My take on Steve Jobs

Every so often in our lifetime, someone passes who you feel for and begin to miss, although you did not know the person in a personal sense.

I first felt that way with President John F Kennedy even though I was only 13 at the time of his death. I felt the same when my friends Bon Hasbullah and Mustaffa Awang were killed in a helicopter crash. It was the similar feelings for Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul. Now, I feel the same way for Steven Jobs.

I came to know more about Jobs (left) after I first read the Peters and Waterman book, ‘In Search of Excellence’ in the early 1980s. They described a technology entrepreneur who was making waves by ‘doing things differently’.

At Intan, we used the documentary on the book for training on companies and their search for excellence. The Apple story and the birth of the Macintosh computer were documented in that training film.

I remember the Macintosh manager, a literature major appointed by Jobs, saying something like this: “No one else in his right mind would have chosen me as the manager to convert his dream into a product! He is a maniac for brilliance!”

Apart from being a technology wizard of sorts, his greatest brilliance was the way he was able to keep focused on his goal and the clarity that he helped his team maintain.

A New York Times obituary by David Pogue explains and expounds this trait and why Jobs can be imitated but never duplicated. It generalises the brilliance of both Jobs and the reactions of the industry, and there are lessons for all technology entrepreneurs:

• Jobs introduced a new product on the global stage.
• The tech bloggers savaged the product and predicted doom.
• The product came out and the public went nuts for it!
• The rest of the industry played copycat.

Jobs’ brilliance, apart from having 300 patents to his name, was his visionary gift of seeing every potential product become a reality, according to Pogue.

‘By seeing the promise in some early clunky technology and polishing it, refining it, and simplifying it until it becomes a standard component. Like the mouse, menus, windows, the CD-ROM or Wi-Fi,” wrote Pogue.

Pogue believes that Jobs’ unique value contribution was his ability and determination to ‘think differently’. He loved to celebrate difference.  

Jobs introduced an advertising campaign when he returned to Apple. It stated that the Apple customer should see themselves as a ‘rebel, a misfit, a round peg in a square hole’; and that the products were for  mavericks and dreamers.

The advertisement concluded: ‘The people who think they are crazy enough to change the world are the ones who do.’

A motivator

I compare Jobs to a maestro conducting an orchestra. Unless one is an accomplished musician, one cannot conduct an orchestra. One has to have expertise. To conduct, theoretically at least, one must know how to play every instrument available and in current use.

Then one has to know every person behind the instrument; to know their feelings, views and opinions, but also have absolute vision and clarity about the score.

Without intimate and accurate knowledge of the score and maybe even the feelings and thoughts of the creator of the score, I suppose there will not be enough clarity and vision by the conductor to communicate the intents of the composer to the rest of the players and partners.

Jobs understood the inter-networking technology as well as most others in Silicon Valley. But what was different was that he could motivate and mobilise a team of techno-entrepreneurs into the zone of the unknown, keep them motivated and help them deliver their dream and vision – and all this while the product was still a secret.

He was a visionary leader with clear and present organisational integrity. Such leaders must have the super vision of the direction and organisational movement towards a goal or target.  

They must set clear direction for the others to move towards. They must motivate the same team to keep going until their goal is achieved. This Steve Jobs could do again and again with all that he helped produce.

May he rest in peace.