iToo ...Could Have Known Steve Jobs. Or Did I?

What are the real bones of the narrative of Steve Jobs? That’s the question we’ve been asking ourselves. Can we imagine writing about him because everybody’s doing it? Jobs , the late co-founder of Apple Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios, would hold his nose at such odious, conformist thought. He was a titan and a revolutionary. The only thing conformist about him was the black turtleneck.

To focus on a single point that I believe goes to the marrow of the man. Defining quality of Jobs, the quality admired most about him, was his capacity for independent thought and action. When it comes right down to it, it’s a characteristic that’s not as prevalent in humans as we think, or at least it lies dormant in most of us. Steve Jobs had it in abundance from the beginning. “Don’t be trapped by dogma,” he said. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” Strong personalities have this quality of independence. The question is what to do with it, how to give it expression. Steve Jobs was bound to influence a lot and be influenced a little. He was born an independent variable — a cause rather than an effect.

Certainly he deserves our admiration, but he also deserves our study. His life was many things. He had galactic vision, was a great technologist, a genius of design, a charismatic showman and peerless marketer. He cultivated a penetrating and discerning eye for consumer preference and taste. He may be the greatest CEO in history. And it is so unbelievably unlikely. He was ousted from Apple in 1985, cast out from the company he had co-founded only to return 11 years later “a very different person” as he would later say. But it was more than an unlikely comeback. His trajectory from that point was beyond imagination. In his second act, he would launch the iMac, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad. He would literally change the world.

When Jobs was young, he was an enfant terrible — a loner, disruptive and curious. After high school, he went to college for six months and then dropped out. He became a smelly hippie and by his own admission, had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. But he loved technology, so he wandered back home and we all know the rest of the story. He and his partner Steve Wozniak started Apple in the garage of Jobs' parents. It was here that his unencumbered personality would find meaningful expression. Out of his disdain for convention, out of his prickly, brash, narcissistic demeanor, out of his vision, high drive and confidence, out of his aesthetic instincts and a deep emotional need to create something of elegant form and hyperfunction came an unprecedented string of exquisitely designed products and platforms.

He had made heroic mistakes in the past. He had crashed and burned. But out of his failures he fine-tuned his judgment, refined his taste and elevated his unreasonable expectations. He developed an empathy for and connection to the consumer that was astonishing. “A lot of times,” he said, “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” He proved true his theory that “simple can be harder than complex.” As we look at iPhone,  think it is: Simple? Yes. Banal? Not a trace.

Steve Jobs did not practice conventional corporate leadership. He was its implacable foe. Most organizations in the world foster incremental growth through incremental improvement. Most corporate leaders compete as a direct response to their competitors. They benchmark the herd. They look for best practice, and in the context of that arena, figure out what to do next. They lead in response to the measures and countermeasures of others. How much time did Steve Jobs spent looking for best practices among his competitors?

Did he come up with all of the ideas? Of course not. And that’s part of the point. He cultivated a culture of independent thought and action because he had the seeds to plant it. We can only hope the seeds he planted will grow a few more of the disruptive and curious variety — the kind that change the world.

Concluding,Jobs has been undeniably an extraordinary man by any standard. He has left his mark on no less than five industries: personal computers with Apple II and Macintosh, music with iPod and iTunes, phone with iPhone, and animation with Pixar. The middle-class hippie kid with no college education that who has built a computer empire and became a multi-millionaire in a few years, was fired from his own company before coming back a decade later to save it and turn it into one of the world’s most influential corporations, with millions of fans around the world. He has also contributed to the creation of the new leader in animated movies for decades to come. He has been called a fluke for years, but is now widely acknowledged as one the world’s most eminent business executives and an unrivaled visionary. He has changed millions of lives by making technology easy-to-use, exciting and beautiful.… And the best part is? He’s not done yet.