Leadership of Steve Jobs - Essay Example

Talking about leader- Steve Jobs Introduction Leadership is a process through which a leader influences followers to achieve a common goal for the organizations. The leadership saga of Steve Jobs started from the garage of his parents. Different unstable business incidents in the past three decades have changed the perceived values of the global leaders. Being a charismatic leader, Steve Jobs was able to read the ambidextrous structures of the modern day business world. Ambidextrous leaders always search for fresh opportunities by exploiting existing opportunities. Under the leadership of Steve Jobs, Apple Inc always tried to come up with new products and improved their existing products. It was properly in line with ambidextrous structure. This paper will talk about the leadership of Steve Jobs. Discussion Over the years it has been found that the business world has faced significant turbulent events. Stock market went through topsy-turvy situations. Cold war ended but new issue of global terrorism has raised its ugly heads. Energy prices have increased. Economic power has been shifted towards the emerging economies like India and China. Due to the increase in the raw material prices profit margins have lowered. With his visionary leadership style Steve Jobs was able to predict the hyper competition and turbulent nature of the industry. Situational leadership style of Steve Jobs made the Apple one of the most successful business organizations in the world. His leadership style has provided Apple the similar outlook of a Canopy tree in the Rain forest. Under his leadership the organization was able to dodge different difficulties and absorbed considerable sunlight of success and recognition. Innovative and entrepreneurial mind set are the important characteristics of the leaders. Innovations like iPhone, iPod and iPad have made the business leadership style of Steve Jobs immortal in the minds of global followers. All these products are the indicators of his supreme innovative capacity. Leadership skills of Steve Jobs can be analyzed with the help of L.E.A.D.S. model which represent Learning, Executing, Analyzing, Designing and Strategizing. Steve Jobs made Apple a learning based innovative organization. He always encouraged its followers to innovate and learn continuously. Under his leadership style learning rate of the organization was always higher than the rate of change in the industry. Due to his leadership of continuous learning the organization has succeeded to change itself according to the needs of the hour. Very often his leadership style forced the whole industry to change. His leadership style gave significant focus towards strategic learning. Figure 1: Strategic Learning Model Above strategic learning model is most relevant to indentify the inseparable part of the leadership style of Steve Jobs (Fig. 1). Being a visionary and transformational leader, vision of Steve Jobs was to provide unique, innovative products and to revolutionize the PC and mobile phone industry. He always looked ahead of time. With the introduction of the operating system Mac, the PC market changed remarkably. It was the base of the modern day computer (Sinding & Bøllingtoft, 2012, pp. 137-139). He had clarity in mind and passion for his vision. His vision was to create a successful team to achieve the goals. He built such a team that sacrificed a lot to fulfill the vision. In 2010, one year earlier of his death, Steve Jobs mailed to top 100 level employees about the possible future strategy of the organization. It shows that he not only predicted the future but also guided the followers about the strategy trough which the organization can achieve their goals (Beahm, 2013, pp. 108-110). It is also an inspiring style of his leadership. The above mailing strategy indicates that he always focused towards maintaining close relationship with the senior executive level of the management. It is one of the most important requirements of building an ambidextrous organization. Currently revenue of Apple is $171-billion and the net income is $37-billion. But 15 years earlier the organization was close to bankruptcy and Steve Jobs with his business strategies revamped the situation. Being a situational leader Steve Jobs had the significant capacity for understanding the risks (Isaacson, 2011, pp. 101-105). When he was planning to introduce products like iPhone, rest of the world thought that it would risky for the Apple. But the leader took that risk and launched different innovative products one after another and the rest is history (Maxwell, 2007, pp. 145-147)). All those innovations have increased the numbers of loyal customers. Due to his risk understanding ability customers across the globe have become more emotionally attached with the brand and currently Apple is one of the most valued organizations across the world. His leadership style was enriched by the capacity of understanding the risks (Sander, 2011, pp. 134-136). This ability has helped this legendary business leader to innovate new products. Evaluation of the performances of different strategies was also an important part of his leadership style. Incremental innovations and architectural innovations were the inseparable part of his leadership style. In the course of innovation he did not ignore the existing famous products also. His leadership style allowed existing business units to refine or improve the various existing Apple products (Elliot & Simon, 2011, pp. 145-146). iPhone is a great example of incremental innovation which took place under the leadership of Steve Jobs. When iPhone 4, 4G and 4S were introduced, these rattled the market. It shows how the leader focused towards the incremental innovation. Products like iPod and iPad are the examples of architectural innovations and all those innovation took place under the leadership of Steve Jobs. Leadership practices have significant impacts on the performances of the organizations. Steve Jobs, with his ambidextrous leadership style were able to aligned exploitative and exploratory business units significantly (Howell, 2012, pp. 109-112). In case of exploitative and exploratory business units strategic intents, critical tasks, competencies, structures, cultures and leadership roles varies. It is a very complex task to do. But with his supreme leadership style Steve Jobs managed it successfully. With this leadership style Apple has been able to manage their existing products successfully and also kept on innovating. Figure 2: Leverage Leadership Capabilities Model The above figure represents leverage leadership capabilities model that can be applied to explains the leverage leadership capabilities of Steve Jobs (Fig. 2). Here in this model leadership capability of Steve Jobs will be analyzed on the basis of implementation competencies and imagination competencies. Different innovative products like iPhone, iPad and iPod are the bright examples of the high imagination competencies of the leader. Those products reshaped the financial performances of Apple (Ireland, Hoskisson & Hitt, 2008, pp. 113-115). It amazed the whole world and currently the organization enjoys significant, substantial brand loyalty and recognitions. It means all the different imaginations of Steve Jobs were also implemented properly in the ground level. It indicates high implementation competency of the leader. All the above arguments have undoubtedly secured the place of Steve Jobs in the upper right quadrant of the above model. It makes him a true business leader (Snyder, 2013, pp. 131-133). Figure 3: Organizational Learning Model Being a true business leader Steve Jobs gave importance towards high learning rate and high competitiveness. These factors influenced and motivated the whole organization. Therefore Apple is globally recognized as the progressive learning organization (Lussier, 2008, pp. 123-125). Conclusion Leadership is all about leading from the front. It is all about communicating the vision across the length and breadth of the organization. Steve Jobs with his leadership capabilities have lead Apple successfully. The essay has clearly indicated that being a true business leader, Steve Jobs have successfully converted Apple as a progressive learning organization. The essay also has highlighted the ambidextrous leadership style of Steve Jobs. In Apple, he managed both exploratory and exploitative business units together and gave ambidextrous outlook to Apple. References Beahm, G. (2013). I, Steve: Steve Jobs in his own words. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Elliot, J. & Simon, L. W. (2011). The Steve Jobs way: Leadership for a new generation. New York: Vanguard. Howell, P. J. (2012). Snapshots of great leadership. Berlin: Routledge. Ireland, R. D., Hoskisson, R. & Hitt, M. (2008). Understanding business strategy: concepts and cases. London: Cengage Learning. Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve Jobs. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lussier, R. (2008). Management fundamentals: concepts, applications, skill development. London: Cengage Learning. Maxwell, J. (2007). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership workbook: revised & updated. New York: Thomas Nelson Inc. Sander, P. (2011). What would Steve Jobs do? How the Steve Jobs way can inspire anyone to think differently and win. New York: McGraw Hill Professional. Sinding, K. & Bollingtoft, A. (2012). Cases on management, leadership and organisations. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur. Snyder, S. (2013). Leadership and the art of struggle: How great leaders grow through challenge and adversity. New York: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Read More