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Steve Jobs: Redefining The CEO
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a nice piece on how Steve Jobs is redefining the job of being a CEO. From the story: 'Just over a decade ago, Steve Jobs was considered washed-up, a has-been whose singular achievement was co-founding Apple Computer back in the 1970s. Now, given the astounding success of Apple and Pixar, he's setting a new bar for how to manage a Digital Age corporation.'"
Indeed, one of the facts of life is that everyone gets topped by somebody who is better, or by somebody who will take it to the next level. That is why I am very intrigued to see who will do that to Jobs. He has already set the bar pretty high, and whoever comes along afterwards will really have to do something spectacular to be noticed, and to earn their name.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
he's setting a new bar for how to manage a Digital Age corporation
literally.
Business Week also has a podcast where they talk with the author of the story to provide a litte more depth. It was a fairly entertaining discussion where they discuss a little of the history of how it all came about and the relationship between Steve Jobs and Disney.
NeXT did reach a level of stardom within the engineering, scientific, and academic community. However, that was due to their innovative systems, rather than Jobs himself.
Indeed, if you went into nearly any modern engineering firm or research lab around 1991 or so, you'd often hear about how many of the employees there wanted even just access to a NeXT system, if they couldn't have one for themselves. Often times the price of such a system was quite prohibitive, but those who did have access were often far more productive than their peers.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Sorry, but somehow I expect a link to a story when I hear the word "piece". You know, with more than perhaps 200 words, especially given the subject.
This is just a short, non-interesting slideshow.
No news here - move along.
TFA is only 7 paragraphs long (with 7 pictures), but this sums it up for me:
"Other CEOs may focus on finance or sales. Jobs spends most of his time trying to come up with the next blockbuster product."
He's not there for the money, he's there to change the world. Well, at least, he succeeds in making us believe he's not after the money... Of course, MacOS X is not open source (yet?!), he's running a corporation after all!
I remember his quote: "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me"
I don't think a majority of CEO can honestly say this nowadays.
Animoog.org
I can't believe that the board of directors of Disney is going to include Jobs. Ten years ago I would have said, "When they pry it from Michael Eisner's cold, dead hands." So maybe it's a good thing that people are sitting up and noticing CEOs who aren't just businessmen with suits and a book by Jack Welch.
Jobs' insistence on controlling all aspects of a product -- from hardware and software to the service that comes with them -- is the new blueprint.
To be sure, Apple is a unique presence in the world of digital media, but the slideshow picture they put alongside this caption was that of an iMac. As far as computers go, total control of the platform is not a new idea. It is, in fact, the oldest one. That type of solution stretches back as far as the room-sized big iron of the '60s and before, but it was most publicly visible, I think, during the '80s, when several companies were vying for dominance of the personal computer market. Commodore, Atari, Apple, IBM - they all had their own little universes where you bought their hardware, ran their OS, and dealt with their disk format. Each company dreamed of taking over with its own end-to-end solution, but that didn't happen. It can be argued that the market is simply too large for any one company to hope for dominance of that kind.
The coolest voice ever.
I had a NeXT slab way back in the day. It was a good computer. And somewhat cheaper than a Sun, DEC, or HP Apollo workstation. The DSP in the cube was an advance. And the software -- as seen in Mac OS X -- was certainly nice. But no one else was coding in objective C, and X was the defacto display standard not DPS. Still, I really liked it.
Steve Jobs is certainly a mastermind. There's no doubt that he's good at what he does. But the question is, where is he heading? For a long time now, there have been multiple sides to his maneuvering. One theory is that he trying to directly challenge Microsoft. Supporting evidence would be his switch to Intel processors, his continued development of iWork (many think Apple is working on a competitor to Excel), Apple's closed business model and their careful manipulation of the media world. However, to truly become a power player in the computer market they need to seriously drop prices. Another argument might be that Jobs is trying to take over the next big frotier, the TV. Although hundreds of companies have released DVRS and media center PC's, none (except Tivo, which has a monthly charge) have made a product cheap enough and easy enough to make it truly mainstream. Many think it likely that the Mac mini will be converted to a media center Mac based on front row. And then there's the iPod, which by itself has opportunity to explode into a dozen other markets. Many people see Apple entering the cell phone market. Other's see them becoming the single driving force in the upcoming explosion of mobile TV. Still others view the iPod as taking music one step further releasing iPod boom boxes and stereos (this type of speculation is still on the same level however as the Apple TV we kept hearing about). The next year will be the defining era of Apple, will they remain the iPod and high end PC maker, or will they come into the market in ways no one could have forseen in the past?
you had me at #!
