STEVE JOBS: Universal Characteristics in His Leadership
The following books are available for free. Please contact me at GFountoulakis@coloradotech.edu.
The Universal Characteristics in the Leadership of David Packard (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B081J7JDBH)
The Universal Characteristics in the Leadership of Steve Jobs (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B081J113NT)
Steve Jobs: More Than Just A “Ding” in the Universe: Characteristics in His Leadership (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DUP0S08).
--To what degree did
Steve Jobs search for purpose, getting beyond selfish notions of meaning?
--Did he pray for
guidance, centering Apple, NeXT, and Pixar on values derived from virtue?
--Did he journey with
careful attention to an internal state, pointing himself toward transformation
and a fuller commitment to service?
--In what ways did he
touch centers of human spirit and places of association, love, protection, and
formation?
--To what extent did
he form spaces of accomplished capability as a manifestation of faith?
--How did he exhibit
principled drive and a manifestation of a spiritual foundation in Apple, NeXT,
and Pixar?
--To what degree did
he move from an egocentric, self-protective view to one centered on the cosmos?
--To what extent did
he pay careful attention to the social, self-worth, ethical, transcendent, and
physical aspects of himself?
--In what ways did he
progress in an unending way to shedding pretense through meticulous
self-regulation?
Tom Chappell connected to a
spiritual foundation through daily prayer for guidance, Centering his company
on values derived from virtue: Chappell,
T. (1999). Managing Upside Down: The
Seven Intentions of Values-Centered Leadership. New York, New York: William
Morrow
A leader’s connection to a
spiritual foundation touches centers of human spirit and places of association,
love, protection, and formation: Bolman,
L.G. and Deal, T.E. (2001). Leading With
Soul: An Uncommon Journey of Spirit. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley &
Sons
A leader’s connection to a
spiritual foundation directs that leader toward fuller consciousness—movement
from an egocentric, self-protective view to one centered on the cosmos. Growing into full consciousness involves
careful attention the social, self-worth, ethical, transcendent, and physical
aspects of oneself. Growth is an unending
progression of shedding artifice through meticulous self-regulation: Chatterjee, D. (2011). Leading Consciously: A Pilgrimage Toward Self-Mastery. New York,
New York: Routledge
A leader’s connection to a
spiritual foundation forms spaces of accomplished capability as a manifestation
of faith, a principled drive, and the manifestation of God’s existence in an
organization: De Pree, M. (2003). Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in
Serving Community. Holland, Michigan: Shepherd Foundation
A leader’s connection to a
spiritual foundation results in a journey involving careful attention to an
internal state, which points a leader toward transformation and a fuller
commitment to service: Greenleaf, R.K.
(2002). Servant Leadership: A Journey
into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist
Press
A leader’s connection to a
spiritual foundation rests on a search for meaning and purpose, getting beyond
selfish notions of meaning: Vaill, P.B.
(1998). Spirited Leading and Learning:
Process Wisdom for a New Age. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass
Excerpt from: Universal Characteristics in The Leadership of Steve Jobs
Available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B081J113NT
--What did Steve Jobs
do to center relationships on trust, justice, giving and enabling, and serving
the needs of people inside and outside of organizations?
--To what extent did
he see leadership as a relationship, based on giving spirit to employees and
creating socially enriching work environments?
--In what ways did he
sense and discover evolving truths through dialogue?
--To what degree did
he engage in ongoing dialogue, resulting in clarity, consensus and commitment?
Leadership is a relationship
based on giving spirit to employees and creating a socially enriching work
environment: Bolman, L.G. and Deal, T.E.
(2001). Leading With Soul: An Uncommon
Journey of Spirit. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Relationship-centered leadership
with its continuous broadening of relationships guides a company’s
transformation: Chappell, T. (1999). Managing Upside Down: The Seven Intentions
of Values-Centered Leadership. New York, New York: William Morrow
A leader’s relationship is one
centered on giving and enabling:
Chatterjee, D. (2011). Leading Consciously:
A Pilgrimage Toward Self-Mastery. New York, New York: Routledge
Leaders who seek to create
organizations as purposeful communities require trusting relationships. Attention to justice is essential to
developing such relationships. De Pree, M. (2003). Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community. Holland,
Michigan: Shepherd Foundation
A servant leader is centered on
relationships, which serve the needs of people inside and outside an
organization. Stating and living values
focused on others builds better relationships inside and outside an
organization: Greenleaf, R.K. (2002). Servant
Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Mahwah,
New Jersey: Paulist Press
At the root of purposeful
relationships is ongoing dialogue, which results in clarity, Consensus and
commitment: Vaill, P.B. (1998). Spirited Leading and Learning: Process Wisdom for a New Age. San
Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass
Excerpt from: Universal Characteristics in The Leadership of Steve Jobs
Available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B081J113NT
Team Integration: Sensitivity to Organizational Structure
One example of
how Steve Jobs’s leadership showed sensitivity to organizational culture can be
found in his interaction with Rupert Murdoch whose News Corp. owns such
newspapers as the Wall Street Journal
and New York Post, Fox Studios, and
the Fox News Channel. On February 24,
2011, at Steve Jobs’s 65th birthday dinner at his house, Steve Jobs
and Rupert Murdoch talked about the importance of infusing entrepreneurialism
and nimbleness into an organization’s culture.
