Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 with his school friend Steve Wozniak. He was ousted in 1985 and returned 1997 to save it from bankruptcy and died in October 2011. He transformed Apple into the world’s most valuable company. Steve Jobs was a polarizing figure, a visionary who led Apple from the depths of bankruptcy to become the most valuable company in the world
His personality was integral to his way of doing business. Eccentric leadership style.
He was a transformational, innovative and charismatic business leader.
He was a Focused, Passionate, intense, petulant, impatient character. Described as a “visionary”
He was excellent at communicating his vision to his staff, customers and shareholders.
On his return in 1997, the company were producing numerous random products for example different versions of the Macintosh. Several weeks of product review sessions, Jobs intervened. On a whiteboard he drew a 2X2 grid declaring what he felt the company needed. On the two columns of the grid Jobs wrote “Consumer” and “Pro” and along the rows he wrote “desktop” and “portable” he told his team members to focus on 4 great products, one for each of the 4 segments of his grid. All the other ideas and products should be discarded.
Jobs took 100 people on a retreat each year. On the last day of the retreat Jobs would stand up and ask the people involved with the retreat to give 10 ideas of what they should do next. This evoked a positive response with people fighting to get their suggestion heard. Jobs would right the ideas down before discarding the ones he thought were useless. From the ten on the list, Jobs would choose 3. http://hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs/
Steve Jobs was a mix of a leader and a manager. People argue that he was a very poor manager of people but an inspirational leader. He was capable of inspiring followers. Some of the