Sounds amazing. Jobs is such a remarkable business figure, but I often wonder if people like him are rare, or if people like him are rarely given positions at the top of companies?
Depending on who you ask, people will tell you companies should be run by either MBA types or engineers. Jobs doesn't seem to fit either of these archetypes. Of all the big tech execs, he has to be the strongest systems thinker.
I think outside of the business success and technological innovation at Apple, one of Jobs largest contributions has been to bring the 'design process' to the center of management. Engineering has great models for problem solving, as does management theory, but design thinking is often the most overlooked. Its not given enough credit. Often when people talk about design they are really talking about aesthetics. When Jobs talks about design, he's talking about process. Hope the book sheds light on this.
I think it's fairly obvious that Apple is exceptional, and Jobs is exceptional. How do we know people like Jobs are rare? Well, have you heard of any others?
Then again, maybe it's the combination of Jobs, Silicon Valley, and that formative era that is rare. Take a young Steve Jobs and put him anywhere else, and who knows what would happen? I doubt he would end up in business--not a legitimate one, at least.
His first business was quasi-illegitimate, he and Woz were selling Blue Boxes so the average Joe could cheat MaBell. (I believe they bragged about thermite lined units for the mafia.)
Funny how 40 years later he's got one of the most restricted phone systems.
Check out Alan Mulally. I think he's an underrated CEO. While he is an engineer, I still admire his business acumen. I would think (and I know I'm going to get criticized for this) he might actually be better than Jobs. If not, it's 1A and 1B. Steve is in Alan's class, not the other way around.
You must view Alan's body of work and what he's done to turn around a company from the very bottom to where it is today. Totally different brand image. He's done it twice.
It looks like Mulally has turned around large, moribund businesses like Ford and Boeing from complete mediocrity to relative competence. I don't mean that in a negative way, because it's miraculous for a company like Ford to turn around the way they did, but let's be honest here. Jobs led a large, established company into being the most valuable public corporation in the world, competing successfully not with behemoths like GM but with Silicon Valley. Name a tech company half the age of Apple that can even hold its own against the forces of creative destruction in the Valley, much less grow like a startup.
I had to google to find out who Mullaly is.
And frankly, Jobs having his vision for years (check out his 1997 WWDC video) and bringing it into fruition looks much much more impressive to me than some cost cutting.
It's hard to argue that there's anyone better than Steve's vision. But Steve also did some cost cutting when he took over Apple (when it was a few months away from bankruptcy).
We all know what Steve would have done if he took over Ford:
1) Elminate all models with the exception of a few. Alan sold off Land Rover, Aston Martin, Volvo and a few others. He also closed Mercury.
2) Take those models and offer one or two different versions of it and offer it in two colors--black or white.
3) Put an emphasis on design. You'll notice that Ford's cars are now much more diverse and much more attractive.
4) Focus on reliability. Again, Alan did the same thing with Ford. He took the engineers to consumer reports and had them scrutinize their reliability right in front of the engineers.
I hope I'm making a point. Steve would of likely did the same thing Alan's done at Ford. Alan would have likely did the same thing Steve's done at Apple. Maybe not quite as good as Steve's done it, but very similar.
I've been watching Mulally a little bit over the past few years. What source(s) of information would you say are best to get a better idea of his thinking and of what he's done? Do you get all that only from interview and maybe annual reports, or is there a better source?
"I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that, he said. But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out." - Steve Jobs
There will always be two sides of a story just like Paul Allen's biography didn't particularly describe Bill Gates in a very appealing light. But that does not undermine the status of these two figures(Jobs, Gates) as the heros of our era. Looking forward.
I'm really looking forward to this book, so much so that I just preordered it (which I normally don't do for books).
Walter Isaacson is a great biographer. His Einstein and Benjamin Franklin biographies are amazing, definitely worth a read.
Since this is Isaacson's first biography of a living person, I'm really looking forward to reading the result. I guess it'll cover a lot of things we didn't know about Jobs and go even more in depth than his previous biographies have.
A lot of both positive and negative things can be said about Jobs, but no one can dispute that he is an interesting character with an astonishing record. November 21 can't come soon enough.
