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Steve Jobs: Redefining The CEO
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Jan 28, 2006 12:10 PM
from the more-like-ring-master dept.
from the more-like-ring-master dept.
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a nice piece on how Steve Jobs is redefining the job of being a CEO. From the story: 'Just over a decade ago, Steve Jobs was considered washed-up, a has-been whose singular achievement was co-founding Apple Computer back in the 1970s. Now, given the astounding success of Apple and Pixar, he's setting a new bar for how to manage a Digital Age corporation.'"
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Who is going to top him? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who is going to top him? (Score:4, Funny)
The only way I think it would be possible for him to raise the bar higher would be to sing "It's Raining Men" on stage at the next Macworld Conference.
Parent
Re:Who is going to top him? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the next somebody who is roughly as good as you are, once your legend starts getting torn down.
Remember, Jobs was huge before he was torn down as being a has-been, before being built up again to who he is now. His legend will fade... We like to tear down our heroes.
Parent
Re:Who is going to top him? (Score:5, Insightful)
Jobs will definately surpass Bill Gates in the history books simply because his story is so much more dramatic. Found the first personal computer company that goes beyond the simple needs of the hobbyist, get fired by the guy he hired to manage the business, start a competing business that goes nowhere, start another business that breathes new life into a 100 year old art form, get begged to come back to the company that fired you, see both businesses take off beyond all possible dreams. What did Bill Gates do? Bluff his way into buying an operating system early in the game and copy copy copy then leverage market position to unfairly damage new comers and competitors. Don't get me wrong, Bill Gates had a great idea at the right time but I doubt he'd be anything more then a footnote if he had to do it twice in his life.
Parent
A new bar? (Score:5, Funny)
literally [apple.com].
Behind the Cover podcast (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a "piece"? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just a short, non-interesting slideshow.
No news here - move along.
This sums it up for me (Score:5, Insightful)
"Other CEOs may focus on finance or sales. Jobs spends most of his time trying to come up with the next blockbuster product."
He's not there for the money, he's there to change the world. Well, at least, he succeeds in making us believe he's not after the money... Of course, MacOS X is not open source (yet?!), he's running a corporation after all!
I remember his quote: "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me"
I don't think a majority of CEO can honestly say this nowadays.
Re:This sums it up for me (Score:5, Insightful)
He's a founder. Look what happened when John Sculley came in in the early 90's. We got the Newton, which I liked, and still like, a lot. But we also got to see the American MBA in action.
The type of accounting and business strategy that for-hire CEO's and CFO's are trained with tells them that everything is about increasing shareholder value in the short-to-mid term (ie, no more than 2-5 years). They are unconcerned with providing value to employees or customers, unless doing so will assist them with goal #1. Even if they think they are working for the long-term success of the company, all the tools they have to put things in perspective are centered around the short-term stock value.
When Jobs came back to Apple, it was like he was the spurned father called to the hospital when his child was morbidly ill or injured. This company is his baby, and he wants to see it succeed in the long term. He wants products that his customers will slowly come to believe they can't live without, not some flash-in-the-pan fad with the latest buzzwords attached.
A lot of Silicon Valley CEO's are founders and have this fatherly instinct. They don't get press because they weren't ousted and then called back to fix things. Neither do the CEO's who weren't called back as their companies went to the chopping block.
If you oust the original founders of the company, it's almost always a death sentence. Apple's board was right to call Jobs back to the helm. But don't think it's something special about Jobs. It's what any company founder should do, and what most would do, because they actually believe in what they're doing.
Jasin NataelParent
Jobs is what a CEO ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most CEOs are just middle managers who got promoted to the top spot; either from within or were hired from another company. But the thing is, what makes a good middle manager (attention to detail, thinking about finances, day to day stuff) is exactly what makes a poor CEO. To be a great CEO, you need to think about strategy, where your market is going, where there is new markets, ner tech, etc... - Which is exactly what Jobs does. Saying he's "trying to come up with the next blockbuster product." is over-simplifying what he does.
It's sad that corps have this mentality that you have to work your way up through the ranks before becoming a CEO. But the problem is, what gets you promoted on the lower levels actually hurts you as a CEO. (There's a reason why the average CEO job lasts less then 2 years - they fired.) If Jobs were concentrating an each department's finances and other details, he would have missed the boat on these new products.
Gates on the other hand, is not a visionary. He is a follower (which can pay off big), but look at MS's strategy: throw money at anything new. Apple on the other hand creates something new.
I think my point is made and I don't want to turn /. into a MBA class! :-(
Parent
Disney (Score:4, Interesting)
Fundamentally the same strategy as before (Score:5, Insightful)
To be sure, Apple is a unique presence in the world of digital media, but the slideshow picture they put alongside this caption was that of an iMac. As far as computers go, total control of the platform is not a new idea. It is, in fact, the oldest one. That type of solution stretches back as far as the room-sized big iron of the '60s and before, but it was most publicly visible, I think, during the '80s, when several companies were vying for dominance of the personal computer market. Commodore, Atari, Apple, IBM - they all had their own little universes where you bought their hardware, ran their OS, and dealt with their disk format. Each company dreamed of taking over with its own end-to-end solution, but that didn't happen. It can be argued that the market is simply too large for any one company to hope for dominance of that kind.
Steve Jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
What would you ask Steve? (Score:4, Interesting)
when 1 page could have been enough (Score:4, Insightful)
It's scaring readers away. I am not waiting for your page to load, and I am not clicking multiple times to read a single article.
And while I am at it. Since the invention of tabs, will everyone please stop using links that insist on opening in a new window. I have one window, perhaps two with multiple tabs. And new links are opened in their own tab. But, noooo, sites still insist links are opened in a new window.
Want to keep me as a return visitor? STOP ANNOYING ME. Stop dictating how I can access your data, if you want me to see it.
