Much as I love working at Awty, it has been wonderful to enjoy my recent two week winter break. Di and I spent most of the short holiday with our family doing something very special and quite different from anything we have ever done before – we caught up with our family for a week in Fiji.
Every year since we last moved away from Australia in 2004, Di and I have spent Christmas with our family, usually at the home of one our children in Australia. Because of the busy time traveling and packing for the Big Move to Houston in July this year, I didn’t have time to catch up my children properly as I usually do at that time of year. So, we decided that spending a full week together,
relaxing and enjoying each other’s company, could be a great idea.
It was!
Spending a week with one another would be our present to each other. I managed to find a cottage that was large enough to accommodate all of us beside the beach and a geographically fascinating coral reef near Sigatoka on Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu. We had the chance to swim, snorkel, kayak, walk in the warm ocean waters between the coral and the brightly colored fish, enjoy a ‘lovo’, catch up on reading, and most importantly, catch up with
each other. It was a special joy for Di and I to have time with our two beautiful grandchildren, something we do miss living so far away from them in Houston.
For my holiday reading, I chose something easy (but perhaps uncomfortably awkward for Trans-Pacific flying) – Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. My choice led to some disparaging comments from one of my sons, who was expecting me
to be reading something heavier, more esoteric and less mainstream (as I usually tend to do). Nonetheless, I felt it was a good choice – and I don’t think it has caused any permanent loss of esteem in my son’s eyes.
Although enjoyable and in places illuminating, I felt the book was a bit like version 1.0 software – it seemed to have been rushed for release with a few bugs remaining, such as quotes or anecdotes that had been repeated and a distorted balance in the detail of reporting some significant episodes – the descriptions of some minor incidents cried out for some good cutting and editing, while some major decisions left me as a reader wondering why they had been reduced to single throw-away sentences.
I was especially interested in Steve Jobs’ biography for two reasons. First, I had been a long-time faithful Apple user, even through the ‘lean years’ of the mid-1990s. My first computer was an Apple IIe (with the standard memory totaling 64K), which I bought in the early 1980s to type my Ph.D. thesis. As well as typing my 100,000 word thesis (and developing the distinctive
two-finger that I still sadly use), it also
soon also became the foundation for developing my children’s early computer literacy skills (as shown in this 1984 photo - left - of my then pre-school aged daughter, Liesl). When I became Head of Prince Alfred College in Adelaide in 2000, my suggested introduction of an iMac computer to the hitherto computer-free décor of the 130-year-old Head’s office caused such concern that I was actually encouraged to forget the idea of using a computer. The ensuing somewhat robust discussion with the bursar (whose office was opposite mine) took almost two months, but as the accompanying photo shows, bringing an iMac into the Head’s office was subsequently seen to be such a significant indicator of positive change that it became the focus for a publicity shot.
My second reason for wanting to read Job’s biography was that he is seen by many as being a brilliant leader, and there might be things to learn. Having read the book, I agree that his leadership had flashes of genius, but it was also deeply flawed in terms of many of his personal relationships and stubbornness. The overall impression I gained was that of contradictions. He
felt abandonment in being adopted, and yet treated his own daughter who was born out of wedlock in the same way. He was a sixties vegan hippie who embraced Buddhism, and yet he also embraced the corporate world with a passion and ruthlessness shown by very few others. He had brilliant insights that resulted in amazing user-friendly technological and marketing advances that seem so obvious with the benefit of hindsight, and yet he also had several spectacular failures such as his refusal to get his cancer treated when it was first diagnosed, the Cube, and MobileMe – the last being especially unfortunate for me personally as it is where I host this website and it will evaporate at the end of June 2012.
I came away from my reading of Jobs’ biography with a deeper appreciation of several points regarding leadership, such as the following:
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1.It is often important to take time thinking and consulting before announcing a decision.
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2.Having said that, when decisions need to be made, it is important to make them decisively and to follow one’s own considered instincts as to what is right and wrong.
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3.Focus should be razor-sharp, and in general, ‘less is more’ – the simpler the better.
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4.Similarly, communications should be clear, concise, unambiguous and to-the-point.
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5.Ensuring high quality is a far better long-term strategy for success and sustainability than cutting corners or viewing proposals in terms of their cost rather than their value.
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6.Good design promotes efficiency as well as satisfaction and well-being.
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7.Recruiting A-grade talented staff who are self-motivated, creative and committed is probably the most important decision a leader ever makes.
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8.Teamwork is important for success; internal conflict is destructive.
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9.Meetings should be creative and frank exchanges of ideas to find new solutions, not procedural confirmations of conclusions previously negotiated.
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10. It is important to take a long-term view and not give in to short-term expediency.
Somewhat surprisingly, I thought, the more I read Isaacson’s book, the less I found to admire in Steve Jobs. Perhaps it was because I knew most of his career and life story already, and thus found much of it anticlimactic, but it was sad to read so many instances where he took the credit for other people’s ideas, savagely abused other people in meetings, over-worked loyal staff and mis-used his undoubtedly remarkable charisma.
I sincerely hope that negative characteristics such as these are not the prerequisites that one needs to change the world – as Steve Jobs undoubtedly did. If I thought for one moment that they were, I would abandon my own quest to improve the world through devoting my life to service through education and spend even more time with that wonderful family of mine.
I have come to the conclusion that improving the world through excellent education requires the best of Steve Job’s positive qualities, but it can’t afford the destructive consequences of his more negative traits. It’s not a particularly earth-shattering or surprising reflection, but I think it is an important and worthwhile reminder nonetheless.