Lessons from the life of Steve Jobs

I’m about two thirds of the way through Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs and it has been a fascinating read. I’m not sure it’s possible that anyone is unfamiliar with this corporate icon who transformed multiple industries. Like him or not, respect him or not, I am seeing some powerful lessons here:

  • Learning is everywhere: Steve Jobs was an avid learner; the stories of his college days are ripe with a wide variety of experiences, which he incorporated into his creative genius over the next 40 years.
  • Integration will breed innovation: Steve was a fanatic about integrating hardware and software, as well as design and engineering. As his teams worked in both of these spheres at the same time (often only by his willpower), they repeatedly developed entirely different ways to look at the same problem and often solutions that would never have been seen otherwise.
  • Intuitive and simple = customer friendly: Having grown up with Apple products since elementary school, I have seen over and over the effort that Jobs and this company put into making products that are designed to work the way people would want them to work. People are willing to pay more, often religiously, for the simplicity that Apple is known for.
  • There is power in rejecting your present reality: Steve is said to have operated in a “reality distortion field” such that he believed things could be accomplished that seemed impossible to the logical eye. He pushed his team to limits that would strain even the most flexible, and broke many. Not every time, but many times, his people surprised even themselves by achieving completely unrealistic goals. This “reality distortion field” has been regarded as one of Jobs’ most significant character flaws, but it also contributed to some of his greatest successes.

SIDEBAR: We may not take the “reality distortion field” to the extreme, but all of us as leaders have to make a decision that there are some things which may not line up with our current reality, that we should work and believe for something greater. In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. called the people of our nation to a new reality, which I considered here. As leaders and people of faith, Hebrews 11 charges us that “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”. Are you working toward a better reality in your world, believing that God will bring it to pass, despite what you see around you?

Formula for Forward Progress

Ingredients for Forward ProgressI’ve been working through a number of projects lately and I’ve started to see progress in multiple categories. It occurred to me that, in my experience, progress has a very simple formula. To use math lingo, I would contend that Progress is a function of New Ideas, Spare Bandwidth, and Resources. If you hold all of these constant, you will likely maintain the status quo.

Ingredients for Forward Progress

If you can increase at least one of the three, though, I believe progress will result. Here’s why:

  • New Ideas: If you only think about your challenges or operations the way you’ve always thought about them, you’re not likely to see change. New ideas, or innovation, can come from visiting someone else’s organization, going to a training event, or bringing new perspectives into the team. Increase your openness to new ideas and your capacity to think differently. It will pay off.
  • Spare Bandwidth: I’ve written more about margin here, but let me summarize by saying that you can’t build toward progress if you spend all of your time doing the same things. If you can’t break out of your own time routines, it may be time to bring someone in who can contribute spare bandwidth to your efforts. (In the not-for-profit arena, finding a volunteer with some experience in your area of weakness and bandwidth to help you build is a big way to add value.)
  • Resources: Sometimes you have plenty of new ideas and even the bandwidth to execute them, but your limiting factor is resources, financial or otherwise. If you’re a leader with financial decision-making authority, watch for this to be a lid for your team. If new ideas and spare bandwidth are going under-utilized, you may want to look for a way to allocate additional resources.
As in math, you don’t necessarily have to increase every value to achieve a greater result. Adding new ideas can cause progress even if you hold bandwidth and resources constant. And the same is true for each. In fact, sometimes new ideas or spare bandwidth can help you continue to make progress even if you need to decrease resources (cost-savings innovations, e.g.).
Paying attention to these three factors will help you lead your team forward toward your goals and vision.