Essay Writing Assignment help on : Steve Jobs
Introduction
Steve Jobs will remain one of the leading innovators in the information age. He has raised the bars in the case of the industry standards in relation to digital media and computing while he serves as the CEO to both Pixar Animation Studios and Apple Computer (Queazzaire, 2011). Today he is admired and looked up to by many. His philosophies of life and business are followed by many. This article is a reflection of his life, philosophies, achievements, analysis and criticism of Steve Jobs.
Personal Life
Steve Jobs took birth on February 24th, 1955 and was born to an American mother Joanne Simpson and Lebanese college professor Abdulfattah Jandali in Green Bay, Wiscosin. His parents were not married at the time of his birth and were given up for adoption after a week of his birth. He has a biological sister Mona Simpson who is now Mona Appel (Young & Simon, 2005). Paul Jobs, who was his adoptive father, was a ‘genius with his hands’ according to Steve Jobs. he has served the U. S Coast guard during the second world war and had also spent hours in his garage where in he made jalopies for kids. Steve shared a strong relation with his father (Sorensen et.al, 2011). Steve Job got married to Laurene Powell who was nine years junior to him and has three children with her, and also has a daughter Lisa Brennan Jobs from Chris Brennan whom he didn’t marry (Whitmer, n.d). He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004. The condition was treated quickly and his job in apple was temporarily replaced by timothy cook. He had a liver transplant as he suffered several years from imbalances in hormones. He was also suffering from the aftermath of pancreatic cancer. He stepped down from on August 2011 and later died on October 5th, 2011 (Quezzaire, 2011)
School life
As a student Steve Jobs had a penchant for mischief and and a Wilfulness that was rapidly developing in to something else. As a child he was suspended from school many times because of his misbehaviour. He often deified the teachers and refused to complete assignment and home works that were given to him. Mountain Views Crittenden Junior High was a tougher high school and his free spirit and intelligence went unnoticed there. He was frustrated and unhappy in his school. They moved again to the flat lands of Los Atlos and found himself in the largest assemblage of science works. This place was heaven for Steven Jobs (Young & Simon, 2005).Steve Jobs entered Homestead High School in 1968. He was a square in his mother’s words as he would notice girls and was also athletically challenged. He had the ability to focus completely on anything that caught his interest. He was even failing in history and English by the time he reached his high school. He was also unpopular among the teachers as he asked questions and challenged them when it came to science (Young & Simon, 2005).
Youngsters admired him for his precision, single mindedness and a generosity when it came to high spirits. John also had the intensity and passion even as a child. He later on joined Reed College in Portland, and his parents were aghast about it not only because of the fees but also because of the distance from home. He had other pursuits and his study came last. The grades of his semester were poor and that made him drop out from college. He travelled to India with his friend and found the experience intense and disturbing (Young & Simon, 2005).
Major events and Achievements in Steve’s life
One of the major achievements of Steve and Wozniac happened in the 1970’s and that was to bring computers from office to home (Smith, 2011). Steve Jobs and Steve Woznaic had founded Apple Computers in 1976 and it became incorporated in 1977. This happened when Apple I was released. This was the evidence for the innovative flair that Steve had also his determination to become successful. None of the major achievements happened until 1985, where a power struggle made Jobs to resign his job. There were also a number of unsuccessful launches during the time. Jobs were a success even when he was away from the shadow of Apple. He acquired Pixar which was a major visual effects company and has produced a lot of successful movies. He also found NeXT Inc, which was a company that manufactured computers for the the education market and later on for the business market. Jobs was made the CEO of the Apple after NeXT was acquired and the operating system of NeXT laid the foundation for Mac. The computer company Apple was transformed into Electronics Company under the guidance of Jobs. He became the CEO of the decade that was a title given to him by the Fortune Magazine. The major reason for this was the unique leadership style that was followed by him and the hands on approach he had taken as a leader. He is also considered the power behind the growth of the company Apple and that is well reflected in the financials of the company. It is also reflected in the demand that people have for its products (Market Line, 2012).