Unbelievable, 7 pages to smear out text that could fit easily on a single page. It takes longer to load one such page than to read it.
It's scaring readers away. I am not waiting for your page to load, and I am not clicking multiple times to read a single article.
And while I am at it. Since the invention of tabs, will everyone please stop using links that insist on opening in a new window. I have one window, perhaps two with multiple tabs. And new links are opened in their own tab. But, noooo, sites still insist links are opened in a new window.
Want to keep me as a return visitor? STOP ANNOYING ME. Stop dictating how I can access your data, if you want me to see it.
Entertainments companies in particular are hurt by focus groups and rule by committee. Disney turned out a better product when Walt was still around. Turner Entertainment faired much better under Ted, than under Time Warner/AOL.
Well, googling for it turns up that it appeared in an interview with him in the Wall Street Journal in 1993.
The real question is whether Jobs will become CEO of Disney/Pixar. If he does, he'll probably have to give up Apple, and move to LA. Running Disney is a full time job.
Most CEOs are just middle managers who got promoted to the top spot; either from within or were hired from another company. But the thing is, what makes a good middle manager (attention to detail, thinking about finances, day to day stuff) is exactly what makes a poor CEO. To be a great CEO, you need to think about strategy, where your market is going, where there is new markets, ner tech, etc... - Which is exactly what Jobs does. Saying he's "trying to come up with the next blockbuster product." is over-simplifying what he does.
It's sad that corps have this mentality that you have to work your way up through the ranks before becoming a CEO. But the problem is, what gets you promoted on the lower levels actually hurts you as a CEO. (There's a reason why the average CEO job lasts less then 2 years - they fired.) If Jobs were concentrating an each department's finances and other details, he would have missed the boat on these new products.
Gates on the other hand, is not a visionary. He is a follower (which can pay off big), but look at MS's strategy: throw money at anything new. Apple on the other hand creates something new.
I think my point is made and I don't want to turn /. into a MBA class! :-(
It seems the main thing that distinguishes Jobs, according to the slideshow, is that he knows his companies' products to the point where he is unafraid to get involved with them at any level from suppliers of suppliers to design to marketing. In other words, he thoroughly knows his business.
A CEO who thoroughly knows his business redefines what a CEO is? This merely highlights the disease that has infected much of corporate America, namely that you don't have to know shit about your business or product, all you have to know is how to manage people, whatever that means.
This is about as effective as the idea that you don't have to know jack about math, or physics, or history in order to teach them; all you have to be is a good teacher, whatever the hell that means.
News Flash: Intelligence, experience, knowledge and motivation are far more important in running a company than an MBA. Steve Jobs illustrates this. News at 11.
Jobs is an artist selling art supplies. For most of their history Macs have enjoyed their greatest success as tools for graphic designers. Design always has required a single, personal vision to succeed. Those great looking toasters and clocks and cars that industry turned out in the middle of the 20th century weren't designed by committee. There were rather a handful of recognized top designers, some of whom spanned everything from streamlined steam locomotives to soap wrappers.
So Jobs has been an industrial designer producing tools mostly used by graphic designers, who of course are sensitive to good industrial design. That's worked. More recently he's gone into the music/fashion accessories business - also one which melds easily with design, and also one where to top lines always come from a single designer's vision rather than committee. And with Pixar, as the good-looking but shallow-on-info slide show says, he knew enough about "creatives" to keep the teams small and together.
