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By Patrick Mayoh
On my table next to the laptop sits a copy of Richard Rumelt’s acclaimed Good strategy/bad strategy[1]. The book embarks on a journey to explain readers what a good strategy is and is not. It was just released this year but I can tell it has all the potential of a classics in Business and strategy literature. Ok back to my table! I read the first case study about successful turn-around strategies and unsurprisingly Steve Jobs’ turnaround of Apple is the first case. Ominous!
Tributes keep pouring in on my facebook page, I click on one link from HBR[2] (havard Business review) and there is a PDF file on sales about him. Oh my! I just cannot keep from reading pages after pages of tributes from major publications and other great world changers like Bill gates. And I wonder how a few lines from this blog can actually capture what this unique person means to the world today. But I want this to be a personal but open letter to the world about what Steve Jobs represents to an MBA and a potential entrepreneur.
Thanks for showing me how being successful in business is all about:
- · Being Unique
- · Being Resilient
- · Seeing the big picture
- · Pursuing excellence
- · Great design
Unique
When you made your come back into Apple in the late 1990s the world held a breath, wondering how you could turn around a company on the brink of collapsing. But you actually performed one of your magic tricks that was quite obvious on second thought but to which the corporate board was inexplicably oblivious to. You chose to ditch all underperforming apple products and focussed on just a few ones creating. You were a true Blue Ocean thinkers not satisfied with more but little and simple. I wish your Apple remains true to that philosophy. Simplicity is better than variety. I got that.
Being Resilient
It is not just the way you fought your battle with cancer or how even after being evicted of your own company you still went on to create the most successful animation company in the world and ended up racking 7 billion in sales to Walt Disney and sit on their corporate board (talk about a rebirth). “I am going to wait for the next big thing”. This is actually what you told Richard Rumelt[3] eager to know about your strategy to upset the WINTEL[4] monster. And true to your word you fought a fierce battle to convince the music industry to help them combat piracy and revolutionize the way we access music nowadays.
Seeing the big picture
Michael Porter rightly lamented the fact that American corporate board were too much focussed on quarterly and annual profits. It is annoying how a nonsensical market fluctuation can send CEOs scrambling for small gimmicks to try and re-establish their images. But you were never drawn into that kind of silliness always choosing to pursue your dreams of what the world should be like and you succeeded. The IPHONES and IPADS have changed forever the way we interact with technology. No wonder people would run to buy your latest gadgets at unbelievably high prices and in the worst recession in human history. Thanks to you I know that focussing on the big picture is the recipe to changing the world and achieving greatness.
Excellence
People like you taught me that excellence is not just a goal but a culture. Is it any wonder that you were a hand-on manager always assessing all the details of your product designing process to make sure people like us get the most amazing gadgets? How you would carefully prepare each of your slides, how you would cultivate respect from your colleagues how you would oversee just about everything on your Apple planet should be a benchmark for any CEO or Entrepreneur.
Design
You once famously said that design “is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But, of course, if you dig deeper, it's how it really works. You have to grok what it is all about”. AMEN.
I have to meet a friend tonight. I wonder if I should wear a turtleneck polo and a pair of blue jeans, where are my snickers? Thank you Steve and good bye.