You basically said everything I was going to say. Isaacson is a master biographer, and being able to interview his subject should (in theory) help him do an even better job (Jobs?). I'm pre-ordering it too.
"Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off limits..."
Given that so many books have been written about Apple and Steve Jobs with nothing but tea leaves for sources I'm interested to see where this goes.
It is stated that Jobs cooperated with the author, but requested no control over the content (bravo). You can bet he had something to say about the previous title and cover [1] though.
Apple had a lot of leverage in that lawsuit, too. It wasn't this vague "look-and-feel" nonsense that was dismissed before--Apple had MS dead to rights stealing the source code to QuickTime.
I hope this is available as an ebook straight out of the gate. It would be ironic in some ways if this was only available as a paper book and the ebook was delayed.
That was the old release date for the book before it was moved up. I'm sure the changes haven't propagated through all channels yet, but I would be very surprised if it didn't launch simultaneously with the physical copy.
I find it very odd that Steve would cooperate with a project like this without so much as the right to read it before it's released. Honestly I wonder why Steve would agree to that. Any theories?
This is a man who is staring his mortality in the face. A man with a truly fascinating story – which can be seen in many, many lights, not all of them positive.
I think he knows he won't live forever and wanted the opportunity to have his story told with his input, instead of it leaving it to chance once his voice was silenced by human impermanence.
1) Trust. Jobs trusts this author. Many have wanted to write this book, this is the man Jobs trusted to do it.
2) Jobs isn't going to live forever. In some sense I think he rightfully understands that this book will partially define his legacy and he wants the record to understand that it isn't filtered through his lens.
In 100 years he may well be the only technologist of our era people readily remember. He's our modern Edison. I'm glad he's taken this book seriously.
Maybe Steve realized when you give up control, you can let someone else shine (Walter) as the artiste.
Steve probably believes Walter was the best writer to tell his story, and you can't discount the fact that he is thinking about his legacy. In fact, I think the interviews may become part of some Apple internal library.
You get better quality journalists and journalism if you don't demand final approval. Wanting final approval means that you want a puff piece, and who wants to write that?
I will try to read it. But I don't really need to know how he left pregnant a girl. I need to know how does he work psychologically to motivate people and get the best of them. Common Jobs, you already did your job in the history, now give your knowledge to the next generation. I can't afford having him as company advisor so a book would be ok.
Maybe Jobs is not the right person to write the book about the Jobs way. Any book recomendation my fellows?
I don't know that much about Jobs, but at a guess:
1) He "manages by end state and intent", just like the Marines are trained to do. Instead of trying to tell engineers how to do their jobs, he tells them what the customer should see, and why that's important. All good non-technical managers do that.
2) He has a rough idea of what all the elements of the system are, how they interact, and how they scale. For example, he talks about how some decisions will reduce API complexity, which increases developer productivity. Few technical managers do that well, and very few non-technical managers understand what technical constraints to focus on. I'm guessing this is something he's improved at, over the years. He screwed up a lot with in his earlier years (doing stuff that wouldn't scale well), and learnt his lessons. Every CEO tries to "understand the big picture". Steve seems to actually get it right.
3) When somebody sounds like they are fudging or hedging, he starts interrogating them to figure out what they are trying to imply. Engineers can be very indirect when they suspect a problem is looming. Steve picks this up, and goes after it like a terrier. It's scary stuff when he does this in public, with a reporter. I'd imagine it's even scarier when he does it with his employees.
4) He's got pretty good taste, and can hire good designers and people with good soft skills.
5) He was lucky enough to hire a few brilliant techies, at the start (Woz, in particular).
Depending on who you ask, people will tell you companies should be run by either MBA types or engineers. Jobs doesn't seem to fit either of these archetypes. Of all the big tech execs, he has to be the strongest systems thinker.
I think outside of the business success and technological innovation at Apple, one of Jobs largest contributions has been to bring the 'design process' to the center of management. Engineering has great models for problem solving, as does management theory, but design thinking is often the most overlooked. Its not given enough credit. Often when people talk about design they are really talking about aesthetics. When Jobs talks about design, he's talking about process. Hope the book sheds light on this.