None of this should be taken to imply that Jobs' success illustrates the right approach for industries in which design is not properly the central focus. For instance, Carter was famously a micro-managing president. Look how that worked out. The Soviet economy was micro-managed from the top (and they even started out as a culture with some very good designers). Results? Nada. The hard-earned lesson that micro-managing is bad still applies across most of the spectrum. Jobs is just fortunate to be in one of the few niches where the generalization fails.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Margaret Whitman's company (Ebay) is bigger
Larry Ellison (Oracle) has been around longer (without leaving the company at least)
Eric Schmidt's company (Google) gets an article on Slashdot every few hours
Steve Balmer's company (Microsoft) sells more Operating Systems
I guess to Jobs credit he founded a very successful company, then left and it tanked and came back and it became a great company again, but I just don't think that there's no question about him being number one as this article has implied.
No Sigs!
I recall reading a story about the development of the IPOD. Several times Jobs looked at the prototype and said, "Change it, I don't like this feature." Because he controlled Apple this could happen even if it caused the schedule to slip and cost $$$. When you are right this is great. On the other hand Henry Ford stuck with the Model T too long, because he misread the consumer's needs.
Jobs certainly has the ability to judge what will make something become a unique product. Wonder if he will have the same skills at picking movies for Disney to produce.
why are people so obsessed with rewarding single people with success of organizations?
Why is it steve jobs that is responsible for all the success of apple?
why was it hitler that was responsible for nazi germany?
Why do humans always have to make everything about one person?
This is retarded. Companies are people and teams. Not people. Countries are people. Not presidents. Parties. Committees. As soon as people stop making decisions this way maybe we'll start making some progress.
--- ask me about nihilism, I will have nothing to tell you.
You don't come up with cool sayings like that unless you're right into it. (Or unless you have a great PR department, which I don't believe was the case).
My impression of Jobs is that he's simply entertaining his mania. --He sees possible futures where technology becomes an idealized, humanity-altering version of itself, and he's simply trying to realize this vision by following and then occupying what seem to him the obvious and inevitable steps.
Is he angling to go head-to-head with Microsoft? I doubt it. Guys like Jobs find reward and adrenalin rushes, etc., through realizing creative vision. Competition and the dark 'joy' of destroying competitors, and the 'joy' of collecting all the money in the world pale in comparison. Jobs is entirely capable of 'losing' to Gates, because winning and losing are of little importance when one's goal is merely to shape and advance. (Even if shaping and advancing mean being a control-freak, which is typical for people like Jobs. Nobody else can see it right or therefore do it right, so why muck about depending on others?)
Time for a little more metaphysical etymology. . .
"Gates" - Not quite the same as a door; doors can be opened and closed by regular individuals. A gate implies a door which is watched and controlled by somebody else, one which is designed to limit and control the flow of that which enters and exits. Bill exerts control over the flow of information.
"Jobs" - Tasks which need doing. Steve follows the work toward his peculiar vision, and then does it, no matter how ludicrous it may appear.
--His moves will at first seem irrational to the sharks, (and frustrated board members), because he likes to invest and play rather than invest and reap. But then when the circumstances are right and creativity blossoms, he suddenly seems like a genius.
My only trouble is that he's embraced the idea that people don't like to think outside certain boundaries and want to be coddled, which may well be true. This bothers me, because while he's out there changing the world, I have to live in it. --And I do not like to be coddled or to have somebody else do my thinking for me.
Candy-coated buttons piss me off. Complexity does not scare me.
-FL
I'd like to see Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs in some kind of TV trivia game show for charity.
Here's the twist: Bill would have to answer questions about Apple, and Steve would have to answer questions about Microsoft. They are both keen competitors, I think many would be surpised at how much they knew about each other's business. And to avoid bruised egos, both charities would "win" with a large prize at the end. Wouldn't that be cool?
Because most people in their lives simply manage to get to work on time, do as they are instructed, and pay their taxes. This behavior pattern does not inspire much of anything to the casual on-looker.
Having a "vision" isn't uncommon. Uncommon, however, is the person who is brave and strong and skilled enough to go about realizing it.
Many people strive to be so capable, and thus they look up to those who have managed it. Role models are what they are for this reason, or so I think.
-FL
The biggest factor that I see is recognition of top talent. This is essentially the same thing I see Google doing.
"Jobs has believed that small teams of top talent will outperform better-funded big ones. He has used the same approach at Pixar, where creative chief John Lasseter has led the way in creating blockbusters like Toy Story and Finding Nemo. Jobs also outsources far more selectively than his rivals. He'd rather have all his creatives working together than save a few bucks by outsourcing such work overseas."