Steve Jobs had a certain level of insecurity in him being and adopted child and not being wanted by his real parent and had to Challenges Faced by Steve Jobs was to start up Apple Computer Inc. He is at times blamed for some of the bad decisions taken by apple and its loss of sales. He also put away from the board when there was a power play in Apple in the year 1885. He had to resign his job and start up anew in his life at that point. It should have required immense courage to start up another company and to acquire Pixar. The digital media company did extremely well when it came to production of some movies. They resolved the complications with Disney when required. He rejoined apple and led the company into the success it is today. Also, it can be said that some of the major launches happened after the removal of his Cancer. He remained working for yet another five years until he faced death in 2011 (Young & Simon, 2005).
Analysis and Criticisms Leadership Strategies by Steve Jobs
The real lessons of the leader Steve Jobs can be analysed by assigning the basic value to the accomplishment that were made by him. One of the most enduring creations that were made by his in his concept was Apple which was an enduring company. Some of the major values followed by him allowed him helped him to become accomplished in his life (Issacson, 2012).
Focus: focus was one of the major strengths that Steve Jobs had. Jobs returned to Apple computers in 1997 and Apple was then producing a random array of computers and was trying to create various versions of Macintosh. He stopped them by tagging them into two different lines that are ‘Desktop’ and ‘Portable’. According to him making a decision as to what should not be done is more important that what should be done. He loved whiteboards as it helped him to focus. This was one feature that was engrained in to Jobs personality. His initial aim was to filter out of the distractions (Issacson, 2012).
Simplification: one of the first marketing brochures conveyed that ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’. This is even reflected in any of the software’s that are made by apple. He followed this even when he was working in Atari as a college drop out. One of the major games that were made during that time was Star Trek game. Also, the games were devoid of instruction manual then. The instruction given for that was Insert quarters and Avoid Klingons. This aim was to conquer through simplicity rather than complexity and ignoring. It is important to ignore the role of each element to that the clutter can be reduced to maximum. People are way too busy to pay for complicated products (Issacson, 2012).
Taking responsibility end to end: when Steve Jobs preferred simplicity, he also had an idea in head that there should be a complete integration, when it comes to the application of peripheral devices, software’s and hard ware’s. Jobs and Apple had taken end to end responsibility where customer experience is concerned. They had managed this to the extent as creating an eco system for themselves. Steve Jobs was sometimes allergic to the fact that other application might run on his products. But considering the quality that apple has, it reminds the customers that it is sometimes good to be in the hands of a control freak (Issacson, 2012)
When behind leapfrog: according to Steve, the mark of a great company is not only about bringing up innovative ideas, but also leap frogging when they are behind. When iMac was originally built he concentrated on dealing with photos and videos that he forgot music. But later on he made the leap frog and created iTunes, iTunes Store and iPod giving much more provisions to the user could do more than just burning cd’s. Once he found that there is a threat to it from phones, he created an iPhone cannibalising his own product iPod (Issacson, 2012).
Put products before profits: Steve Jobs even when he was creating the first product didn’t worry about profit maximisation or cost tradeoffs. He was only concerned about creating the great product that with cater to the requirements of the customers. He didn’t compromise with quality and this increased the prices of the system. On the other side it also revolutionised the usage of computers and made computers accessible at home and not only in offices. When there is too much of stress on sales and marketing the product seems to matter less. The focus was on marketing until he came back and put the focus back on innovative products (Issacson, 2012).
Do not be a slave to focus groups: According to Jobs market research and customer research were not to be done before creating an innovative product because they would know what they need or what they would get until it is shown to the customers. He quotes Fords line often when it comes to not focussing on the focus groups. According to Henry, “if I had asked customers what they wanted they would have told me, ‘A faster horse’!”. According to Jobs caring for the customers is entirely different from asking them continuously as to what is required by them. He believed in reading things that were not visible on the page and that are what innovation is all about. He used himself as his focus group (Issacson, 2012).
Bend reality: Jobs colleagues called this the reality distortion field and Steve was always criticised for his ability to push people to do the impossible, this ability was for bullying and lying made people to perform well and he had proved it in his very own case. He bluffed to Atari he could develop the game in four days when he himself knew it was impossible and ended up doing it because he bullied himself to it. This helps him to reduce the boot time were putting the things up are considered (Issacson, 2012).
Impute: three principles that were gravely used by Jobs were empathy, focus and impute. According to Jobs, people did judge a product by its cover. This was one of the reasons why he was well engages in designing the covers by himself and patented it under his name (Issacson, 2012).
