You’ve probably caught the news fairly often regarding the co-founder of Apple and celebrity CEO.
As an employee of 12 years, I’m going to answer the question on most people’s minds and the one the SCLM will drive into the ground…will he be missed? Absolutely but it wasn’t always that way.
When he returned as part of NeXT’s acquisition under the bumbling leadership of Gil Amelio, there was much apprehension. Apple had been continuously hemorrhaging market share, money and innovation since the Nineties began with Windows 3. A “good enough” OS with cheaper hardware (286/386) spelled doom for Apple; really it meant the company would probably live on as a boutique brand: graphic arts namely. Two previous CEOs (Scully and Spindler) proved to be ineffective and number three (Amelio) was just High-Tech Mitt Romney (fire a few thousand people, sell the company off and get a golden parachute). Bringing Jobs back into the inner circle was seen as a crazy move because everybody, especially the same SCLM praising him today, figured he was the same mercurial figure Scully ousted in 1985. As Eleanor Clift once said, people make the mistake of the believing the past to be destiny. Besides, all the momentum was pushing Microsoft’s way. Jobs would go on to be victim number four.
There’s another cliche about learning from failure and it’s wisest to start a business with someone who has experienced such a thing. For Jobs, his decade away from Apple weren’t necessarily failures: NeXT didn’t set the world on fire yet it was integrated into Apple and then there’s some little animation company called Pixar. But the time away definitely sharpened his skills at numerous levels. Most importantly, when and how to make the difficult decisions all his predecessors wouldn’t, namely cutting unsuccessful products loose instead of letting them linger on. For example, the Newton.
Jobs also recruited many lieutenants who shared his vision at many levels and he knew they would carry out his orders. I’ve worked in many other places of varying sizes before Apple and saw the CEO (or equivalent) defanged by managers/department heads. If the CEO doesn’t have this working in his/her favor, nothing will get done contrary to the Randroids’ Cult of Gault Fallacy.
After cutting the losses, Apple pressed forward incrementally: no more confusing model numbers; the iMac; USB to unify Serial, SCSI and ADB; the iPod, iTunes, etc. These started very slowly at their debuts if you remember and eventually became the juggernauts we know today. Could another CEO do this? Maybe but nobody today has Jobs’ showmanship and force of personality. Gates, Bezos, Fiorina,Whitman, Zuckerberg and their sort lacked his charisma with the public.
Now will come the real test I think he saw coming. What will happen without him at the helm because in business, people only remember what you’ve done lately, they don’t care about your entire track record, unless it’s a retrospective or obituary.