The Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

De Har­vard Busi­ness Review van vol­gende maand bevat een lang artikel over The Real Lead­er­ship Lessons of Steve Jobs door diens biograaf Wal­ter Isaac­son.

Ideaal om te lezen tij­dens een zondagse brunch. Een inter­es­sant ver­haal, met heel wat waarde­volle lessen. Enkele quotes:

Focus. When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was pro­duc­ing a ran­dom array of com­put­ers and periph­er­als, includ­ing a dozen dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the Mac­in­tosh. […] Their job, he told his team mem­bers, was to focus on four great prod­ucts. […] By get­ting Apple to focus on mak­ing just four com­put­ers, he saved the com­pa­ny. “Decid­ing what not to do is as impor­tant as decid­ing what to do.”

Sim­pli­fy. At one point Jobs made the sim­plest of all sug­ges­tions: Let’s get rid of the on/off but­ton. At first the team mem­bers were tak­en aback, but then they real­ized the but­ton was unnec­es­sary. The device would grad­u­al­ly pow­er down if it wasn’t being used and would spring to life when reen­gaged.

Don’t Be a Slave To Focus Groups. “Cus­tomers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” He invoked Hen­ry Ford’s line “If I’d asked cus­tomers what they want­ed, they would have told me: A faster horse!”

Push for Per­fec­tion. As a young boy, he had helped his father build a fence around their back­yard, and he was told they had to use just as much care on the back of the fence as on the front. “Nobody will ever know,” Steve said. His father replied, “But you will know.”

Gepubliceerd door Stijn Vogels

Natural born probleemoplosser met een oog voor usability, design, trends en details. Professioneel bezig met letterwoorden als SEO, SEA, SMO, DIY en CYA.

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