Push for perfection: when the products were being developed there were situation when Steve had to put on the pause button and start things again because he felt it was not perfect. This happened with the movie toy story and also with iPad. Once the design was completed he felt it was not good enough and called his team members and asked them to change it over again as the case competed with the display (Issacson, 2012).
Tolerate only ‘A’ players: some of the major strategies that were adapted by Steve were to be rude to employees and he admits that he did this to prevent bozo explosion where mediocre people would find it fine to stick on to the same environment. There were many ways to run a company and it can be said that Steve should be complemented for his rudeness because it is the strategy that works well with him to yield perfection (Issacson, 2012).
Engage face to face: face to face meetings and conversations should be made to implement innovative ideas and building should foster that. This is also the way how his place was designed. Atrium was located in corridors and stairs. He was always open to ideas from others (Issacson, 2012).
Know both big picture and the details: Jobs had a great passion about knowing thing completely. This means he has a vision and he worked on his mission well. for example when he brought in the successor strategy that the hub would move into the cloud and a server farm was being built up he was as concerned about the colours to be applied to the new place as he was concerned about the vision of the company (Issacson, 2012)
Combine humanities with science: one of the strategies he applied was to connect humanities to sciences and arts to engineering and creativity to technology. This was also a philosophy behind the creation of the products. Steve before his death also gave in a vision of making text books in to artistic creations (Issacson, 2012).
Stay hungry, stay foolish: it can be seen the Steve Jobs is a product of the two great movements, one id the counter culture of the hippies and was marked by anti authoritarianism and rock music and the second was high tech and hacker culture of the Silicon Valley and was full of engineers (Issacson, 2012).
Engagement, enrichment and empowerment: he also gave a high level of importance to engagements, enrichment and empowerment. These were the three magical strategy words as far as he was concerned. Engagement is required because it supports the needs of the customers, enrichment adds on to the value that is provided for the customers and empowerment is highly necessary because it shifts the emphasis and control to the customers and enables them to customise and personalise (Blowers, 2012)
Major Criticisms
Barrack Obama was an admirer of jobs. According to him “Steve was among the greatest of the American innovators… brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it”. His employees adore him in spite of the criticism that he was so rude and pushy. According to them it was a strategy that worked for him and he was really good at it. He was also criticised for being a perfectionist. He was also pushy in nature and challenged people to get things at at faster pace. Bill hates and Steven were competitors, but it is said the Bill gates helped him to develop Macintosh the pride of Apple computers. This means that he was taking false fame. In his personal life he declined fathering his own child and this doesn’t reveal much well about his personality. He is also said to have put the whole Apple Company in trouble with his false decisions as he wouldn’t compromise on any other suggestions put forth by his colleagues. He was well engaged in quieting the critics with his blunt reply
Is Steve Jobs was alive now he would be working compulsively and obsessively on the new product which is going to be launch by Apple which is also a part of his vision. He would go ahead with his logo of Apple revolutionising the world and try to bring in more innovations for his company.
Why Steve Jobs
Apple as a product has always attracted my attention and so has Steve Jobs. His story is against the normal pattern of billionaires and great people who have had support of education from various universities and a rich father. The Story of Steve Jobs is an inspiration to all the people with different talents and makes them believe that they can bring in a different to the whole world. Some of the strategies that were used by him seems ruthless to me and I may not agree on the implementation of them. But if I was to try balancing the negative features he had with the positive approach and the accomplishment he has made, his accomplishments would definitely outweigh the negative features. He has brought in some of the amazing products in to the world.
Conclusion
To conclude, it can be said that Steve Jobs will remain alive for years to come irrespective of the lack of his physical presence. He has left behind a cult of apple fans who forbids themselves from the usage of any other products. He once quoted that he is not scared of not being the richest man in the Cemetery. But the satisfaction that he made a great product mattered to him ever night when he went to sleep. No organisation this famous has been so dependent on the charisma of their leaders including Microsoft, to the extent that even when he stepped down from the position as CEO of the company Cook was known as the substitute of Steve Jobs and not CEO. It can honestly be said that he has made his company secure for years to come and can rest in peace believing that his products are still the best among its peer products irrespective of the competition in the industry.
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