Steve Jobs indicated that he used to believe that a big company was
unable to have a clear organizational culture.
However, he believed accountability and simplicity could be imbued in
Apple’s organizational culture.
For example,
Steve Jobs strictly enforced accountability after disheartening reviews of
Apple’s MobileMe service surfaced in the media.
He gathered the MobileMe team in the Town Hall Auditorium of Building 4
on Apple’s campus. This auditorium was a
venue Apple used to unveil products to a small group of journalists. For a half-hour, Steve Jobs berated this
group. Right on the spot, he named a new
executive to run it.
Steve Jobs
instilled simplicy in Apple’s organizational culture. The name of the company—Apple—evokes the
simplicity of a piece of pie. In
designing brochures for the Apple II, Steve Jobs chose an apple with a bite
taken out of it for its simplicity.
Steve Jobs repeatedly emphasized the simplicity in Apple’s products and
operations. Isaacson points out that
Steve Jobs felt that design simplicity should be associated with making
products easy to use. Making products
easy to use involved making them intuitively obvious to navigate, because
sometimes a device’s design can be so complex that a user finds it intimidating
to utilize it.
Steve Jobs
related simplicity with ease of use. He
praised the desktop metaphor being created for the Macintosh, because he felt that
such a metaphor could leverage the experience people already had regarding the
desktop. People knew how to deal with
the desktop intuitively.
Steve Jobs’s
design sensibility embracing simplicity arose from his devotion to Zen. He wrestled
with each new product design to see how much he could simplify it, aiming for
the simplicity that arises from conquering complexities, rather than ignoring
them.
Steve Jobs’s
obsession with simplicity as beauty could be seen in Apple’s retail stores and
its checkout process. The layout of
Apple stores and its checkout process minimize the number of steps. Steve Jobs believed simplicity and the lack
of distractions were important to a great store. Steve Jobs provided the recipe for the
simplicity of the retail stores’ checkout processes.
Another product
Steve Jobs focused on making as simple as possible for the user was the iDVD
application. Mike Evangelist, an Apple
software designer, had demonstrated to Steve Jobs an early version of the
interface to iDVD. After looking at a
number of screenshots, Steve Jobs drew a simple rectangle on a whiteboard,
indicating that a user would drag a video into that rectangle and click on a
button to copy a video on a computer to a blank DVD. This led to the simplicity of iDVD—an
application that allowed users to burn DVDs.
Steve Jobs also pushed
for simplicity in the development of the iPad.
He believed that the core essence of the iPad would be its display
screen. Everything that the iPad did
deferred to the display. Steve Jobs
sought to remove and simplify features and buttons so they posed no distraction
from the display. Steve Jobs had this to
say said at the announcement of iPad 2 regarding simplicity that came from
integration.
“It’s in Apple’s
DNA that technology alone is not enough. We believe that its technology married
with the humanities yields us the result that makes our heart sing. Nowhere is
that more true than in these post-PC devices. Folks are rushing into this
tablet market, and they’re looking at it as the next PC, in which the hardware
and the software are done by different companies. Our experience, and every
bone in our body, says that is not the right approach. These are post-PC
devices that need to be even more intuitive and easier to use than a PC, and
where the software and the hardware and the applications need to be intertwined
in an even more seamless way than they are on a PC. We think we have the right
architecture not just in silicon, but in our organization, to build these kinds
of products.”
To retain the
simplicity of the customer experience related to the iPhone, Steve Jobs
indicated that software developers outside of Apple would be permitted to write
iPhone applications. However, they would
have to meet strict standards. Apple
would test and approve them. These
applications could only be sold through the iTunes store.
Simplicity was
bred into Steve Jobs’s soul, propagating the architecture in the organization
Steve Jobs built. Steve Jobs attributed
his love of simplicity to his Zen training.
When he returned to Apple in 1997, his focus on simplicity led to
cutting all except a few core products to get Apple back on track. He eliminated buttons to make devices
simpler, features to make software simpler, and options to make interfaces
simpler.
