[snowwrestler]

It's unrealistic to expect any leader to know everything, understand everything, or even to consider every idea with rational equanimity.

The factor that comes through all these Steve Jobs stories is his incredibly strong drive to move forward. He didn't wait or equivocate... if he thought something was wrong, or he should hear from someone on a topic, he personally and immediately went after the very best information or person he could get. In my short career, it is striking how rare that seems, even among senior managers.

And if you think about it... those same traits are what you see demonstrated by the author in the linked story. He was worried that his company was headed in the wrong direction, so he personally and immediately went after the best solution he could think of: secretly calling the CEO of Intel!

The secret to reading these "Steve Jobs leadership" stories is that Jobs is usually not the only leader in the story.

[wahern]

> The secret to reading these "Steve Jobs leadership" stories is that Jobs is usually not the only leader in the story.

People can debate the whys and hows, but there's no denying that key point.

Maybe it was by accident; maybe Steve's careful design; or perhaps a consequence of Steve's personality and the kind of people he found himself in the company of--those attracted to him, him to attracted to them, or both. I don't think those questions are easily answered. But you can't even begin to answer those questions without realizing that he was surrounded by leaders, and it probably wasn't a random fluke--that is even if it was accidental, the accident happened once in the beginning and thereafter perpetuated itself, not accidental in the sense that at every pivotal moment he was by chance surrounded by leaders.

And even if by accident there's much to be said that Steve didn't ultimately fritter away that initial good luck. Again, deliberate or not, conscious or not, most people would have frittered that good luck away. It's hard to deny that there was something peculiar about the man. But debates get caught up in our contemporary moral narrative about merit, intelligence, worth, etc. There can't be an objective assessment, if at all, unless we appreciate how that narrative colors our perspective and understanding.

[ryandrake]

> The secret to reading these "Steve Jobs leadership" stories is that Jobs is usually not the only leader in the story.

This is a good point and probably not an accident. During my time there I worked with middle managers who, at most other companies would qualify as C-level executives. Yet there they were: world class leader sitting there managing small team X on project Y, Because Apple.

[snowwrestler]

Different jobs have different responsibilities, and the personal characteristics of strong leadership are largely orthogonal to those.

What I mean is, being a C-title executive means a different set of daily tasks than leading a small project or product team. A self-aware person who doesn't want to do the C-level tasks won't take a C-level job, even if they are a great leader who maybe could get that job. Instead, they look for the best environment in which they can do the job they want to do.

A big goal for any CEO is to create that environment and find those people. Steve Jobs seemed to be pretty good at that.

[Torwald]

After his return to Apple, Jobs explicitly said that Apple should be better at partnering. It was on the event were he announced the Microsoft deal.

I guess Steve learned this during the Next years.

[gowld]

The size of your team is not a strong correlate to the quality and importance of your product.