I received a copy of the new book on Steve Jobs in my Christmas stocking and immediately read it cover to cover. It is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it. Maybe it’s my age having lived through many of Apple’s evolutions.
I had been working for a developer helping to subdivide his property when he decided to convert some 300 acres to a zero energy development. He was a former aero-space engineer and had been intrigued with various energy savings for some time. This was going to be his crowning achievement. We hired Emory Loving’s from Denver as a key advisor and were underway. It soon became apparent that the project was too large for me to handle and I recommended another firm to put together the proposal that had a drop dead date with the City. After a while he fired the firm and came back to me to rescue the project, but by then the timeline was very tight. I put together a team and we started working out of his living room. With my first exposure to Apple, he bought four Apple II’s. We were underway and made the deadline.
The next step was to buy one of the first Macintosh’s with the floppy drive for my office. But as the first Mac with a hard drive came onto the scene (1 mg), I jumped in and bought three. We thought we had died and gone to heaven. As new models came out we continually up-graded and were an Apple shop. However, as Apple started to slip and business expanded, we decided we needed to become a PC shop. I did hang onto a Power Mac which I still use for film making. You know the rest of the story with the i-Phone,the i-Pad, and I would guess soon to be an i-TV.
What does any of this have to do with you? It turns out that Jobs was a first class SOB. His success could send you the wrong message.
I just ran across another new book, The Invisible Spotlight by Craig Wasserman and Doug Katz. They suggest that:
- “Whether managers appreciate it or not, they are a central and dominant influence in their employees’ lives. Employees spend countless hours watching, listening, thinking about, talking about and trying to please their bosses. This is what is meant by the invisible spotlight.”
- “Your relationship with employees is forged in brief, unscripted moments.”
- “The trick is to consciously control the influence you have and to act with intention.”
- You can be “callous, thoughtless and intimidating,” as was Jobs.
- “More thought than you ever imagined goes into the art of recognition and encouragement.”
You might also want to read another favorite book of mine, The No Asshole Rule that suggests organizations can’t afford to have assholes in the group.
Two specific experiences come to mind from my consulting practice.
- I was working with a mid-sized Midwestern community that had a brilliant Planning Director. He had done unbelievable things for the city and like Job’s was a great visionary and implementer. But, like Jobs, was also a bit of an SOB. I suggested to the City Manager that he would not change. He needed to decide if the trade-offs were worth it.
- My second example was another brilliant Planning Director who asked me for some personal advice. He had some of the same attributes as Jobs. He asked me for some hard headed personal advice which I delivered over a glass of wine in his living room with his wife joining us. As I began to describe the issues, his wife broke into almost uncontrollable laughter – he was the same at home as in the office. The change he undertook not only improved the office but his home life as well.
Few of us have the brilliance of a Steve Jobs. Even if you did, you won’t survive as a planner or manager as an SOB. It is time in the New Year for you to think about your Invisible Spotlight.
The Management Doctor
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