One example of
how Steve Jobs’s leadership showed sensitivity to organizational culture can be found in his interaction with
Rupert Murdoch whose News Corp. owns
such newspapers as the Wall Street
Journal and New York Post, Fox
Studios, and the Fox News Channel: Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve Jobs. New York, New York:
Simon & Schuster
For example,
Steve Jobs strictly enforced accountability after disheartening reviews of Apple’s
MobileMe service surfaced in the media: Lashinsky,
A. (August 25, 2011). How Apple works: Inside the world's biggest startup. Fortune. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2011/08/25/how-apple-works-inside-the-worlds-biggest-startup-2/
Steve Jobs
instilled simplicy in Apple’s organizational culture: Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve Jobs. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster
“…We think we
have the right architecture not just in silicon, but in our organization, to build
these kinds of products” (p. 527): Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve Jobs. New York, New York:
Simon & Schuster
Excerpt from: Universal Characteristics in The Leadership of Steve Jobs
Available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B081J113NT
Integrity: A Commitment to Ethics
Steve Jobs’s
leadership exhibits a commitment to ethics in the ways he returned to Apple in
1997, terminated Apple’s philanthropic programs in 1997, returning backdated options
in 2001, re-launched philanthropic programs at Apple in 2006, and addressed the
FoxComm suicides in 2010. However, the
extent of such a commitment in his leadership differed in Project Breakout, the
2005 Google agreement, and after the Foxconn suicides in 2010.
1972 Project Breakout
One day, Steve
Jobs called Steve Wozniak at work, saying that Nolan Bushnell, the founder of
Atari, wanted to do another Pong-like game. Nolan Bushnell wanted Steve Wozniak
to do it, because he knew how good Steve Wozniak was at doing designs with the
fewest possible chips. Nolan Bushnell
had been complaining that the Atari games were rising significantly in chip
count, approaching 200 chips for a single game. He wanted them to be simpler.
Steve Jobs told
Steve Wozniak that Nolan Bushnell wanted a one-player version of Pong, with the ability to bounce the ball back to
the paddle. Steve Wozniak became
excited, because he could see that a one-player version could be much more fun
to play than the existing two-player version of Pong. Therefore, he immediately agreed to create a
design for this version of the game.
Steve Jobs then
told him that the hardware-implemented design had to be completed in four
days. Steve Wozniak estimated it would
take engineers months to complete this design.
Every single wire mattered because every single connection determined
when signals would appear on the screen.
There were thousands of little connections between chips, and they all
mattered. Steve Wozniak felt he could complete
this game in less time than other enginers, but four days was an insanely
ridiculous goal. Nevertheless, he
accepted the challenge.
Steve Wozniak began
drawing the schematics for this game, Breakout, so a TV could display light on
the screen—line by line. He neglected to
sleep for 96 hours. During the day, he
drew the game’s design on paper clearly enough so this design could be used to wire
together chips. At night, Steve Jobs
bread-boarded. Bread-boarding involved
putting all the components, including wires on a prototype board, and wiring
together the chips using wire-wrapping—a way of wiring together chips without
soldering. Because Steve Wozniak was the
only one who understood the circuit he had designed, Steve Wozniak slept very
little at night waiting for Steve Jobs to call him when he finished
bread-boarding. The project was
completed in four days, and it worked, using 45 chips.
Steve Jobs paid
Steve Wozniak half of the $700 he stated Atari had paid him for the game. The payment Steve Jobs received was based on
how few chips the game used. Steve
Wozniak discovered that Steve Jobs received a few thousand dollars more than he
had told him he had been paid, but attributed this to their being kids. Steve Jobs got paid one amount, and told him
he was paid another. Steve Wozniak
admits that Steve Jobs’s lack of integrity hurt him. However, he chose to avoid making a fuss
about it.
Ethics always
mattered to Steve Wozniak. He failed to
understand why Steve Jobs had been paid one amount, but told him he had been
paid another. He attributes this to
differences in people. In no way, did he
regret the experience with Steve Jobs at Atari.
Steve Wozniak considered Steve Jobs his best friend, indicating that, in
the scheme of things, this event added up to very little, especially, since he
and Steve Jobs became comfortable financially after establishing Apple.
For a very long
time, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were the best of friends. For some time, they had the same goals in
forming Apple. However, they were very
different people.
When Steve
Wozniak starting working on the Apple I board he thought about the lives of two
people who died on the same day. The
first person was very successful. That
person had spent his entire time running and managing companies, ensuring sales
goals were always met, and that those companies were profitable. The second person had spent his life
laughing. That person had little money,
liked to tell jokes, and followed gadgets, technology, and other things he
found interesting in the world. Steve
Wozniak saw himself as the second person.
This was why he never let what happened with Project Breakout bother him
and never held it against Steve Jobs.
