Leadership Style of Steve Jobs - Book Report/Review Example

Leadership Style of Steve Jobs Steve Jobs is an iconic figure because of the way he carried out his responsibilities as a leader and founder of the Apple Technologies. His leadership style attracted much attention from both critics, as well as supporters thereby providing a number of critical lessons from his success and flaws in leadership. Jobs preferred a lean organizational structure whereby the mangers or the executive were free, open, and easily accessible by their juniors. This enabled free flow of information across all levels of the organization, as well as boosted the morale of workers since they got an opportunity to present their ideas, inventions, and opinions directly to the executives of the company for consideration and review. Jobs was a very innovative and creative man, and as such, expected the same of his employees and juniors within the organization, thereby prompting him to create an organizational structure that supported organizational learning and development. Form the biography; readers learn a number of critical leadership lessons through evaluating the leadership style of Steve Jobs in the way he operated Apple Technologies. One key lesson is the fact that there are two ways of running a business, which are to focus on profits or to focus on the products. As with the case of Steve Jobs, he focused on products knowing fully well that good profits would follow afterwards. This is very true as the proof is always in the pudding. A close analysis of the Apple Technologies financials places it at the top in market value and profitability, at a staggering figure of $ 441. Another lesson learnt from the leadership style of Steve Jobs is that simplicity always reigns supreme. As for his case, simplicity revealed itself in both the integrated end-to-end process and the user interface. As such, he was able to connect intuitively the software, the hardware, as well as the content that he was to present to his customers (Russell and Taylor 45). As Jobs said it, “Nature loves simplicity”, and this is the key factor that Jobs used to simplify great creativity into a simple gadget that his consumers could use and derive maximum satisfaction, yet still reeling in the greatness of the innovation at hand, such as the innovation of the iPhones and iPads. Jobs always believed that one must have intuition and foresight as a leader in order to be successful in running the company. Intuition enables a manager to develop new things that fix the gap existent in the market, as well as come up with major decisions that shape the future and growth prospects of the company. For instance, Jobs once asked how people would know what they want until they got to see what they wanted, especially from the producers and marketers, such as was the case of Apple Technologies. As such, Jobs believed people did not know what they wanted thereby it was the responsibility of his company to show them what these people what they wanted. One such amazing result from his intuition was the iPhone. Readers of this biography learn the importance of focus as another core leadership practice exhibited by Steve Jobs during his time at the helm of Apple Technologies. Jobs demanded that the company puts single-minded attention to one or a few items and ensure that these few selected items succeed. For instance, at one point in time Jobs took his employees for a retreat and asked them to come up with projects that the company was to work of over the coming years. The team suggested ten major projects. However, Jobs struck out seven items from this list leaving only three as he needed the company to concentrate and put all its efforts to the success of the these projects. The selected three projects were the iPad, the iPhone, and the iPod (Isaacson 56). A good leader must have a reality distortion filed. As such, this will enable the leader to push his or her employee to do the things that they think or feel they cannot do. Steve Jobs was the master of encouragement as he pushed his workers to think out of the box and come up with revolutionary crazy inventions that rocked the technologies world. He is on record for repeatedly using his mantra to encourage people to attempt the impossible by telling them not to be afraid since they were in a position to do it. Management Style of Steve Jobs Steve Jobs was an anomaly in management as considered by both critics and supporters. As such, his leadership style was one to admire or to criticize, but definitely not one to emulate. This left him out of the various business frameworks proposed in management, thereby providing the orthodox framework, and then the Steve Jobs framework. Theories on institutional management continue to look at this management style as an exception is because Jobs navigated a territory obscure to management, which entailed creation of meaning, both for the customers and for the employees. As such, this was the infamous management style of Steve Jobs, “management by meaning.” He placed people at the center, not necessarily by giving users what they wanted or by creating a flat playful organization that enabled a streamline flow of ideas from the bottom up, but by giving them proposals (Russell and Taylor 12). The users do definitely not drive the Apple Technologies approach to innovation. As such, it does not listen to what the users have to say. Rather, this approach makes proposals to these users. In managing by meaning, Jobs recognized that people are human, and as such, have cultural, rational, as well as emotional dimensions thereby being in a position to appreciate the people who create meaning for them to embrace. It is a fact that customers do not buy products from Apple Technologies simply because of their unique functionality or utility, but majorly for the great design and identity of these products that created new meanings for these users. Application of Real World Examples Tim Cook took office after the demise of Steve Jobs in 2011 at the helm of Apple Technologies. From the performance recorded by the company since he took over, it is