LESSONS FROM STEVE JOBS

If you’re running a radio group today or you’re an air talent trying to thrive, you may find this interesting. I hope it will give you a small idea of where we, as an industry, have gone far off course during the past 20-plus years. If it does, I urge you to read Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs.

Steve was not flawless. He was not a particularly nice person. But he was a genius when it comes to business.

He took an idea and turned it into the world’s most valuable company and he did it by breaking just about every business rule in the book, certainly every rule radio is now preaching.

And that’s the point…

There’s always another way to do things for those with vision and courage and steadfast belief.

And, God knows, there are lots of us out here waiting to join someone who believes in something more than making himself and his family super-rich. We’ve had 20 years of that…

“Sculley destroyed Apple by bringing in corrupt people and corrupt values. They cared about making money -- for themselves mainly … rather than making great products. Macintosh lost to Microsoft because Sculley insisted on milking all the profits he could get rather than improving the product and making it affordable.” ~ Steve Jobs

“(Jobs) felt that Sculley’s drive for profits came at the expense of gaining market share. As a result, the profits eventually disappeared.” ~ from STEVE JOBS by Walter Isaacson, p. 295

And, from TIME Magazine’s article, What Would Steve Do…

“…he took total responsibility for his product from end to end … he put products before return on investment and … he wasn’t a slave to focus groups.”

“Jobs … had the entrepreneurial impulse to put engineers above bean counters in the corporate hierarchy. As Jobs told Isaacson, ‘My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything. The people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings.’ “

“Focusing on product meant taking the long view -- another key Jobs leadership lesson. After the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, most of Silicon Valley stopped spending. Apple, meanwhile, started ramping up research and development, hoping to invent a lot of innovative new products that would put it ahead of competitors after the downturn. It worked. Out of the recession came the iPod, the iTunes stores and even a new operating system, OSX.”

“Steve spent a lot of time stressing to me how the seeds planted during that downturn, sometimes over the skepticism of his board and investors, grew into the products that turned Apple into the world’s most valuable company,” says Isaacson.

“Jobs stands out as an exceptional leader not so much because of his in-your-face style but because American business has come to be dominated by bean counters seeking hyper-efficiency rather than by innovators focused on real growth.”

Ponder this quote from Steve Jobs if you remember nothing else from this today:

“I don’t think it’s good that we’re perceived as different, I think it’s important we’re perceived as MUCH BETTER. If being different is essential to doing that, then we have to do that, but if we could be much better without being different, that’ll be fine with me. I want to be much better! I don’t care about being different, but we’ll have to be different in some ways to be much better.” ~ Steve Jobs, Apple WWDC closing keynote, 1997