Steve Wozniak had this figured out before he and Steve Jobs started
Apple.
Steve Jobs’s 1997 return to Apple
Unlike Project
Breakout, Steve Jobs’s discussion with Oracle’s CEO, Larry Ellison, about the
way Steve Jobs was planning to get back to Apple and get control of the company
without Larry Ellison having to buy Apple exemplifies a commitment to ethics in
Steve Jobs’s leadership. Steve Jobs explained
to Larry Ellison that his strategy was to get Apply to buy NeXT, get on Apple’s
board, and be advisor to the CEO. Larry
Ellison told Steve Jobs that without buying the company, they could make no
money. Steve Jobs told Larry Ellison
that he needed no more money, to which Larry Ellison replied that although he
may have no need for more money, no one else should make that money. Steve Jobs indicated to Larry Ellison that if
he went back to Apple and owned no share of the company, he would have the moral
high ground. At NeXT, development
continued on NeXTSTEP, NeXT’s object-oriented operating system. Apple Computer acquired NeXT and used
OPENSTEP as the basis for OS X, released in 1999, as the successor to the
MacIntosh operating system, Apple’s primary operating system since 1984.
1997 Termination of Apple’s
Philanthropic Programs
Steve Jobs’s commitment
to ethics and integrity also can be seen as a systemic movement in Apple. This systemic movement is illustrated in
Steve Jobs’s 1997 termination of Apple’s philanthropic programs. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he
terminated Apple’s philanthropic programs.
Steve Jobs terminated these programs because Apple was in financial difficulty
as indicated it its 10-K filing with the SEC for its fiscal year ending
September 26, 1997. The 10-K filing
showed that Apple’s 1997 net loss from continuing operations was $1.05
billion. Moreover, in 1996 and 1997,
Apple’s debt ratings had been downgraded to non-investment grade. Steve Jobs’s ethics drove him to end these philanthropic
programs on behalf of the employees and shareholders so Apple could address its
financial difficulties.
2001 Backdating of Options
It is difficult
to explain what changed between Project Breakout and now that affected Steve
Jobs’s view of integrity as a moral and practial necessity. In Apple’s 2001 backdating of options, Steve
Jobs utilized example and policy to establish an approach to ethical management
that gave Apple a reputation as an ethical leader. Backdating alters the date a stock option is
granted to a date when the underlying stock price is lower. Backdating makes stock options more valuable.
In 2001, Steve
Jobs was granted stock options amounting to 7.5 million Apple shares, without
the required authorization from the company’s board of directors. Furthermore, the option came with an exercise
price of $18.30. This price should have
been $21.10, thereby incurring a taxable charge of $20 million that Steve Jobs would
have neglected to report as income had he retained these backdated options.
In 2006, an
internal company inquiry found that this grant had been recorded improperly,
because it had been made at a special board meeting. However, this internal company inquiry also
pointed out that Steve Jobs had returned the options without exercising them.
In 2007, the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it would file no
charges against Apple. Rather, the SEC
filed charges against former Apple general counsel, Nancy R. Heinen, and
Apple’s CFO, Fred D. Andersen, for their roles in backdating Apple options. The Commission accused Nancy Heinen of participating
in a fraudulent backdating of options granted to Apple's top officers that
caused the company to underreport its expenses by nearly $40 million. The
Commission indicated that Nancy Heinen caused Apple to backdate a February 2001
grant of 4.8 million options to Apple's executive team and a December 2001
grant of 7.5 million options to Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs,
altering company records to conceal the fraud.
The Commission
also stated that Fred Anderson should have noticed Nancy Heinen's efforts to
backdate the Executive Team grant, thereby failing to take steps to ensure that
Apple's financial statements were correct.
Fred Anderson agreed to pay approximately $3.5 million in penalties.
The Commission
also said it would bring no enforcement action against Apple, because the
company swiftly, extensively, and extraordinarily cooperated in the
Commission's investigation. Apple's cooperation consisted of prompt
self-reporting, an independent internal investigation, the sharing of the results
of that investigation with the government, and the implementation of new
controls designed to prevent the recurrence of such fraudulent conduct.
2005 Agreement Between Google and
Apple
Unlike that
exhibited after Steve Jobs’s return to Apple and the termination of Apple’s
philanthropic programs in 1997, and the return of backdated options without
their exercise in 2001, a commitment to ethics and integrity in Steve Jobs’s
leaderhip differed during the 2005 Google agreement. The exhibit of a commitment to ethics and
integrity in Steve Jobs leadership during the 2005 Google agreement was similar
to that in Project Breakout.
