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Does Steve Jobs cling to an outmoded CEO-centric approach? (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/File 2008) |
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Apple chief is no model, blogger says
Jobs: Not a role model. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs joins Mickey Mantle and David Crosby as a member of the Famous Liver Transplant Recipients Club. Bill Taylor, a blogger at the Harvard Business Review, looked at Jobs’s leadership style after the news that Jobs had received a transplant earlier this year, but had chosen not to inform investors.
In terms of the impact his products have had on the world, Steve Jobs represents the face of business at its best. And yet, in terms of his approach to leadership, Jobs represents the face of business - well, if not at its worst, then certainly not as something worth emulating. It’s not so much the secrecy about his liver transplant or the controversies over backdated stock options. Those are matters of corporate governance and investor relations, which, while important, aren’t all that urgent. To me, the issue is more Jobs’s approach to leadership itself - which, despite the compelling and cutting-edge quality of his products, is strangely unappetizing and often downright retro.
Jobs, for all of his virtues, clings to the Great Man Theory of Leadership - a CEO-centric model of executive power that is outmoded, unsustainable, and, for most of us mere mortals, ineffective in a world of nonstop change. A Wired magazine cover story from last year made the point well. The article begins with a memorable anecdote of the CEO, in search of a space in the company’s crowded parking lot, regularly leaving his Mercedes in a handicapped space, sometimes taking up two spaces. The pattern became so noticeable that employees, according to the article, put notes on his windshield that read, “Park Different.’’
Leaders who want to both change the game and stay in the game for the long haul have come to appreciate the power of “humbition’’ over blind ambition. What’s humbition? It’s a term I first heard from Jane Harper, a nearly 30-year veteran of IBM. It is, she explains, the subtle blend of humility and ambition that drives the most successful leaders, an antidote to the know-it-all hubris that affects so many executives and entrepreneurs.
Humility is not part of the Steve Jobs leadership repertoire - and that’s worked out fine for him. But humility has become a crucial part of the job description for leaders who aren’t Steve Jobs. So marvel at his products, applaud his feel for design, wonder at his capacity to cast such a large shadow over so many industries - and, by all means, pray for his speedy recovery and long health.
But don’t think you’ll do better as a leader by acting more like Apple’s leader. Trust the art, not the artist.
Iranian protesters aren’t the first to leverage social media. Much has been written about how Twitter and YouTube have been a factor in training attention on protests in Iran. Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, observes that the many Iranians using new technologies are a “latent community’’ that can come to life and have political influence. But he says mainstream media (MSM) coverage of how the technologies are being employed has missed key points.
One of the reasons MSM outlets are so focused on social media is that they’re not able to deploy reporters to cover these protests. In some cases, the majority of reporting from the ground is coming from social media. It’s worth asking what the biases might be in amplifying those social media reports. [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s supporters tend to be poorer, more rural, less educated and more likely to speak Farsi than [candidate Mir-Hossein] Mousavi’s supporters - a picture of the protests via social media runs the danger of overstating Mousavi support or minimizing Ahmadinejad support. We’ve been trying to counterbalance this a bit at [the website] Global Voices - Hamid Tehrani, our Iran editor, did a brief roundup of bloggers supporting Ahmadinejad. It’s worth noting that the posts he quotes are all in Farsi: language may well be a barrier that is influencing coverage as well, if voices for reform are easily quoted in English and voices for the status quo are in Farsi.
. . . I’ve been asking some of the reporters I’ve spoken with where they were on other recent social media and protest stories. Citizen media has emerged as one of the key spaces for journalism in Fiji in the wake of a coup government that’s censoring mainstream media. It’s been a key source of information in Madagascar as that country’s suffered through a violent change of government. (One reporter whom I mentioned this to remarked that Madagascar was “just a speck of an island somewhere.’’ That speck is twice the size of Great Britain and has the population of Australia). In Guatemala, online media publicized the assassination of a lawyer by forces close to the president . . . and government authorities began arresting people for Twittering the story to amplify it. These weren’t huge stories for most newspapers - the Iran story is huge not because of the social media aspect, but because protests in Iran are a huge story independent of citizen media.
Labeling the moment. “The worst recession since the Great Depression’’ isn’t exactly a catchy name for what we’re enduring. Forrester Research chief executive George Colony tries out “The Gateway Recession’’ - one that will connect two very different eras.
When the economic clouds clear, many prevailing elites will have been swept away, organizational structures will have fallen, and many who were formerly in control will have lost power. Those who can speak digital will thrive, and those who cannot will finally get the message and retire.
The signs are everywhere. Post-Gateway players: Obama; Amazon; Zappos; JetBlue; Twitter; Facebook; blogs; Craigslist; broadband; Wikipedia; DVRs; and iTunes. Pre-Gateway: GM; The New York Times; the Republican Party; shopping malls; print advertising; excessive executive pay; TV networks; boards of directors full of aging plutocrats; and the TV-centered Washington chattering classes.
Like the US Civil War, which separated an agrarian society from an industrialized economy, or World War I - a death knell for many European elites - the Gateway Recession is exposing fundamental weaknesses in long-standing political, cultural, and economic institutions.
Have you seen an interesting local business blog item lately? E-mail kirsner@pobox.com. 
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