It’s been more than a decade since we lost Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind some of the greatest technological innovations in history. He lost his battle with pancreatic cancer in 2011 and would be 69 years old today.
Jobs’ enormous influence as Apple’s leader left a lasting impression on both managers and employees. But one of his most abiding beliefs may surprise leaders who aspire to success like the Apple cofounder.
When Jobs and the other Apple cofounders, including Steve Wozniak, first realized how big their company would be, they decided to hire what they called “professional management” — people who simply knew how to manage people . But it quickly backfired.
“It didn’t work at all,” Jobs said in a 1985 interview. “Most of them were jerks. They knew how to manage, but they didn’t know how to do anything.”
Jobs’ comment gets to the crux of a central debate in management: whether managers should actually want to be managers or not. Jobs argued that the people who least expected to become leaders ended up becoming the best managers in the long run. This is because other employees were more likely to actually learn something from them because they had mastered that skill, rather than just focusing on management techniques.
Great individual contributors make great managers
This is the first of Jobs’ best management advice: elevate people who operate at the highest levels into management.
“You know who the best managers are. They are the great individual contributors who never, ever want to be a manager, but decide they have to be because no one else will be able to do such a good job,” Jobs said in the same interview.
Jobs bet on Debbie Coleman, a Macintosh team member who was 32 when he promoted her. She studied English literature in college, but earned an MBA from Stanford University and has proven herself to be an exceptional financial manager.
“There is no chance in the world that anyone else would give me the chance to perform this type of operation,” Coleman said in a 1980s interview. “I am under no illusion that there is incredibly high risk, both to me personally and professionally, and to Apple as a company, to put a person like me in this job.”
Apple “was betting on a lot of things” when it named her financial manager, Coleman said. They were “betting that my skills and organizational effectiveness trump” his lack of technological and manufacturing experience. Coleman became Apple’s chief financial officer and was called one of Silicon Valley’s “most important technology executives.” She died in 2021.
Keep the company collaborative
Another key position held by Jobs was that Apple would be a collaborative company and uniting its employees with a “common vision” was a central concept.
“Leadership is this: having a vision, being able to articulate it so that the people around you can understand it and get consensus on a common vision,” Jobs said in the 1985 interview.
This collaborative approach has continued to play out throughout Apple’s history, as Jobs long claimed that his company was the “greatest startup” in the world.
“There is extraordinary teamwork at the top of the company, which translates into extraordinary teamwork throughout the company,” Jobs said in a 2010 interview at the D8 conference. “Teamwork depends on trusting other people to do their part without watching them all the time.”
Recruit the right people
Jobs took it upon himself to be heavily invested and involved in recruiting at Apple. He wanted people who were “insanely good at what they did” but “not necessarily seasoned professionals.”
Jobs wanted employees and managers who knew what Apple could do with technology and wanted to bring it to “a lot of people.”
“The greatest thing that happens is when you get a core group of 10 great people,” Jobs said in the 1985 interview. “It becomes self-policing about who to let in that group. So I consider the work more important than someone like me [to be] recruitment”.