Google and Apple
had explicit agreements to refrain from hiring or recruiting each other’s
employees shown in emails and phone calls in 2005 between Eric Schmidt, Sergey
Brin, and Steve Jobs regarding recruiting for the team working on Apple’s
Safari browser. Steve Jobs called Sergey
Brin to enforce this agreement, which Sergey Brin goes along with in an
email. In 2010, Google and Apple settled
a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into agreements to refrain from
competing for each other’s staff and thereby hold down salaries for tech
workers.
Philanthropic Programs at Apple
Beginning in 2006
As the 1997
termination of Apple’s philanthropic programs illustrates a systemic movement in
Apple, exemplifying a commitment to ethics and integrity in Steve Jobs’s
leadership, so does the restarting of philanthropic programs at Apple in
2006. That year, Steve Jobs announced
Project RED. Project RED helped launch
an initiative U2’s Bono and Bobby Shriver created to donate contributions from the
sale of each PRODUCT RED product to The Global Fund. Funds from The Global Fund are used to help
those women and children in Africa HIV/AIDS affects.
Steve Jobs was
also involved in a joint philanthropic effort announced in 2011 with eBay, HP,
Intel, Intuit and Oracle to help Stanford Medical Center build its new $2
billion hospital. Stanford University invited
Steve Jobs to speak at its 2005 commencement,
treated Jobs during his battle with cancer, and served as the location for
Steve Jobs’s memorial after he died.
2010 Foxconn Suicides
As the 1997
termination and 2006 restarting of Apple’s philanthropic programs illustrate
systemic movements in Apple that exemplify a commitment to ethics and integrity
in Steve Jobs’s leadership, so does the company’s response to the Foxconn
suicides. The Foxconn suicides occurred
at the Foxconn City industrial park in Shenzhen, China. 17 Foxconn employees attempted suicide,
resulting in 13 deaths. Foxconn is a
contract manufacturer for Apple’s iPhone.
On May 26, 2010,
Apple released a statement regarding the Foxconn suicides, saying that the
company was concerned about these suicides.
In addition, Steve Jobs had the following to say about the Foxconn
suicides.
“I think that
Apple does one of the best jobs in the industry and in any industry of
understanding the working conditions in our supply chain. We’re extraordinarily diligent and
extraordinarily transparent. You can go on
our website and read our report published once a year. We go into these suppliers and we go into
their secondary and tertiary suppliers—places where nobody has ever gone before
and audited them before. We’re pretty
rigorous about it. So, I can tell you a
few things that we know, and we are all over this. Foxconn is not a sweat shop. You go to this place and it’s a factory, but,
my gosh, I mean they’ve got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and
swimming pools, and I mean, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory. But they’ve had, if you count the attempted
suicides 13 so far this year...They have 400,000 people at this place. So, 13 out of 400,000 are 26 per year so far
for 400,000 people or 7 per 100,000 people.
That’s still under the U.S. suicide rate of 11 per 100,000 people, but
it’s really, really troubling …We’re over there trying to understand what’s
happening, and more importantly, trying to understand how we can help, because
it’s a difficult situation. They’ve got
a lot of workers who’ve left very poor rural areas, coming to these factories
away from home for the first time, 19 years old. They’re probably less prepared to leave home
than your typical high school student, going to college in this country. So, I think there’s some real issues
there…We’re trying to understand right now.
Before we go in and say we know the solution, we need to understand what
the problem is…We send over there our own people that have been going over
there for a long time, and are very familiar with them. And, second, we’ve hired some outside folks
as well.”
Apple’s Supplier
Responsibility Progress Reports for 2009-2012 discuss results from audits of
the labor conditions of Apple’s suppliers.
While the names of specific suppliers are omitted, the reports indicate
that relationships with suppliers have been severed due to their neglecting to
comply with Apple’s code of behavior.
In addition,
Foxconn installed suicide-prevention netting.
Buddhist monks were brought in to conduct prayer sessions inside the
factory and employees were asked to sign no-suicide pledges.
However, Foxconn
employees being forced to sign legally binding documents, guaranteeing that
they and their descendants would refrain from suing Apple because of unexpected
death, self-injury, or suicide exemplifies a different commitment to ethics and
integrity. In addition, a Steve Jobs
email and Steve Jobs’s remarks contradicted the statement Apple had released on
May 26, 2010, because they downplayed the loss of life at Foxconn. The email indicated that Foxconn’s suicide
rate was well below the average for China.
Steve Jobs’s remarks stated that Foxconn’s suicide rate was below that
of the United States.
One day, Steve
Jobs called Steve Wozniak at work, saying:
Wozniak, S.
(2006). iWoz Computer Geek to Cult Icon:
How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it.
New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company
A commitment to
ethics in Steve Jobs’s leadership is exemplified in Steve Jobs’s discussion
with Oracle’s CEO, Larry Ellison, about:
Isaacson, W.