I work designing telecom software and I see the opposite. Software personal here are hired and managed like cattle. They throw bodies at problems and the cheaper the bodies, the better(we are currently ramping India and China labs while downsizing Texas labs). They create a process that is aimed at the lowest common denominator and that is the result it has, lowest common denominator performance.
If you want to be the best, you hire the best and remove obstacles from their path, and demand their best.
I have occasionally had the priviledege to work in an environment that empowered the talented employees and encouraged them to do great things. It is amazing. But those days are gone now.
Some have an almost accusatory tone when referring to Jobs micromanaging. I think of it as taking a direct interest in the quality and showing it. Encouraging his people to do great things.
I would rather be encouraged by a perfectionist wanting great things, than the mindless hordes of management graduates with decks of powerpoint slides and MS project plans indicating when every piece is projected to be done by the headcount. Mindlessly they shuffle bodies around when reality doesn't line up to projections.
Building leading technology will always be a least partially like producing great art. It will be the domain of creative driven talent, not commodity bodies monitored in MS project plan.
He's a bigger loser than he was a decade ago.
Loser? When you're not in the game to 'win', losing only means not being able to continue playing.
One of my favorite personality types is the one which pisses off guys like you by not caring about winning or losing in the boring conventional terms so many people think hold validity. Creativity is everything. Greed is a disease. --This, I believe, is a Universal truth which shapes our reality, and once you figure it out, you can fly.
There's a reason why a fellow who has only 'conquered' 3% of the computer market is such a recognized name. It's because he's learned one of the key secrets of life; how to have fun while everybody else is agonizing over which way the ball is being kicked.
Who would you enjoy meeting more at a party? --A boring conservative money-getter, or a 'loser' who isn't scared to dream and get excited about it? All my friends are technically 'losers', but they live happily, without fear or want, and they light up the world. All the money-getters I've met, by contrast, are like pre-fab appliances with 2-dimensional social skills. These are the 'winners'. Hmm.
-FL
I have been trying to get his autograph for 15 years. Now I think he's risen to a level that it will be impossible. There is going to be a big hole in my autographs of people that wear turtlenecks every day.
"why are people so obsessed with rewarding single people with success of organizations? Why is it steve jobs that is responsible for all the success of apple? why was it hitler that was responsible for nazi germany? Why do humans always have to make everything about one person? This is retarded. Companies are people and teams. Not people. Countries are people. Not presidents. Parties. Committees. As soon as people stop making decisions this way maybe we'll start making some progress."
Here's a news flash for you: the vast majority of the human race needs some sort of direction in any organizational enterprise. The guy ultimately responsible gets the credit for the organization's success, but he also gets the blame should things go wrong. The perfect example is the crew of a ship. Sure the crew all know their jobs, or should, but it's up to the captain to make sure that the jobs are being done to the benefit of the ship and crew. He's the one who has to decide where the ship is going; how best to get there; use the resources aboard, material and human etc. Sure, the other officers can give him the best advice, even the correct advice, but ultimately, somebody has to make the decision. And if you think you can operate a ship by committee, you're sadly mistaken.
It's not a matter of obsessively rewarding single people with the success of the enterprise, it's about having a focus of direction and responsibility. Your suggestion that progress can be made without such a focus is simplistic to say the least. In an anarchistic society who makes the decisions about garbage collection, public safety, environmental protection, legislation etc? And don't be so naive as to suggest that we'll all just group hug and sing "Kumbaya" and the good inherent in humanity will magically make these things sort themselves out. The average human is more than willing to pass the buck and let somebody else worry about this stuff.
During the Internet boom, we thought that computer companies would become fair places to work. Post-boom, we think that blogs & transparency will take over the world. But Jobs fires whole departments from Apple when there's a leak in some insanely trivial product announcement. The place is a dictatorship. Some of their products are ok, especially compared to products from other dictatorships. But I hardly think the Slashdot crowd, impressed by technical achievements & the promise of digital liberation, is interested in celebrating mean capitalists who run private tyrannies. If he represents the future, it's going to be terribly unpleasant in the digital age.
