An Analysis of Steve Jobs' Leadership Style and Impact

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Steve Jobs' leadership, examining his strengths, weaknesses, and the challenges he faced throughout his career at Apple Inc. It begins with a brief overview of Steve Jobs' background, highlighting his role as co-founder, CEO, and Chairman of Apple. The report then delves into his key strengths, such as his ability to anticipate consumer needs, develop innovative products, build high-performing teams, and his strong vision. It also acknowledges his weaknesses, including his task-oriented approach, blunt criticism, and tendency to underestimate competitors. The report further explores the challenges Jobs encountered, including dropping out of college, product failures, and his ousting from Apple. The core of the report focuses on leadership lessons that can be gleaned from Jobs' approach, such as the importance of innovation, perseverance, hiring smart people, and succession planning. The report concludes by emphasizing Jobs' charismatic personality and his role in transforming Apple from a company facing bankruptcy to one of the most successful and influential companies in the world. The report uses information from various sources to support the analysis.

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Contents
About Steve Jobs............................................................................................................................................1
His Strengths..................................................................................................................................................1
His Weaknesses.............................................................................................................................................1
Challenges Faced by Steve Jobs....................................................................................................................2
Leadership Lessons from Steve Jobs.............................................................................................................2
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................................3

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About Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman of Apple Inc. He was born on 24th February 1955
in San Francisco. He co-founded Apple computers in 1976 with Steve Woznaik. Jobs enrolled in Reed
College after school but dropped out after 6 months. In 1976 when job was 21 years old Apple computers
was started in a Garage. Steve Jobs and Steve Woznaik together revolutionized the computer industry by
innovating gadgets like iPod, iPad and iPhone, which became part of everyday life of people. He died on
5th October 2011 in Palo Alto due to pancreatic Cancer (Biography.com, 2017).
His Strengths
 Steve Jobs was an amazing salesperson and had the talent of anticipating what consumer wants.
He would then develop and design such a product and market it in such a way that both existing
and new customers would feel the need of buying Apple’s products.
 He had the ability to develop great teams and he also ensured his team performed beyond their
limits to accomplish high standards of software and hardware.
 It was his vision to design technology which can be used by those who themselves are not
technologists and using his salesmanship he convinced people to believe in his vision.
 He had very strong imagination. He envisioned products like iPod, iPad and iPhone which
eventually changed the way people communicate work and live their lives.
 He had the ability to design and develop technology products which changed the world. He aimed
at developing innovative and interactive designs and insisted that these designs be absolutely
perfect. This gave Apple competitive edge and contributed in developing Apple’s brand
(Himmel, 2013).
His Weaknesses
 Task Oriented. Jobs was very task oriented. Organization’s performance was given more
importance than employees’ feelings. His drive for excellence was so high that he did not
hesitated in delivering blunt criticisms to his employees.
 Steve Jobs was too proud to accept criticism and underestimated Apple’s competitors like IBM.
Due to his inability to accept criticism he would turn a discussion in confrontation, this in turn
discouraged others to voice their opinion. But when he came back to Apple in 1985, he had made
efforts to work on this weakness and developed the ability to consider the ideas of others and
reshape his goals in case of any complications.
 Steve Jobs stole ideas of others and also accepted it openly. In 1979 Jobs visited Xerox where he
saw a prototype of a Mouse. He was amazed with the idea of a device which could move the
pointer on screen to select menus. He asked his team to develop a device which is sturdier and
costs less. He also developed Mac computers with inspiration from GUI he saw at Xerox (May,
2016).

