Well, The mighty Steve Jobs that we have so much to learn from. You can see the Full review here.
The book Walter Isaacson the author is a well-know writWell, The mighty Steve Jobs that we have so much to learn from. You can see the Full review here.
The book Walter Isaacson the author is a well-know writer (Einstein, Franklin are his other biography books) has covered all the aspects of Job's life from his childhood, family, friends, to founding apple with Wozniak, each product design (Macintosh, iphone etc.) and venture (Next, Pixar) he conveyed.
The book has benefited a lot from articulation of Walter Isaacson and the content are precise with rich details as he has interviewed all the people he's named in the book as well as Steve Job.
The best thing about reading biographies and the very reason why I love biographies is the lessons you can learn from the bests. Having a business guru like jobs as a mentor is a blessing not everyone can have and fortunately enough, biographies makes this dream come close to reality. So here are the best things I've learned about Jobs:
Jobs Core Personality Traits and Management Ethics
1. Jobs was an abandoned child, and when he asked his mom and dad if his real parents didn't want him, they repeated slowly: "We specifically picked you out". So, abandoned, chosen, special, became part of what Jobs regarded himself of.
2. From early in childhood, his dad who was a skilled mechanic would take him to show him how repairing is done. He would point out to him the detailing of the designs, lines, vents etc. Jobs also watched his father a lot using his skills in negotiations when bargaining the parts he wanted to purchase. These experience with his father instilled within him persuasion skills and attention to details that came in handy later in his career.
3. Another impacting force on Jobs views was his childhood search of neighborhood exposing him to simple, smart, cheap houses that were build by Joseph Eichler. From these exposures and later his Zen practices, he developed an orientation towards simplicity that influenced later all his ideas and designs.
4. A core personality trait of Jobs which had a significant impact on all his achievements was him being relentless on getting what he needed or what he deemed to be right:
That summer of 1972, after his graduation, he and Brennan moved to a cabin in the hills above Los Altos. “I’m going to go live in a cabin with Chrisann,” he announced to his parents one day. His father was furious. “No you’re not,” he said. “Over my dead body.” They had recently fought about marijuana, and once again the younger Jobs was willful. He just said good-bye and walked out.
One day Jobs walked into the lobby of the video game manufacturer Atari and wanted to be hired there, and told the personnel director, who was startled by his unkempt hair and attire, that he wouldn’t leave until they gave him a job. :D
5. Perhaps the boldest of Jobs traits was his Reality Distortion Field which made him believe what seemed utterly impossible to others and he would always persist that something odd could be done and interestingly enough, he would be often right.
6. He would refuse to accept automatically received truths, and he wanted to examine everything himself.
7. Jobs had came to belief that he could impart his feeling of confidence to others and thus push them to do things they hadn't thought possible
8. A remarkable thing that helped Jobs what he eventually became was his engagement with many great people and mentors and getting into different businesses and careers. For instance:
The Atari experience helped shape Jobs’s approach to business and design. He appreciated the user friendliness of Atari’s insert-quarter-avoid-Klingons games. “That simplicity rubbed off on him and made him a very focused product person,” said Ron Wayne. Jobs also absorbed some of Bushnell’s take-non-prisoners attitude. “Nolan wouldn’t take no for an answer,” according to Alcorn, “and this was Steve’s first impression of how things got done. Nolan was never abusive, like Steve sometimes is. But he had the same driven attitude. It made me cringe, but dammit, it got things done. In that way Nolan was a mentor for Jobs.”
9. Bushnell tought Jobs:
I taught him that if you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, ‘Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.
10. Mark Markukula another mentor of Jobs taught him:
You should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.
And that is precisely what Job did with apple. He always thought product not profit. Markulla instilled in Jobs the apple philosophy which revolves around three core principles as follows:
I. Empathy: an intimate connection with the feelings of customers and understanding their needs. II. Focus: To do what must be done, every other unimportant opportunities must me eliminated. III. Impute: People from an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it onveys. "People DO judge a book by its cover." If you present your great product in a slipshod manner, it they will be perceived as slipshod.
11. From Alan Kay a Xerox mighty scientist Jobs embraced and applied two Maxims: I. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. II. People who are serious about software should make their own hardware.
12. A great thing I've noticed being the root of many extraordinary feats has been this:
Because I didn't know how it couldn't be done, I was enabled to do it.
13. Jobs has been an all-time perfectionist and always complaint that young generation has no such quality ingrained in them.
14. Jobs would never compromise quality and perfection in favor of lowering the costs, nor would he care about how much longer the project would be delayed to meet his expectations.
15. Jobs would always argue that "By expecting people to do great things, you can get them to do great things." This actually has proven psychological roots.
16. From Bill Atkinson: "Great art stretches the taste, it doesn't follow the tastes." 17. "No, because customers don't know what they want until we've shown them", this is what Jobs kept replying whoever suggested doing some market research.
18. The journey is the reward. Jobs favorite maxim which too has proven neuropsychological roots. As soon as you reach your goal, the joy vanishes. (Look up dopamine working mechanism and its effects if interested).
19. Another Job's favorite maxim was: "It's better to be a pirate than to join te navy." He wanted to instill a rebel spirit in his team to have them behave like swashbucklers who were proud of their work but willing to commandeer from others.
20. Sculley former PEPSI, the first apple CEO had a weakness to manage a dysfunctional company was his desire to please other people, one of many traits that he did not share with Jobs:
We would go to the Mac building at eleven at night,” Sculley recalled, “and they would bring Jobs code to show. In some cases he wouldn’t even look at it. He would just take it and throw it back at them. I’d say, ‘How can you turn it down?’ And he would say, ‘I know they can do better.’”
21. Microsoft followed a different philosophy, their initial products were often clumsy, but they were extremely persistent, so they kept improving and improving their works.
22. Jobs had a profound emphasis on recruiting only and only A players:
Jobs had latched onto what he believed was a key management lesson from his Macintosh experience: You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players. “It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players,” he recalled. “The Macintosh experience taught me that A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.”
23. As I traversed through the book, I noticed several things contributing to Jobs ability to come up with ideas: I. He always have been on the edge of the technology and art, aware what's the latest achievements of scientific and artistic communities. II. He actively would canvass academics to inquire them on their needs and shortcoming to see if he could come up with a solution. III. Part of his routines what holding occasional retreats with top 100 managers to a resort and keep brainstorming ideas and selecting top 3 out of n+1 proposed ones.
24. What prepared Jobs for great success was getting fired from apple in act I, starting the "Next" venture and indulging and failing in any type of projects he desire. In short, his failures made him the "Steve" we know on act III (which is returning to apple).
25. This one is a bit dark: When he wanted to acquire something that others wouldn't let go of (like his daughter Lisa from his ex-wife) he would spark off a destructive route of ignorance. In case of his daughter, he undermined his ex's effectiveness and her well being to get Lisa to move into his house.
26. A lesson Jobs learned from his Buddhist days was that material possessions often cluttered life than enriched it.
27. One thing the Jobs believed lead to the down fall of apple after he left the company with Sculley was that "Sculley destroyed apple by bringing in corrupt people and corrupt values," "They cared about making money for themselves mainly, and also for apple, rather than making great products.
28. If Jobs new for sure a course of action was right, he was unstoppable. But if he had doubts, he sometimes withdrew, preferring not to thinking about things that did not perfectly suit him.
29. Job's ambition was to build a company that would endure, and he asked Markulla what the formula for that would be. Markulla replied that lasting companies know ho to reinvent themselves.
30. A beautiful phrase I read was Job saying: We at apple have forgotten who we were. One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.
Loading...