Being a knowledgable CEO is "redefining"? (Score:5, Insightful)
A CEO who thoroughly knows his business redefines what a CEO is? This merely highlights the disease that has infected much of corporate America, namely that you don't have to know shit about your business or product, all you have to know is how to manage people, whatever that means.
This is about as effective as the idea that you don't have to know jack about math, or physics, or history in order to teach them; all you have to be is a good teacher, whatever the hell that means.
News Flash: Intelligence, experience, knowledge and motivation are far more important in running a company than an MBA. Steve Jobs illustrates this. News at 11.
Art (Score:4, Insightful)
So Jobs has been an industrial designer producing tools mostly used by graphic designers, who of course are sensitive to good industrial design. That's worked. More recently he's gone into the music/fashion accessories business - also one which melds easily with design, and also one where to top lines always come from a single designer's vision rather than committee. And with Pixar, as the good-looking but shallow-on-info slide show says, he knew enough about "creatives" to keep the teams small and together.
None of this should be taken to imply that Jobs' success illustrates the right approach for industries in which design is not properly the central focus. For instance, Carter was famously a micro-managing president. Look how that worked out. The Soviet economy was micro-managed from the top (and they even started out as a culture with some very good designers). Results? Nada. The hard-earned lesson that micro-managing is bad still applies across most of the spectrum. Jobs is just fortunate to be in one of the few niches where the generalization fails.
Is Steve Jobs really the best CEO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Larry Ellison (Oracle) has been around longer (without leaving the company at least)
Eric Schmidt's company (Google) gets an article on Slashdot every few hours
Steve Balmer's company (Microsoft) sells more Operating Systems
I guess to Jobs credit he founded a very successful company, then left and it tanked and came back and it became a great company again, but I just don't think that there's no question about him being number one as this article has implied.
Re:Is Steve Jobs really the best CEO? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
hero worship (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it steve jobs that is responsible for all the success of apple?
why was it hitler that was responsible for nazi germany?
Why do humans always have to make everything about one person?
This is retarded. Companies are people and teams. Not people. Countries are people. Not presidents. Parties. Committees. As soon as people stop making decisions this way maybe we'll start making some progress.
Role Models. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Because most people in their lives simply manage to get to work on time, do as they are instructed, and pay their taxes. This behavior pattern does not inspire much of anything to the casual on-looker.
Having a "vision" isn't uncommon. Uncommon, however, is the person who is brave and strong and skilled enough to go about realizing it.
Many people strive to be so capable, and thus they look up to those who have managed it. Role models are what they are for this reason, or so I think.
-FL
Parent
Measure the man by his basic beliefs. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't come up with cool sayings like that unless you're right into it. (Or unless you have a great PR department, which I don't believe was the case).
My impression of Jobs is that he's simply entertaining his mania. --He sees possible futures where technology becomes an idealized, humanity-altering version of itself, and he's simply trying to realize this vision by following and then occupying what seem to him the obvious and inevitable steps.
Is he angling to go head-to-head with Microsoft? I doubt it. Guys like Jobs find reward and adrenalin rushes, etc., through realizing creative vision. Competition and the dark 'joy' of destroying competitors, and the 'joy' of collecting all the money in the world pale in comparison. Jobs is entirely capable of 'losing' to Gates, because winning and losing are of little importance when one's goal is merely to shape and advance. (Even if shaping and advancing mean being a control-freak, which is typical for people like Jobs. Nobody else can see it right or therefore do it right, so why muck about depending on others?)
Time for a little more metaphysical etymology. . .
"Gates" - Not quite the same as a door; doors can be opened and closed by regular individuals. A gate implies a door which is watched and controlled by somebody else, one which is designed to limit and control the flow of that which enters and exits. Bill exerts control over the flow of information.
"Jobs" - Tasks which need doing. Steve follows the work toward his peculiar vision, and then does it, no matter how ludicrous it may appear.
--His moves will at first seem irrational to the sharks, (and frustrated board members), because he likes to invest and play rather than invest and reap. But then when the circumstances are right and creativity blossoms, he suddenly seems like a genius.
My only trouble is that he's embraced the idea that people don't like to think outside certain boundaries and want to be coddled, which may well be true. This bothers me, because while he's out there changing the world, I have to live in it. --And I do not like to be coddled or to have somebody else do my thinking for me.
Candy-coated buttons piss me off. Complexity does not scare me.
-FL
NeXT did reach a level of stardom. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, if you went into nearly any modern engineering firm or research lab around 1991 or so, you'd often hear about how many of the employees there wanted even just access to a NeXT system, if they couldn't have one for themselves. Often times the price of such a system was quite prohibitive, but those who did have access were often far more productive than their peers.
Parent
Re:NeXT did reach a level of stardom. (Score:5, Informative)
Taft
Parent
Losers. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
He's a bigger loser than he was a decade ago.
Loser? When you're not in the game to 'win', losing only means not being able to continue playing.
One of my favorite personality types is the one which pisses off guys like you by not caring about winning or losing in the boring conventional terms so many people think hold validity. Creativity is everything. Greed is a disease. --This, I believe, is a Universal truth which shapes our reality, and once you figure it out, you can fly.
There's a reason why a fellow who has only 'conquered' 3% of the computer market is such a recognized name. It's because he's learned one of the key secrets of life; how to have fun while everybody else is agonizing over which way the ball is being kicked.
Who would you enjoy meeting more at a party? --A boring conservative money-getter, or a 'loser' who isn't scared to dream and get excited about it? All my friends are technically 'losers', but they live happily, without fear or want, and they light up the world. All the money-getters I've met, by contrast, are like pre-fab appliances with 2-dimensional social skills. These are the 'winners'. Hmm.
-FL
Parent