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Apple’s rise from a sinking computer hard and software making company to success as the world’s largest vendor of personal computers under the visionary and charismatic leadership of co-founder, Steve Jobs.
Leadership is a process not a position (Hughes, L. Richard., Ginnett , C. Robert., et al(2013) Leadership: enhancing the lessons of experience, Page 1). This philosophy further suggests that one is not a leader except perhaps in name only, merely because one holds a title or position. Leadership involves something happening as a result of interaction between Leaders and followers.
A real life example of how leadership is a process and not a position is the Andes experience where an amateur Uruguayan rugby team was travelling by airplane en route to a game in Chile. They had a plane crash and never arrived at their destination. In order to ensure continual survival for those who were still alive in the snow covered mountains, everyone took upon themselves to work on ways to survive. Some of the basic issues the Andes survivors faced: tension between individual and group goals, dealing with the different needs and personalities of group members, and keeping hope alive in the face of adversity (Book).The Andes experience also gives us an example of informal leaders emerging from a group. Before the flight there was a boy named Parrado who was awkward and shy both athletic and socially. Nonetheless this unlikely hero became the best loved and most respected among the survivors for his courage, optimism, fairness and emotional support. (Book) Parrado rising as a leader through the situation didn’t start overnight, as it is said he was an awkward and shy person, there was a process that led to him emerging the most respected and loved hero. According to the story, he was a “second stringer”, he wasn’t the most skilled or knowledgeable in the team.
This can be likened to the situation Apple was facing before the second coming of Steve Jobs. Apple was making losses with sales sinking while product lines with custom components kept expanding. According to the case, Apple was in a death spiral by 1996 after failing to attract an acceptable offer to buy the company. Steve Jobs came in and like Parrado as a visionary leader (although he had a history of failures to his name) that helped Apple get out of the crisis it found itself. He took drastic measures that would benefit Apple in future and yet he didn’t even finish college. For instance, the workforce was reduced while R&D spending was cut in half. In addition more than dozen product lines were axed in order to focus on just one desktop and one laptop and clone makers that cannibalized sales were cut off or bought out.
Steve jobs did not focus on his past failures at Apple and neither did Apple. They believed in him to bring him back on board .Steve Jobs was good at identifying business opportunities and experiences from his previous lapses might have helped shaped him and given him fresh ideas going to support the philosophy that it is not the title of a CEO that gives you the ability to lead. Like Parrado, he wasn’t the “star” but he made use of opportunities. An example from the case is when he saw an opportunity to dominate the business by vastly improving the consumer experience with digital music devices, acquisition and management. In fact his past costly failures helped build his entrepreneural and competitive spirit. His past was a process preparing him for the leader he was to be come in future.
Persuasiveness in group decision making was also an important part of leadership among the Andes survivors. During the difficult discussions preceding the agonizing decision to survive on the flesh of dead comrades, one of the rugby players made his reasoning clear ” I know that if my dead body could help you stay alive then I would want you to use it. In fact, if I do die and you don’t eat me, then I’ll come back from wherever I am and give you a good kick in the ass”(Book). According to the case, Steve Jobs was also very persuasive and for the first time he directly subjected customers to his persuasive powers by providing a Genius Bar to introduce them to his products, while using a huge poster of John Lennon and Yoko Ono to convince customers to think differently. He also struck a historic deal with Bill Gates over what a failed Apple would do to his battles with the U.S Department of Justice and this led to Microsoft investing US $150million in Apple and gave Apple one of it big breaks as it was engulfed by losses.
Leadership has been defined by researchers in many different ways such as; * Actions that focus resources to create desirable opportunities(Book) * A complex form of social problem solving(Book)
This is many more Steve Jobs did at Apple.