Case Study 2: Leadership Style Of Steve Jobs

CASE STUDY 2 – Leadership Style of Steve Jobs

Apple was cofounded by Steve Jobs in his parents’ garage in 1976, was ousted by him in 1985, rescued by him from near bankruptcy in 1997, and by the time he died, in October 2011, developed into world’s most valuable company. Jobs reformed seven industries via personal computing, music, animated movies, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing. He belongs to the list of America’s great innovators, along with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney.

He performed as if the normal rules didn’t apply to him. The passion, intensity, and extreme emotionalism he brought to everyday life were things he also put into the products he made. Under watch of Steve Jobs, Apple became

Every aspect of hardware was analyzed properly, each component to the overall look. Along with, he analyzed the user experience in every line of code and with each salesperson in the Apple stores. Jobs had an obsession with “the whole widget” and that reflected the passion for perfection. He presented his magnetic personality to motivate thousands. Apple’s model of closed and proprietary system was consistent with his personality and that had set Apple apart from open-source competitors.

IGNORE REALITY

Jobs had the ability of Reality Distortion Field i.e. push the impossible. An early example was when Jobs was on the night shift at Atari and provoked Steve Wozniak to create a game called Breakout. Woz said it would take months, but Jobs gazed at him and boasted he could do it in four days. Woz ended up doing it.

TEAM WITH WINNERS

Jobs was so direct that it bordered on rude. But his high aspirations and direct behavior made Apple employees to believe they too could accomplish anything. In a way, his rough treatment screened for the highly driven and prevented mediocrity that snuffs out innovation. Jobs said, “Maybe there’s a better way—a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code words—but I don’t know that way, as I’m just

When he returned to Apple as CEO, he helped write the “Think Different” ads. Consciously or not, he was describing himself. “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. 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.” In his beginning address for a class at Stanford University, he inspired the students to follow their own dreams and not to get up in living someone else’s life.

VISION + DETAILS

Jobs’ passion was applied to both large and small issues. Some CEOs are great visionaries and know that everything lies is in the details. In 2000, he came up with a big vision that the personal computer should become a hub for managing the user content. With this hub in mind, he developed different kinds of nodes and launched personal devices. In 2010 he brought the successor strategy where the hub moved into the cloud and Apple built huge server farms to upload and sync content.