evident that he does not have the same skill, smartness, ambition as well as self-drive as compared to that of Steve Jobs. The company is gradually losing its market, especially for its strongholds, to industry competitors who are taking advantage of the slow rate of innovation of the new CEO at Apple. This is an evident fact that the leadership and management style of Steve Jobs, though controversial in some case points, was phenomenal in driving Apple Technologies to the helm of the industry. Critical Lessons Learnt From the Book The book explores the life and works of Steve Jobs, such as what made him tick as a leader and as a manager, as well as what made him stand out from the crowd as an extraordinary genius in the technologies industry. One key lesson learnt by most readers of the book is the need to create value in every product or every service that they produce and present to the market. This as a result keeps the customers satisfied as it meets their preferred tastes and choices. As a result, one is able to undertake the process of value creation by ensuring they provide the customers with what they want, rather than what they need. This is because most customers do not always know what they want in life, and it is the duty of the companies and manufacturers to come up with what will meet the future wants of its customers. If these companies only seek to meet what the consumers need, then they are bound to fall out of market since this will be already common knowledge and many other industry players will be keen on providing consumers with what they need. According to Russell and Taylor (115), the company will face stiff competition from other industry players as they jostle for a significant control of the market share. Consequently, Apple Technologies seeked to be the industry leader in the technologies market by always coming up with something new and exquisite, something that the market, as well as its customers and competitors were not even aware would exist in the industry. This surprise effect boosted the sales of the company, and as such, every new product launched by the company always had record high sales over the first few days or weeks of launching. This surprise effect is what majorly led to the growth of Apple Technologies, as well as its fast ascend to the top of the technologies industry. A company should always think ahead of its consumers, forecast on their future trends and buying behavior, thereby enabling them to develop and invent products, services, as well as a delivery system that surpasses every expectation of their customers. This was the key strategy of Steve Jobs whereby he ensured each product produced by Apple Technologies surpassed every expectation of its customers, especially in relation to value, design, invention, and creativity. Learning from the leadership and management style of Steve Jobs while at the helm of Apple Technologies, companies now know how best to approach the market in order to perform extraordinarily well, as well as to stay on top. With Jobs, innovation and creativity was key to the improvement and success of his corporation (Isaacson 87). Therefore, other industry players and managers learn that customers need value in whatever they present to the market, and this value will enable the company to stay in control of the market forces, as well as guarantee it with maximum profitability and growth. An obvious fact in today’s market is that most companies always conduct a comprehensive market research before launching a new product into the market. From this research, these companies seek to find out how the consumers will react to the new products or services it will produce, the level of competition it will face from other existing players in the market, as well as the purchasing trends, tastes and preferences of the target consumers. This is in fact the conventional way that precedes every launch of a new product within the market, whereby the company has to listen to its customers before producing something that they wanted. As such, the customers dictated what products and services that the company was to product and send to the market. However, according to Steve Jobs, this is a very wrong strategy, as it does not always work. Jobs NEVER listed to his customers. On the contrary, he produced products that sold on record highs despite the customers having no knowledge of what he was secretly cooking. For instance, Jobs did not go out to the market to research and find out his customers opinions before introducing the iPod, or the iPad, or the iPhone, yet these products sold very fast within their fast days of introduction into the market. Jobs focused on providing meaning and value to every item that he produced before presenting it to the market. This is the key secret that made his products sell so fast despite customers having no knowledge over their existence (Russell and Taylor 47). Similarly, contemporary companies should also seek to emulate the strategy applied by Jobs when developing new products and services for the market. The concept of first listening to what consumers want and then producing a product or a service tailored to meet his or her needs is very wrong because every other industry player is doing so. At the end of the day, a customer will have several varieties of products to select from, products and services tailored to meet his or her needs, tastes and preferences, which leaves each company in the cold demanding that each player adds a significant punch to their products in order to guarantee maximum sales. Products from Apple Technologies always hit the rooftops on their sales charts on the very first day of introduction into the market, which is the key lesson that industry players and related companies should learn, practice and emulates. Works Cited Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York City: Simon and Schuster, 2013. Print. Russell, Roberta and Taylor Bernard. Operations Management: Creating Value along the Supply Chain, 7th Edition: Creating Value along the Supply Chain. Hoboken, New Jersey: The Wiley Press, 2011. Print. Read More