(2011) Steve Jobs. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster
Steve Jobs
terminated these programs because Apple was in financial difficulty as indicated: Sorkin, A.R. (2011). The Mystery of Steve
Jobs’s Public Giving. New York Times.
Retrieved from http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/the-mystery-of-steve-jobss-public-giving/?_r=0
In 2001, Steve
Jobs was granted stock options amounting to 7.5 million Apple shares, without the
required authorization from the company’s board of directors: Worstall, T. (2011). Steve Jobs Obituary: the
Backdated Options Scandal. Forbes. Retrieved
from http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-obituary-the-backdated-options-scandal/#63a366ae2da7
In 2007, the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it would file no charges
against Apple: SEC (2007). SEC Charges Former
Apple General Counsel for Illegal Stock Option Backdating Commission Also
Settles Claims Against Former Apple CFO for $3.5 Million. Retrieved from https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2007/2007-70.htm
That year, Steve
Jobs announced Project RED.: Dilger,
D.E. (February 2, 2012). Tim Cook exposes the lie that Steve Jobs ignored
philanthropy. appleinsider. Retrieved
from http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/02/tim_cook_exposes_the_lie_that_steve_jobs_ignored_philanthropy_.html
Google and Apple
had explicit agreements to refrain from hiring or recruiting each other’s employees
shown in emails: Edwards, J. (2014).
Emails From Google's Eric Schmidt And Sergey Brin Show A Shady Agreement Not To Hire Apple Workers. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/emails-eric-schmidt-sergey-brin-hiring-apple-2014-3#ixzz3l0q0QsBZ
The Foxconn
suicides occurred at the Foxconn City industrial park in Shenzhen, China.: Mozur, P. (2012). Life Inside Foxconn’s
Facility in Shenzhen. Wall Street Journal.
Retrieved from http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/12/19/life-inside-foxconns-facility-in-shenzhen/
17 Foxconn
employees attempted suicide, resulting in 13 deaths: Tam, F. (2010). Foxconn factories are labour camps. South China Morning Post. Retrieved from
http://www.scmp.com/article/727143/foxconn-factories-are-labour-camps-report
Foxconn is a
contract manufacturer for Apple’s iPhone:
Pomfret, J., Yan, Huang, and Soh, Kelvin (2010). Foxconn worker plunges
to death at China plant. Reuters. Retrieved
from http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/05/us-china-foxconn-death-idUSTRE6A41M920101105
On May 26, 2010,
Apple released a statement regarding the Foxconn suicides: Kingsley-Hughes, Adrian (May 26, 2010). Apple
"saddened and upset" at Foxconn suicides. ZDNet.
Retrieved from http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-saddened-and-upset-at-foxconn-suicides/
Steve Jobs had
the following to say about the Foxconn suicides: Jobs, Steve (2011, September 29). Steve
Jobs-Foxconn [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gOu50HaEvs
Apple’s Supplier
Responsibility Progress Reports for 2009-2012 discuss results from audits of the
labor conditions of Apple’s suppliers: Apple’s Supplier Responsibility 2009 Progress Report. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2009_Progress_Report.pdf
Apple’s Supplier
Responsibility 2010 Progress Report. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2010_Progress_Report.pdf
Apple’s Supplier
Responsibility 2011 Progress Report. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/kr/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2011_Progress_Report.pdf
Apple’s Supplier
Responsibility 2012 Progress Report. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2012_Progress_Report.pdf
Foxconn
installed suicide-prevention netting:
Von Buskirk, E. (2010). Foxconn Rallies Workers, Leaves Suicide Nets in
Place (Updated). Wired. Retrieved
from http://www.wired.com/2010/08/foxconn-rallies-workers-installs-suicide-nets/
Buddhist monks
were brought in to conduct prayer sessions inside the factory. Employees were asked
to sign no-suicide pledges and forced to sign legally binding documents,
guaranteeing that they and their descendants would refrain from suing the company because of unexpected
death, self-injury, or suicide: Malone,
A. and Jones, R. (2010). Revealed, Inside the Chinese suicide sweatshop where
workers toil in 34-hour shifts to make your iPod. Daily Mail. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285980/Revealed-Inside-Chinese-suicide-sweatshop-workers-toil-34-hour-shifts-make-iPod.html
In addition, a
Steve Jobs email contradicted the statement Apple: Viticci, Frederico (May 30, 2010). Steve Jobs Email Conversation About Foxconn Suicides. MacStories.
