Nu Steve ziek is wordt de Jobs-Methode relevant: met o.m. het Mac Team

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sp9nhQH6t4

Steve Jobs, APPLE's CEO, heeft zich opnieuw ziekgemeld. De signalen, zoals de reactie van de beurzen op dit bericht, lijken deze keer mee te vallen wat zou kunnen betekenen dat wij ons geen zorgen meer mogen maken over Steve's opvolging, hopelijk vindt die opvolging pas 't.z.t.' plaats.

Omdat Steve er dus 'even' niet is, is het interessant om te kijken naar de "Steve Jobs Methode" ofwel: hoe pakt deze succesvolle entrepreneur zijn zaken aan? Daarvoor buigen we ons over een recent interview met John Sculley, Steve's voormalig 'dynamic duo' partner. Sculley analyseert de "Jobs Methode" alsvolgt:

• "Steve always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do – but the things that you decide not to do. He’s a minimalist.
• He was able to work in multiple levels in parallel from “change the world,” to the details of what it takes to actually build a product. 
• Steve had this perspective that always started with the user’s experience. The user experience has to go through the whole end-to-end system.
• In each case, he always reached out for the very best people he could find in the field.
• Steve had a rule that there could never be more than one hundred people on the Mac team: "The organization can become bigger but not the Mac team.".
• The one that Steve admired was SONY. The first thing he did with Sony's new Walkman was take it apart and he looked at every single part. How the fit and finish was done, how it was built.
• Steve was incredibly methodical; he believed in perfection.
• What Steve’s brilliance is, is his ability to see something and then understand it and then figure out how to put into the context of his design methodology — everything is design."

Op deze manier, Sculley gebruikt verleden tijd, lijkt het wel een necrologie toch publiceerde 'Cult of Mac' het interview met John Sculley al in oktober 2010: John Sculley On Steve Jobs, The Full Interview Transcript; een aanrader, zeker nu......

19/01/11

Prof. Jeffrey Pfeffer komt vandaag met de volgende Jobs-lessons:

• The first is the most inspiring: it's that power can result from sheer drive, persistence, resilience, and the ability to tolerate conflict.
• The next lesson to be learned is that power can come through the projection of an image of strength that may not yet be the reality.
• This brings us to the third lesson: that likeability is not a prerequisite to power. While being liked can increase your influence, the equation works more reliably the other way around: being powerful will get you liked.

Zoals Pfeffer stelt: Jobs managementstijl wordt niet gedoceerd in managementboeken & MasterClasses maar da's nog maar een kwestie van tijd. Pfeffer: 'There are few careers more worthy of study than Steve Jobs'.

Lees ook Jeffrey Pfeffers blog 'Without Steve Jobs, Can Apple Stay Powerful?'.