A Consequence of Steve Jobs

A friend of mine and I were talking about Steve Jobs the day after he passed.

My friend is an astute observer of the design world.  He has long been a Mac user.  And he has deep familiarity with the ways of major corporations.

My friend was, well, outraged with many of the encomiums laid at Jobs’s bier by people who were comparing him to inventive geniuses like Thomas Edison.

Don’t get me wrong.  My friend admires the work of Apple.  Way back in 2000, after Apple introduced the PowerMac G4 Cube (remember that wonderful clear box?), he said in print, “While other computer companies are content to put out more gray plastic that’s little different from the computers of yore (save for faster chips and more memory), Apple is redefining what a computer is.”

And the company spent the rest of the decade redefining what lots of things are, like music players, the way we buy music, and what phones look like and do.  Arguably, Apple even changed retail establishments, not only in the way that Apple Stores look, but the way that they draw in customers in a way that might lead one to believe that they’re giving things away, not charging a premium.

Steve Jobs was at the forefront of that change.

Given the profound effect that Jobs, who became synonymous with “Apple,” had on our everyday world, it isn’t so farfetched to think of him in an Edisonian context.

But my friend had another point.  He put it this way:

In addition to his legendary “reality distortion field,” which made people hang on his every word and gesture, Job had a legendary temper.  He had a tendency to drive people hard.  Extremely hard.  A tendency to belittle efforts that were not up to snuff.  His snuff.  One might argue that the ends justified the means.

But. . .but not everyone has the keen eye and superb sensibility that Steve Jobs had.  In fact, most people don’t, pure and simple.

And there are plenty of managers of companies out there, all of whom admire Apple—not only for its products, but for the way that it has managed to become wildly successful from a financial point of view.

And few—if any—are Steve Jobs.  So, isn’t there the possibility that they may think that the way to Jobs-like greatness and performance is to drive their people as hard as Steve Jobs did?  “Well, it worked for him, so. . .”they think, before trashing someone’s design, not in a way that will lead to a better design, but because they can.

There are some people who can make other people do more—and help them do better.  Importantly, they know when that better is achieved.  Steve Jobs was one of them.  Most managers aren’t.

So where does that put us?  Maybe in not a particularly good place.

There is a story about Picasso.  Apparently, one day a person said something about his Cubist portraits and asked why they were not more realistic.  “I’ve been able to paint all my life like Michelangelo,” he allegedly said, “and I’ve been trying to get away from it.”

He had the talent.  He had the skills.  He had the ability.  And he worked to do something different.

And Steve Jobs was an artist like that.

So one can no more think that they can paint like Picasso by simply picking up a brush than they can imagine that they can lead a superb product development team by simply being as demanding as Jobs.

We’re all going to miss him.