Retrieved from https://www.macstories.net/stories/steve-jobs-email-conversation-about-foxconn-suicides/
Moreover,
employees were asked to sign no-suicide pledges: Malone, A. and Jones, R. (2010). Revealed,
Inside the Chinese suicide sweatshop where workers toil in 34-hour shifts to make your iPod. Daily Mail. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285980/Revealed-Inside-Chinese-suicide-sweatshop-workers-toil-34-hour-shifts-make-iPod.html
Excerpt from: Universal Characteristics in The Leadership of Steve Jobs
Available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B081J113NT
Orientation Toward Performance and Excellence: A Focus on Self-Development
Throughout his
life, Steve Jobs experimented with several modes of self-development. For example, Steve Jobs underwent primal
scream therapy, which Arthur Janov, a Los Angeles psychiatrist, developed and
popularized. Scream therapy is based on
the Freudian theory that repressed pains of childhood cause psychological
problems. Arthur Janov argued that
re-suffering these primal moments while fully expressing the pain—sometimes in
screams—could resolve these psychological problems. To Steve Jobs, this seemed preferable to talk
therapy, because it involved intuitive feeling and emotion, rather than
analyzing. He felt that reliving
childhood pains would lead to insight.
In late 1974,
Steve Jobs became involved in 12 weeks of therapy at the Oregon Feeling Center,
located in an old hotel in Eugene.
Robert Friedland, Steve Jobs’s guru from Reed College, ran this
center. While undergoing scream therapy,
Steve Jobs confided to friends about the intensity of his pain regarding being
put up for adoption and having no knowledge about his birth parents. Steve Jobs felt that he could better
understand himself if he knew more about his physical parents. To avoid hurting his adoptive parents, he
refrained from hiring a private investigator.
Rather, he spoke with his adoptive parents, Paul and Clara Jobs, and
learned that his birth parents had been graduate students at a university and
that his father was Syrian. He was
deeply angry about being put up for adoption.
While experiencing scream therapy and for a while afterwards, Steve Jobs
seemed to have found peace, improved confidence, and reduced feelings of
inadequacy.
There are other
examples of Steve Jobs’s focus on self-development. When he dropped out of college, he took up
Buddhism. At Apple, he was an active
learner, dropping in for learning sessions with staff. He distanced himself from his tendency to
shut people down, taking on new behaviors to allow others to open up and
contribute more comfortably. He accepted
input and applied it to making needed changes in himself.
Even his rivalry
with Bill Gates provides evidence of self-development. In May of 2007, then Wall Street Journal columnists Walt Mossberg and Karen Swisher got
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together for a joint interview during an All Things
Digital conference. At first, Steve Jobs
spoke warily of Bill Gates. However,
when Bill Gates recalled how, while Steve Jobs was reviewing the software
Microsoft was making for the Macintosh, he would see Steve Jobs make decisions
based on people and product, doing things differently in a way that was magical,
Steve Jobs pointed out that Microsoft’s decoupled approach to technology was
faring better in the personal computer market than Apple’s theology of building
end-to-end products. Also in that
interview, Steve Jobs indicated that this difference in design philosophy led
Apple and him to less collaboration with others.
In his 2005
commencement address at Stanford University, Steve Jobs provided further
confirmation of self-development. He
mentioned that he dropped out of college, believing that everything would turn
out all right, signalling that had made a decision and committed to it. Stating that following his curiosity and
intuition led him into much of what he stumbled into showed how he trusted
himself and his intuition. Talking about
how the “lightness of being a beginner” replaced the “heaviness of being
successful” was synonymous with keeping an open mind. Finally, his referencing keeping faith even
though life hit him “in the head with a brick” suggested trusting and having
faith in his decisions and himself.
Throughout his
life, Steve Jobs experimented with several modes of self-development: Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve Jobs. New York, New York:
Simon & Schuster
In his 2005
commencement address at Stanford University:
Stanford 2005 Commencement address.
Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vja4GJv40xE
Excerpt from: Universal Characteristics in The Leadership of Steve Jobs
Available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B081J113NT
Integrity: A Connection to A Spiritual Foundation
Steve Jobs’s
concern with Eastern spirituality, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and his pursuit for
illumination went past the phase of a curious 19-year-old. From the time he journeyed to India, Steve
Jobs was an active and sincere Buddhist—throughout his life, pursuing many of
the teachings of Eastern religions.
These precepts included direct insight into the truth Buddha (prajñā)
taught , wisdom, and rational
understanding, instinctively felt through meditation. Steve Jobs reflected on the lasting influence
of his trip to India.
“Coming back to
America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The
people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use
their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the
rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than
intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.
Western rational
thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great
achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never
learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable
but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential
wisdom.
Coming back
after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world
as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you
will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it
worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more
subtle things— that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to
see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down,
and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you
could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it.
