Steve jobs

How to conquer the world?

        Today Apple is a huge company which commercialize many electronics devices as Macintosh, Ipod, Iphone… Almost everyone knows this company by now and its annual profit for 2017 was about $ 45.2 billion. However, this company change a lot to get there and his history is affiliated with one man: Steve Jobs. We can call the personality of Steve Jobs atypical, but he was for sure a visionary man. Even if he had some relational issues with his employees in his company he was gifted for some aspects of leadership, a leadership is the activity of leading a group of people or an organization.

To run his business, Steve Jobs had to adapt his behavior and develop his skills. He sacrificed a part of his private life by dedicating it to his ideas.

In a first part, I will describe the personality of Steve Jobs, his skills, his relationships ... and I will then present his point of view from the facts of the film.

First, although many leadership qualities can be learned, Steve Jobs is a natural born leader. Already at the university, he was apart, convinced of his skills, he gave up his studies and began his first project on his own. However, he knows when he needs help, whether for production or for the financing of his project. He wants and knows to have the best at his side thanks to his persuasion; he knows how to be convincing. Although some of his behaviors are questionable, in fact it does not bother him to lie and manipulate people. Moreover, he has a tunnel vision and he is very mean to people who do not adhere to his ideas. For example, he may dismiss one of his best employees because he is skeptical of an ambitious part of a project. At the same time, it's one of his strengths: when he can, he keeps around him positive people who always want to go forward and always do better like him. He needs to trust and know his employees and he always ask them to be loyal. On one hand Steve Jobs he’s confident, enterprising and focused and on another hand he’s obsessive and ruthless.

His perfectionism led him to be sidelined but he reintegrated apple business a few years later as CEO.

I think that the key of his success is he’s ability to anticipate the need of people (“How does somebody know what they want if they’ve never seen it?” in the film) but in my point of view it’s really pity that he sacrificed his private life like his relationship with he’s first child for a long time, or with he’s friend with who everything started… Steve jobs had some relational issues also at work, the relations with the board of directors and the staff are pretty conflictual.

Another explanation of his success can be found in the fact that he had new visions about how to run a business and how it's important to stand out from the competition. Furthermore he always knew how to present a project to some potential consumers and even if he wasn’t really good with relationship he was good for talking to a bunch people, selling them a product, making jokes… as contradictory as it may seem he was charismatic.

Even if his profile as a leader isn’t perfect, he’s now a model of success.

Useful vocabulary

Revolutionize an entire industry device

Limitless

Comfort zone

Designer

Behavior

Deadline

“I just can’t work for other people”

Independence

Industrial revolution

The operating system

“How does somebody know what they want if they’ve never seen it?”

Market

Start up

Business

Motivation

Company

Management

Project

Retailer

Consumer

Valuation

Partners

Profits

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