I think it was very savvy of Jobs to buy the computer graphics division of LucasFilm to create Pixar, but it's John Lasseter who made Pixar what it is today.
One could argue that a large part of Pixar's success has been Job's willingness to stay out of day-to-day operations and concentrate on the business side.
Indeed, Jobs says with pride that Pixar has made the tough call to stop production at some point on every one of its movies to fix a problem with a storyline or character. "Quality is more important than quantity, and in the end, it's a better financial decision anyway," Jobs told BusinessWeek last year. "One home run is much better than two doubles," he said, explaining that then there's only one marketing and production budget rather than two.
This is a profound statement of commitment and speaks volumes not only about Pixar's approach to technology, but Apple's as well. Apple's focus on Mac OS X and a high quality experience with all of its hardware--from iMac to Powerbook to Powermac to iPod nano to iPod video--is the product of a singular mind. We've all heard about Jobs' influence on all aspects of product development and what strikes me is how the above quote resembles Apple's notorious commitment to a single-button mouse. It's almost as if a one-button mouse is a metaphor in hardware for the singular attention Jobs, (hence) Apple, and Pixar devote to its products.
I hope we see a new Disney come out of this merger more than we see a new Pixar.
blog
For instance, Carter was famously a micro-managing president. Look how that worked out. The Soviet economy was micro-managed from the top (and they even started out as a culture with some very good designers). Results? Nada.
The two examples of which you spoke aren't very fair, to say the least. Carter didn't fail as a president because he tried to micromanage (in fact, that's one thing I really appreciate about him), he failed because he did not find his legs in Washington, and couldn't communicate with politicians to save his life (not neccessarilly a bad thing, but a bad thing if you are one). The USSR was never designed to be micromanaged, in fact, the original philosophy was completely opposite. But one person changed all that, Stalin, of which all the original revolutionaries hated and advised the party not to trust. Unfortunately, the politician most suited for the job, Trotsky, was hunted down and killed by Stalin, who basically took over the country by force. There is little doubt that if Trotsky had become the rightful leader, as Lenin had suggested, there would have been no cold war. Fear of communism only started AFTER Stalin entered the picture. Fascists have to micromanage to stay in power. But that's not to say that micromanaging can't be used for a possitive outcome.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
In my opinion, the CEO role is more about being a leader, not a manager (that's what your underlings are for). Steve Jobs is leading. He's showing vision and implementing it.
Most CEO's these days are nothing more than managers - they worry about the bottom line, their idea of raising profits is limited to cost cutting, and basically spend their time looking back at the last quarters results (to see where they can cut more costs) than looking forward.
So no, I don't think Steve Jobs is 'redefining' the CEO role - I think he's merely showing up how crap most CEOs actually are.
I knew Jobs back in the early days (and again, several times later in his career.) His one real obvious talent was the ability to focus, stay focused, and keep the people around him also focused on the task at hand.
For some reason, that always seems to disappoint people. They wanted some sort of magic, focusing on any bright shiny slogan or technology associated with the current project. People expect CEO's to put on a great show, it is practically a job definition (no pun intended) these days.
Most CEO's are chosen because they look and act like CEOs. Jobs sets a high bar simply by adding the ability to concentrate on the job to that short list.
Take a look at other CEO's in this class, such as Mark Hurd when he was at NCR. Same thing; FOCUS.
No matter how knowlegable, how micro managing a CEO is, he or she cannot have a significant effect on a corporation directly; there is only 24 hours in a day, and only so much they can do.
But CEO's set the tone for a company. What they value, the company values. And if a company values focus, then the efforts of members of the company are all directed towards the same goal, and thats where success comes from.
Not a magic slogan of "saving the world", not some high fashion techtoy, not some secret mastery of arcane knowledge. Jobs could have as easily been a complete dummy running a company producing coathangers in Nebraska, whose motto was "grab it all, control it all, squeeze it till it bleeds", and he still would have suceeded, because a small army of people, focusing on a goal, will always win against a much larger, unorganized mob.
People forget that CEO's are, first and foremost, leaders, and the job description for a leader is pretty simple... LEAD!(i.e. get everyone going in the same direction.) Every other definition is just smoke and mirrors, no matter how much everyone would like to believe that it is more than that.