Introduction
“Leaders create vision, the meaning within which others work and live. Managers, by contrast, act completely within a vision”- says Adler Nancy J in her book “International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior”. This is absolutely true when one examines the case of Steve Jobs. A leader with a vision is one who has the ability to see the present as it is and formulate a future that grows out of and improves upon the present (Snyder and Graves 1). In other words, “a leader with vision is able to see into the future without being far-sighted and remain rooted in the present without being near-sighted”. A leader with a vision has to keep moving forward despite various forces such as fear of failure, emotional hardships or practical difficulties or problems in the industry (Snyder and Graves 1). Steve Jobs was a man who faced all of these forces and overcame them with confidence and character.
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is best known to the world as the CEO of Apple, which he co-founded in 1976 (APPLE 1). He is also the co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios. Apple is one of the topmost technological companies in the world with its award-winning Macintosh computers, OS X operating system, and consumer and professional applications software. Apple also leads the digital music revolution, having sold over 110 million iPods and over three billion songs from its iTunes online store (APPLE 1)). Apple has recently entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone. The Pixar Animation Studios has created eight of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time: Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille (APPLE 1). Pixar merged with The Walt Disney Company in 2006 and Steve now serves on Disney’s board of directors. So, the story of Steve Jobs is an interesting case-study on successful leadership. He was a great leader, a man with the vision of changing the world with his innovations.
In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak set up shop in the garage of the Jobs’ family house in Los Altos, California, with lots of excitement and a little money. They named their company as the Apple Company and their first machine as the Apple I (Brashares 16). The first machine was a moderate success. The next machine, Apple II was a huge success. Very soon, IBM had entered the personal computer market and proved to be a fierce competitor (Munnariz 1). Three years later, Apple Computer went public and this gave the company a market capital of over $1 billion (Munnariz 1). In 1983 Steve Jobs invited John Sculley to leave Pepsi and become Apple’s president. Soon however, many differences crept up between them (Munnariz 1).
In 1985, just a few months after Woz left the company, a power struggle ensued and Steve lost. Steve took some time off to travel to Europe and inspired by a lack of high-end computerized machinery he formed NeXT (Munnariz 1). The hardware company NeXT, proved to be a big failure. That did not stop him from acquiring majority stake in Pixar from George Lucas in 1986. Pixar became a success story and he soon got involved in a production deal with Disney. Steve Jobs was a man who had confidence in the machines he wanted to sell and his timely decision of allowing the company to go public helped raise capital. Soon after, when he was forced to step down, he took it in a sportive manner and utilized the time to explore new opportunities. This shows he was both creative and a positive thinking person who was never bogged down by success or failure.
Under Sculley, Apple Company foundered due to reinforcement of discipline at the cost of creativity. The Mac was simply improved and refined by no successor to Mac was launched. Once back in control, Jobs reconnected Apple with its boldly creative values. The results were almost immediately made available to consumers: the candy-colored iMac, the sleek G4, large flat panel screens, and the Titanium PowerBook (Bedbury and Fenichell 212). All combined radical styling and flash with technological innovation, the very values that Apple had exemplified until Jobs’ departure (Bedbury and Fenichell 212).
Sculley was removed from his post and Apple brought back Jobs as a consultant and interim-chairman. Steven Jobs ensured that Apple returned to its winning ways. This is testimony for his ability to lead from the front and his skills as a strategist and tactician. Steve Jobs is currently overseeing Apple’s return to consistent profitability on the heels of the successful iMac and G3 system introductions. Since he has rejoined Apple’s stock have shot up more than 70%. Meanwhile he continues to monitor his investment in Pixar. The reaction of Steve Jobs to the drop in demand for personal computers in 2000 was four-fold: Continue with the new product plans with the expectation that demand would pick up in 2001.
Restructure the company so that Apple would continue to be viable at an annual revenue basis of US $6 billion as opposed to US$8 billion. Not lay off people and Protect Apple’s cash reserves (Schlender 88). This shows that Steve Jobs was a clever strategist, a man capable of looking into the future to take present day decisions, sensitive to the needs of his employees and aware of the finances of the company. These qualities are thus the essence of his leadership. In the words of Sculley: “Steve Jobs had a great ability to shift points of view constantly, to compare, contrast. …Steve could see the potential for high technology in a “low-tech” Cuisinart, and prophecy for the computer industry in a Bob Dylan lyric about war. His ability to draw rich contrasts helped make him a genius” (Skoldberg 192).
Steve Jobs is a good example of a charismatic leader who inspired wild enthusiasm among his employees. On the personal level he has been characterized as an innovative, energetic individual who was able to excite others and stimulate their creativity in order to launch what is essentially a new industry (Cunningham and Lischeron 45). According to Gibson et al (1998) “Jobs dressed like a maverick, worked like a maniac and inspired everyone with his drive and determination” (11). Skoldberg says that the success of Apple Company was mainly due to Jobs’ strategy of focusing on his most profitable customers and coming up with new things to sell them rather than just chasing more market share. When he was asked: “What would the demands for sustained growth, rather than just the turnaround of the company, mean for its stock value?” Jobs reply was characteristic: “We are focusing on producing the best computers in the world, and if we do that, the rest will take care of itself”. This captures both his philosophy and the style of mission effectiveness in a nutshell (Skoldberg 193).
The case of Steve Jobs turning around the fortunes of Apple Company after the failure of Sculley shows that top management teams play a crucial role in company performance. In any business organization, the corporate culture is formed through corporate philosophy and vision, product-market strategy and personnel management systems. Top management plays the most important role by manipulating these three factors that shape corporate culture. Top management is also the group responsible for assessing the external environment of a company (Brown 188).
It can identify the best performances of competitive organizations and compare internal operations with them. This is possible only with strong leadership at the top. organizations grow they transcend through thresholds of complexity. Mark S. Van Clieaf points out that the factors that influence organizational complexity are product complexity, market operating complexity, and environmental complexity (Greiner, 1985) and the structure of an organization and its ability to transcend through these stages of higher complexity will depend upon the Level of Competence of its CEO or SBU President/General Manager (Clieaf 33). Thus, the leader of an organization takes on a much more significant and active role in the case of new economy initiatives, which often involve large up-front investments, cross firm boundaries, and have crucial timing. This has been especially proven in the case of Apple Company.
The performance and success of a company depends on its top management and more specifically on its leader. Hence, the following general conclusions maybe made as a result of the study of the case of Steve Jobs:
- The leader is the most important person in an organization. It is important for an organization to have a good leader. The return of Steve Jobs to the top post ensured the return to success of Apple Company.
- The leader should be a man with a vision, with a focus on the future, with an ability to take risks, make crucial decisions, be positive no matter what the situation is and above all have the ability to lead the team from the front. Steve Jobs is a great example of integrating the vision of a company with the vision of a person according to Intagliata et al (2002) (page 12)
- Innovation is the cornerstone of truly great leadership. The computer sold at Apple Company was a truly innovative product, as were the animation movies at Pixar Studios.
- All success begins with an idea and the boldness to make that idea a reality. Steve Jobs began with an idea to sell computers to the world. He had the boldness to begin his company with low capital and have his first product built in his garage.
- A leader must not be afraid to diversify and be willing to take risks. In the case of Steve Jobs, he diversified into the entertainment industry when the going was tough for him at Apple Company.
These conclusions are made in the light of the leadership qualities and achievements of one of the greatest leaders of modern times – Steve Jobs.
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