Steve Jobs - The untold genius stories

Jobs’s visionary ability for understanding consumer product trends and vectors, and his ability to motivate the hell out of people to drive them toward a goal and getting the very best out of them, we still don’t know some of the untold story of Steve Jobs. The Apple co-founder and ex-CEO was too complicated and nuanced for any biographer to understand and communicate quickly.

Perhaps some of those spaces will be filled in when Ed Catmull’s forthcoming book is published, worked with Steve for 25 years and is someone who could add a great deal of richness and perspective to the picture of Jobs we have now.

I have been fortunate enough to come to know Catmull over the past several years. It’s evident when he talks about Jobs as a person and leader is that Catmull saw him as a great partner and collaborator. That’s a quality that rarely comes through. On the contrary, the prevailing accounts are of Jobs the Tyrant and Jobs the Narcissistic Egomaniac.

Bouncing back from defeat! The “Jobs” way

Peter Sims

Like every strong leader and artistic personality whom I’ve known or studied, Jobs needed to fail before he could develop more accurate self-awareness and self-acceptance and finally acknowledging what he really wanted, and a more human and authentic approach to his leadership. I’ll leave it to Catmull and others close to Jobs to describe that nuanced personal evolution.

Unlike at Apple, Job’s leadership style at Pixar was far from controlling. Sure, he drove the overall strategy. Yes, he fired sales and operations people repeatedly, as Pixar shifted its focus from manufacturing hardware to software to producing short digital commercials and, ultimately, to making movies.

He also invested a substantial portion of his net worth in Pixar. And both Catmull and John Lasseter, Pixar’s chief creative officer, came to consider Jobs their “protector.”

Together, Jobs, Catmull, and Lasseter managed to weave technology, art, and business into a unified whole, with a common purpose and values and an incredibly rich and creative culture. Without any one of those three contributions, neither the company nor its films would have come into existence. And that culture is what has differentiated Pixar from the typical Hollywood approach — which is to transact for talent on each project through short-term focused negotiations.

To succeed, Pixar needed Lasseter’s innovative genius and ability to drive its creative processes and norms. It needed Catmull’s technological prowess and leadership, which helped drive the invention of a completely new set of technologies ranging from Pixar’s RenderMan software to the supporting back-end systems and processes.

And of course, Pixar desperately needed Jobs. He provided the financial resources, strategic flexibility and motivational leadership that many companies require and a willingness to make small bets on affordable losses, namely short animated 

 Link: Marketwatch