My Take on the book: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Just finished reading this 540 pager by Walter Isaacson, former CEO of CNN and Times Magazine managing editor. Perfect timing as Apple officially announced the iPhone5 this week and will unleash it to the public on September 21st. BTW, this was the first product launch without Steve Jobs since his passing last year. Here are some highlights, or rather "my take" of the book:

His Leadership

Authoritarian, autocratic, dictatorial, charismatic...one could ask "how can these type of leadership styles spawn a company that revolutionized 21st century technologies and accumulated over 40 billion dollars in revenue over his tenure?" Don't most schools of leadership promote a democratic approach? delegatory? participative?collaborative? in order to promote a healthy and productive organization?  According to the author, although Apple's culture was often steeped in fear, intimidation, and uneasiness, Jobs created a culture in which collaboration was essential to bringing out people's creativity and imagination. His team took ownership of the products they produced. They believed in what they were creating and did not cut corners in the process. 

His Personality

Jobs had what the author described as a reality distortion field (RDF), which was the ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. Jobs would often give a project deadline of say, 2 weeks, which (in the employee's reality) was not possible. They needed 6 months. Long story short, they met the deadlines albeit working 18 hour days. Steve Jobs had a temper. He would often berate employees in public if he did not believe their work was meeting his expectations...such as "this is shit!" referring to a particular design or idea. Jobs considered the time in his life that he was on acid extremely important in his development because it provided him with a state of enlightenment that he had never experienced before. "Definitely, taking LSD is one of the most important things in my life." He was heavily into eastern spirituality, Zen Buddhism, and Hinduism. Jobs told Isaacson that he was "50/50" on the existence of God, and that he wasn't sure whether there was an afterlife. But he was hopeful, he said, that something would endure after death.

His Family

He fathered an illegitimate child that he originally denied having with his first girlfriend, Chris-Ann Brennan. The daughter, Lisa, is about 36 years old today. It is safe to say that she had a tenuous relationship with her father over the years up to his passing. Jobs had three children with his widow, Laurene Powell: Reed, Eve, and Erin. He took Reed under his wings, but it was wrote that he kind of shunned the two daughters. Steve admitted regret in not being a better father to his children.

His Products

This book chronicles the tension between Jobs and his competitors such as IBM, HP (to some extent), Adobe, Disney (in particular, Michael Eisner), and of course, Bill Gates and Microsoft. During Job's tenure, Apple released the following products that played a major role in defining 21st century technologies: Apple I, Apple II, Lisa, Macintosh, G3, iMac, OSX, Intel/Mac Pro, MacBook, iPod, iPod Touch, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Pixar Studios - Toy Story franchise, A Bug's Life, Monster's Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WallE, Up, and Brave. It was noted that Pixar's 10 year run between 1995 and 2005 out-performed and out-grossed Disney Animation Studio ten fold. This was a major factor in the tension between Jobs and Eisner.

My Favorite Quips

Ron Wayne, an early friend from the Atari years, declined to invest $1500 in Apple because it was too risky. His $1500 investment in the year 2010 would have been worth 2.6 billion dollars. He now lives in Pahrump, NV. 

Daniel Kottke, an early friend from the Reed College-LSD-Hinduism days, and an early Apple computer engineer, was not offered stock options when Apple went public in 1980. Although he was a spiritual friend of Jobs, Jobs did not believe Daniel was worthy of stock options. It was rumored that Jobs denied him stock because he felt betrayed that Kottke offered Chris-Ann a shoulder to cry on after her split with Jobs.

In 1980, Jobs spoke to a class of Stanford business students and after submitting to a dull and predictable barrage of questions about the worth of Apple stocks, he asked, "How many of you are virgins? How many of you have taken LSD?"

Jobs on Bill Gates - "Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology...He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas...He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."

My final take

Although I am not totally aligned with his leadership style, temperament, and disposition, I believe he was one of the most influential people of our lifetime. It is hard to deny the impact that Apple and Pixar products have played, and will continue to play, in our society. I can't think of one company that puts out a product with so much hype and anticipation as Apple products. I can't imagine the scene when the iPhone 5 is released to the public on September 21, 2012. And more importantly, the products are creative, detailed, clean and pure...right down to the packaging. That's the way Steve wanted it. He was a perfectionist, right down to the inner parts not seen by the user...even at the cost of denigrating and alienating the people around him. Steve Jobs was probably an asshole, jerk...the kind of guy you would just want to kick his ass...geez, the guy parked in handicap spots with no remorse (RDF). But when it's all said and done, this "asshole" had a vision to create a company that intersected the liberal arts and technology...when no other company had that kind of vision...and did so with flying colors.

Disclaimer: I switched to Apple products in 2010 when I purchased the first iPad. Since then I have switched my PC to an iMac, Samsung phone to iPhone, Zune player to iPod Touch, and have recently purchased an Apple TV....