Zen has been a
deep influence in my life ever since. At one point I was thinking about going
to Japan and trying to get into the Eihei-ji monastery, but my spiritual
advisor urged me to stay here. He said there is nothing over there that isn’t
here, and he was correct. I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are
willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next
door.”
Steve Jobs first
joined a small group of Zen Buddhist followers.
Their teacher was Shunryu Suzuki of the San Francisco Zen Center, who
used to come to Los Altos every Wednesday evening to lecture and meditate with
this group. After a while, Steve Jobs asked his
assistant, Kobun Chino Otogawa, to open a full-time center in Los Altos, where he became a faithful
follower.
Steve Jobs also
went to retreats at the Tassajara Zen Center, a monastery near Carmel where
Kobun Chino Otogawa also taught. Steve
Jobs’s devotion became intense, meeting with Kobun almost daily, and going on
retreats with him every few months to medidate.
Steve Jobs discussed with Kobun about devoting himself fully to
spiritual pursuits. Kobun Chino Otogawa counseled
him otherwise, assuring him that he could keep in touch with his spiritual side
while working in business.
After his
ousting from Apple in 1985, Steve Jobs took up intensive study with Kobun Chino
Otogawa. Throughout his life, Steve Jobs
experimented with various modes of self-improvement and actualization. However, Zen Buddhism stayed with Steve Jobs
the longest. Steve Jobs centered his
journey to spiritual realization on Buddhist beliefs and practices, with Kobun
Chino Otogawa as his guide. Steve Jobs’s
beliefs were open and flexible, centering on a few essentials of Buddhist
doctrine—simplicity, oneness, and integration.
Steve Jobs’s and Kobun Chino Otogawa’s time together was integral to the
big leaps that Apple took later on with its product design and business
strategy. Based on Eastern religion, Steve
Jobs first honed his design aesthetic.
Then he chose to identify only what he needed—leaving the rest behind.
Steve Jobs used
Zen precepts of simplicity, oneness, and integration to create the Apple
product line. The early Macintosh
computers were remarkable in their simplicity of design. As Zen is very complex and yet simple, so too
were Apple products. Macintosh
computers, released in 1984, used a complex graphic user interface to make
using a personal computer simple.
(DOS-based personal computers, released in 1984, used blinking green
display screens on which the user had to enter lots of text and remember long
commands to make it work.) The
technology that made the iPod work was incomprehensible. However its design made it simple to
use. The iPod had no on off switch and
allowed its user to teach it. Steve
Jobs’s ability to integrate Zen philosophy into everyday technology contributed
to the success of Apple products.
Steve Jobs’s
Zen-based beliefs remained constant over the years and expressed themselves
also at NeXT and Pixar. During the
mid-1980s, Steve Jobs named Kobun Chino Otogawa, NeXT’s spiritual guru.
At Pixar, Steve
Jobs expressed the Zen Buddhist precept of integration. He sought to have technology and creativity
intersect at Pixar.
The design of
the Pixar campus was a demonstration of the intersection of technology and
creativity. In November 2000, Steve Jobs
bought a deserted Del Monte canning factory on 16 acres in Emeryville, just
north of Oakland, California. Steve Jobs
insisted that there should be one large building around a central atrium to
encourage unsystematic meetings between
computer scientists, animators, and Pixar executives.
Steve Jobs
sought to emphasize the linkage of principles from different cultures, even at
the expense of convenience. Steve Jobs
insisted that the best creations occurred when people from disparate fields connected
so that distinct ways of seeing the world were brought to bear on a single
issue. The Latin crest of Pixar
University embodies the Zen Buddhist teaching of integration: Alienus
Non Diutius. Alone No Longer.
Steve Jobs’s
concern with Eastern spirituality, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism: Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve Jobs. New York, New York:
Simon & Schuster Coming back to America was: Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve
Jobs. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster (pp. 48-49)
Steve Jobs first
joined a small group of Zen Buddhist followers:
Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve Jobs.
New York, New York: Simon & Schuster
After his ousting from Apple in 1985, Steve Jobs took up intensive study with
Kobun Chino Otogawa: Melby, C. (2012). The Zen of Steve Jobs. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons
Steve Jobs used
Zen precepts of simplicity, oneness, and integration to create the Apple Product
line: Bradford, B. (2014). The
Inconsistent Zen Of Steve Jobs [blog]. Retrieved from http://barrybradford.com/steve-jobs-inconsistent-zen/
During the
mid-1980s: Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve
Jobs. New York, New York: Simon
& Schuster The Latin crest of Pixar University: Taylor, B. (2008). Pixar’s Blockbuster
Secrets. Harvard Business Review.
Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2008/07/pixars-blockbuster-secrets
Excerpt from: Universal Characteristics in The Leadership of Steve Jobs
Available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B081J113NT
