Before this book came out, I didn’t know all that much about Jobs or the role he played at Apple. I remember at some point hearing that he was forced out of Apple, and that after quarters of falling sales and mediocre products, Apple brought him back. I mainly recognized his face from watching Apple product presentations on youtube, in eager anticipation of a new macbook computer or ipod version.
Apple hasn’t been on my radar until recently, when it started coming out with the ipod, followed by the sleek aluminum macbook. As a kid, I always hated the Macintosh computers in school. They were slower than windows, less intuitive, and not conducive to gaming. Also, when I started to get into programming in high school, I hated how Apple computers had such closed systems and how it was difficult to fiddle with their hardware. All the way up until college, I was a die hard windows or linux fan. However, when the aluminum macbook came out, I fell in love and haven’t looked back.
I was in London when Jobs died. It was a big shock. I had no idea he was suffering from cancer and it felt really strange because he’s around my dad’s age. Shortly after, the biography came out and I remember most articles I read said it was scathing, unfriendly, and ugly. Well, being a young entrepreneur, full of dreams and passion, you can imagine what was #1 on my Christmas list. I wanted to learn who this man really was and whether he was an Edison or a Rockefeller. A Benjamin Franklin or an Andrew Carnegie.
Before I give my thoughts on this book, I want to say that Walter Isaacson did a brilliant job of capturing this man on the page. Using extensive research, flowing prose, and keen psychological analysis of a deep and complex character, he weaves this compelling and informative narrative that makes the book a guaranteed seller. I’ve read his other books on Benjamin Franklin and Einstein, and hope that he continues to write biographies for the rest of his life.
There is one belief or driving force that I think has existed all throughout Job’s life and it is a common belief among people who leave behind something we call “legacy.” It’s the kind of belief system that I believe Alexander the Great must have had, and it’s summed up in this quote from Job’s Standford Commencement Address: “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
It’s like the quote from the movie Alexander: “The fear of death drives all men.”
I think that Job’s need to do something great, to forward the human race, to keep achieving and creating despite what he had already created, and to be remembered is what led to his incredible focus, hard work, and success. He had this idea in his mind that he was going to die young and wanted to do all he could before that happened. When you understand that desperate need, it’s easier to understand why he ignored his family so much, how he summoned the strength to keep going, and the reason he took such huge risks, often betting the company when it wasn’t necessary.
So, just like Alexander the Great, he had this desire, but unlike Alexander, he considered himself an artist, not a military general. Instead of conquering nations, he sought to bring products into the world that did not exist before and held them to rigorous and perfectionist standards.
When he talks about what drives him, he seems to give off less of an egotistical or control freak nature than what is portrayed in the biography: “I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s been done by others before us…A lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow…We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contribution that came before us, and to add something to that flow.”
A lot of entrepreneurs say that the greatest ventures one will create are inline with one’s passions. For Jobs, this was combining his need to be an artist with his interest in technology. In short, he sought to combine the humanities with science.
I spoke in my last post about the different types of entrepreneurs that exist. Some do market research in order to understand where there are gaps in the market place and how they can take advantage of those gaps. Others seek to solve problems that individuals have with new or slightly altered products. Then, there are entrepreneurs who create products that people don’t realize they “need” until they see it. Jobs certainly was not an inventor or engineer, but he did have the ability to understand this last category of people and push his employees to develop innovative products that people didn’t realize they needed.
“Some people say ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.'”
I think it’s clear to anyone who reads this book that Jobs is a master salesman, an expert handler of people, and has an incredibly intuitive sense about the marketplace and aesthetics. Despite these amazing qualities, there is this strange thing about reading this book and learning how he grew up. You get this sense of how ordinary and human he is. I feel like some people are idealized as gods by the media, and it’s wonderfully refreshing to be able to come away from this book and be able to think about how on many levels, he’s no different than me or my friends. It might seem pretentious to say something like that knowing how much he accomplished and how he revolutionized six industries, but it’s completely true. To reinforce that belief, I’m going to provide a short video from when he was younger:
Well, I’m certainly not saying very much about his bad qualities. In a lot of ways he reminds me of Howard Hughes, a very successful and driven man with many personal issues and odd mannerisms. There is no doubt that he put a lot of his personality into Apple products and the company’s organization, but I’m going to stay away from some of the ugly things in his past. They do serve to make him more human. Since I want to be an entrepreneur, I mentally glossed over a lot of the negative things and focused on emulating the positive, but all I can say is after reading this book, my mom hated the man and wanted nothing to do with him or his products.
I remember Will Smith saying in one of his interviews that he believes that all successful people have to have a delusional quality to them because they have to believe that something different will happen that hasn’t happened to anyone else around them. Steve Jobs had a similar “reality distortion” field that he used to get people to give their best, to stay ahead of the competition, and in less admirable cases, ignore his daughter born out of wedlock, ignore that he needed to seek medical attention for cancer, and ignore the horrible effects of his strange diets. In hand with a natural charisma, Job’s reality distortion field reminded me of something that a cult leader would employ to get his or her loyal followers to behave how they wish. It was actually incredibly effective and it’s very interesting reading about how he used this to his advantage.
For example, he would convince employees that they were capable of performing incredible production feats, despite a seemingly inadequate deadline length or lack of technological ability. Then, amazingly, they would perform these feats (and often be up day and night doing so). I guess people truly can do more than they think they are capable of.
His ability to create a reality distortion field was married with his knack for creating a team of A players. He had this firm belief that A players only want to work with other A players and that B players often let C players creep into the organization because they are self-conscious about their own performance and want to appear better. By giving these A players harsh feedback and holding them to a high standard, he was able to cultivate the creation of wonderfully beautiful and technologically advanced products. His ultimate test was to create products that the engineers themselves would want to use.
“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.”
I think this is the reason that Jobs continually sought to re-invent himself and his company.
This book was incredible and is a must read for all entrepreneurs and technologists. I’d like to end this entry with a quote from an Apple advertisement.
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
The Thought Hole 