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Challenges Faced by Steve Jobs
 After finishing his high school he enrolled in Reed College, Portland. But he dropped out after six
months and took calligraphy classes because he thought his education was too expensive for his
middle class parents (Linn, 2011).
 In 1984 Steve Jobs introduced Macintosh as a home computer but it was too expensive for the
target audiences. So, Jobs tried to target it to corporate clients with features like less memory and
no networking capabilities Mac was not accepted by the American corporate. As a result of this,
Jobs was ousted from board of directors by CEO John Sculley, whom Jobs only had hired. By
1985, Steve Jobs sold his share of Apple stocks and resigned.
 Product Failures: In 1985 Apple discontinued Lisa Computer due to poor sells and faced failure
of its Macintosh PC. As a result, Jobs was ousted from his position as head of Macintosh
Division. Jobs found Next computers after leaving Apple in 1985 but Next also flopped and
Apple acquired its software division in 1997. Powermac G4 Cube introduced in July 2000 was an
highly appreciated innovation from apple but it failed because it could not find market with a
price tag of $1600.
 In 2004, Steve Jobs announced about his illness through an email. At the launch event of iPhone
his appearance had diminished notably. In 2009 Jobs took a medical leave of about six months.
He underwent a liver transplant. All this time he continued to be CEO of Apple Inc. but in August
2011 he stepped down at CEO as he felt he could no longer carry on his duties. In October the
same year he passed away at an age of 56.
Leadership Lessons from Steve Jobs
 Innovation is the Key: Jobs believed in developing innovative and interactive devices to be used
by everyone, especially those who are not Technologists themselves. He always looked for
opportunities to develop devices which are ahead of its time. People used to burn CDs on their
personal computers to save on-line content. Jobs realized that Mac did not record CDs. So,
instead of adding the plain feature to enable CD writing in Mac, he developed iTunes software
and revolutionized the online music market.
 Nothing is Impossible: During the trial run of iPhone it was noticed that the plastic screen gets
scratched easily. So, it was decided that the plastic screen will be replaced with Gorilla glass
developed by Corning. Gorilla glass is scratch resistant glass developed through a chemical
process. Corning’s CEO Wendell Weeks was asked to deliver a shipment of gorilla glass in 6
months. Weeks told Jobs that it was impossible as they have stopped manufacturing gorilla glass
and now manufacture LCD displays. Jobs insisted on Weeks to manufacture and deliver gorilla
glass in 6 months. Weeks called a meeting of Managers at Kentucky facility of Cornings and
converted the LCD displays to Gorilla Glass and delivered it in 6 months.
 Hire Smart people: Steve Jobs hiring principle was very simple “Hire Smart people and let them
tell you what to do”. He believed in hiring smart people who know their work well.
 Succession Planning: Tim Cook current CEO of Apple joined the company in 1998 and was
groomed by Jobs in preparation to lead (Kalla, 2012).

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Conclusion
In this report, strengths, weakness and challenges faced by jobs were discussed. Finally, the lessons
today’s leaders can learn from Jobs leadership style are enumerated. Steve Jobs was a Charismatic
personality and with his able leadership took Apple from bankruptcy to heights of success, twice.

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Bibliography
Biography.com, 2017. Steve Jobs. [Online] Available at: https://www.biography.com/people/steve-jobs-
9354805 [Accessed 10 January 2018].
Himmel, R., 2013. What Personality Traits Made Steve Jobs Successful? [Online] Available at:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/answer/226410 [Accessed 11 January 2018].
Kalla, S., 2012. 10 Leadership Tips from Steve Jobs. [Online] Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/susankalla/2012/04/02/10-leadership-tips-from-steve-jobs/
#599a6ce4667f [Accessed 11 January 2018].
Linn, A., 2011. What Steve Jobs Taught us: Its OK to Fail. [Online] Available at:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44278117/ns/business-us_business/t/what-steve-jobs-taught-us-its-ok-
fail/#.WlcKYa6WbIU [Accessed 11 January 2018].
May, M.E., 2016. Why Coming Up With Original Ideas Is Actually Easier for Your Brain. [Online] Available
at: https://www.inc.com/matthew-e-may/why-steve-jobs-was-so-proud-to-steal.html [Accessed 11
January 2018].