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Wired: Steve Jobs' Management Style Bucks Trends

by , 3:00 PM EDT, March 19th, 2008

Over the last 100 years, management philosophy has gone from enslavement to empowerment, according to Leander Kahney at Wired Magazine . Steve Jobs has bucked that trend with what seems like tactics from the Industrial Revolution, and it has worked. The results have allowed Apple to leap ahead of the competition.

"In the 1940s, Bill Hewlett and David Packard pioneered what business author Tom Peters dubbed 'managing by walking around,' an approach that encouraged executives to communicate informally with their employees. In the 1990s, Intel's executives expressed solidarity with the engineers by renouncing their swanky corner offices in favor of standard-issue cubicles," Mr. Kahney wrote.

In contrast, Mr. Jobs has gone against that trend, ruling with an iron hand, attending to every little product detail, and keeping employees on a roller coaster of praise and fear.

Despite Mr. Jobs' tirades, Apple employees are devoted. "That's because his autocracy is balanced by his famous charisma — he can make the task of designing a power supply feel like a mission from God. Andy Hertzfeld, lead designer of the original Macintosh OS, says Jobs imbued him and his coworkers with 'messianic zeal'."

Also, there's that thing about changing the world, and Apple employees believe they can do it.

Mr. Kahney's five part article recounts some old stories about Mr. Jobs and his Apple parking space and adds some new insights from Apple employees. The net result, however, is not just an understanding of how Mr. Jobs thinks, but how that's translated into huge success against brutal competition in Silicon Valley. Guy Kawasaki summed it up:

"Steve proves that it's OK to be an asshole. I can't relate to the way he does things, but it's not his problem. It's mine. He just has a different OS."

Observer Comments

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View Name:Guest
Subject: Blind to the others who tried it that way
Close Name:ipaqrat Posts: 40 Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Subject: There's no trend-bucking, here...

There's no trend bucking, here! Being an asshole is a long standing tradition in upper management.

What's unusual about Steve Jobs is that his vision, and the resulting products, DON'T SUCK. I'm glad he didn't compromised on it's execution. NOW we can all see that there's no reason he ever should have.

A look back at the John Scully days brings that into sharp relief. Hell, look around on the Subway: ipods everywhere, I carry a MacBook, white Apple stickers stuck over Dell emblems on those dog-ugly chassis... I love it!

Doesn't even Microsoft routinely engage in the sincerest form of flattery? Yet their products remain are SO poisoned by group thinking by engineers for engineers. (Although I do quite like playing with PowerPoint 2007. It ain't productive exactly, but ya sure can make pretty pictures really fast.)

Charisma helps at a tactical level, no doubt, as much as bad manners hurts. But I bet what carried him all these miles, is that people who work, wheel and deal with Steve Jobs harbor no doubt where they stand with him. At the end of the day, you feel no need to screw him over because, if nothing else, he didn't lie to you.

When Steve Jobs gives up the helm (dead, tired, FIRED), look out, because it's slam back to mediocrity. Because you can't TEACH vision. You can't TEACH people to care.

Read this: Got a singular vision? Think different? Well, then you BETTER be an asshole to get it done. Vision not so great? Products turn out to suck? Well, then out with you. Go stand with the other assholes who aren't Steve Jobs.

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