis behavior reflected the contradictions, confluence, and eventual synthesis of all these
varying strands.
When Jobs returned to Apple, he helped write the text for the Think Different ads: Heres to the crazy
ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes If there was any
doubt that, consciously or not, he was describing himself, he dispelled it with the last lines: While some
see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can
change the world are the ones who do.