10 Lessons from Steve Jobs

Many people who want a successful career, whether they are fresh entrepreneurs or not, are looking for tips and mentoring which would accelerate their achievements. In order to develop some leadership skills or to implement new strategies, entrepreneurs need to invest either in mentorship or to form a team which they could develop these skills with. Speaking subjectively, change and improvement require either investment, time or both.

In this way, Steve Jobs gave us some guidance.

1. Simplify

Exaggeration is an explicit form of loss, Steve Jobs explains. We need the simplest thinking, the simplest design for consumers. Simplicity is currently attractive, so “that piece of apple behind the screen” creates a wave of weakness. „Sell what people do like”. For consumers, simplicity is a weakness, but from a positive perspective. S – Simplify and you’ll easily Sell.

2. Focus

„Your mission” and „high quality” – that’s what you should pay attention to.

In 1977, Steve Jobs said: „ I don’t feel my mission now is to win a popularity contest. I feel my mission now is helping my Apple team do the right things, so the Apple company could prosper again. And I know this will happen”. It’s important to focus on your priorities as a company and to take into account the advantage part. Think internally, then externally.

Focus on quality. People will recognise the quality of a product from „their own experience with the product’, not from the marketing perspective. Steve Jobs sets an example for Japan. Even though American companies use high quality in marketing, costumers think that Japan does, but not from marketing perspective. Why is that? Because Japan do not invest much time in creating good marketing campaigns, so they focus on innovation. The „access key” to our customers is to provide them the most innovative products and the best services.

3. „Stay hungry, stay foolish”

That’s a statement taken from last page of the Whole Earth Catalog, 1974 and mentioned by Steve Jobs in 2005 at the Stanford Commencement. What did he mean by stating it? With this slogan, he summed up his stories and concluded: People should be hungry of new ideas, knowledge, strategies, opportunities, the wish to achieve more and more. „Stay foolish” it’s about taking risks. There might be a chance to fail and people to call you foolish „while taking unconventional decisions”, but you should still follow your aspirations and expectations.

4. Products first, then Profits

In the 80's, when Steve Jobs and his team designed the original Macintosh, his order was to make it great. He’s never mentioned the importance of profit or of cost trade-offs. He could invest as much as needed, in order to provide to his costumers „the best products”. He emphasized the need of most efficient functionality of the machine: “Don’t worry about price, just specify the computer’s abilities”.

The machine created had too many costs, which led to losses in the company and resulted the Steve’s ouster from Apple. But according to his way of thinking and the strategy of putting the product in the foreground, the desired balance has been reached: “Focus on making the product great and the profi¬ts will follow. “( http://tashfeen.pbworks.com/f/Leadership.pdf )

5. Big Picture + The Details = Perfection

A company needs to see both the big picture and the details, in order to perform. Time Warner CEO Je Bewkes said that Steve Jobs is the one who managed to do that. In 2000 he came up with a vision that personal computer should become a “digital hub”, where user could manage his music, photos, content. In this way he brought Apple into personal devices with iPod and iPad. (Big picture)

In 2010 he came up with another idea. He thought: what will users do in case their devices will be replaced with new ones or will be followed by any other Apple products? In this way iCloud was created - “a server farm so all user’s content could be uploaded and then seamlessly synced to other personal devices”. (Big picture)

In contrast, he thought about the power of detail and decided to emphasize the importance of the design, starting with the colour and ending with the shape of the screws inside the iMac. (Details)

6. Think Through the Problem

A businessman's thinking involves thinking through the problem. As intense a problem is, so intense must be the solution. It’s complicated, but only a person “who will keep going, find the underlying problem and come up with an elegant solution that works on every level”, will achieve the expected goal. That’s what Apple team did with Mac.” (AppleDesign, 1977)

If companies just wait for “feedback” from customers and see it continually fail, the company could easily be destroyed. "Sometimes people don't know what they want until you show them what they want," says Steve Jobs. (Bloomberg Businessweek, May 25, 1998)

If you do not manage your problems efficiently internally, externally you will lose potential consumers and your costumers.

7. Share a Vision/Idea/Point of View

It is very important for a company to convey to people a vision, an idea through its products. Steve Jobs provided a clear vision in this context. In regards to design and functionality, he focused on device security in his company, especially AppStore security.

In 2010, at Apple event for iPhone 4.0 software he talked about Android Apps. He called them “Porn Apps’, because there is no security provided on Android’s market: “There’s a porn store for Android that you can go to, and it’s got nothing but porn apps for your Android phone. And you can download them, and your kids can download them, and your kids’ friends can download them on their phones. And that’s just not the place where we want to go.”

Those words attracted many ears and in addition, boosted trust between Apple company and its customers.

8. Say no to 1,000 things.

It’s hard to do that sometimes, but you know why? That happens when a person feels overwhelmed. But why do entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed sometimes?

When there is no plan of actions, for a businessperson it’s hard to prioritize his efforts. In any business there must be a vector, to which the company must lean. If the company does not understand what its strengths are and what it needs to focus on the most, it will not understand which "external resources" to say no to. In that case the company will accept them all. And this could lead to decline in business, because in this way it would promote ineffective strategies, the creation of products without quality or value and the provision of services without context.

The Steve’s concept was: “Innovation comes from saying “No” to 1,000 things”, according to Forbes. In order to expand the idea of simplicity in his company, he had to say no to all things that would prevent this long-term process.

9. Sell dreams, not products

“If you help your costumers reach their dreams, you’ll win them over”

“Some people think you’ve got to be crazy to buy a Mac, but in this craziness, we see genius” - Steve Jobs

In 1997, when Apple was closed because of bankruptcy, Steve Jobs said he would reduce the number of products that Apple sold, to satisfy the needs of the costumers. Jobs pushed us to the idea that costumers are a priority. They have never cared about Apple products, they have always cared about themselves and took into account their needs, hopes and ambitions, when it came to buy “an Apple product”.

So, it is good to minimise the number of products that your customers do not need and to overturn them in a smaller quantity, but with a higher value. The customer gives value to the product. If he likes the product and needs it, the product automatically gains power in the market. Only then should the number of products be maximised.

10. Bend reality

By saying “bend reality” he thought about “reality distortion field”.

In his vision, reality boils down to transforming the impossible into the possible. Throughout his life, he encouraged his employees to do their best to create a spectacular image of Apple. He saw no limits, because in the process of reaching the goal, there are no limits.

“Jobs was famous for his ability to push people as far as their creativity and brainpower could possibly carry them and then pushing them harder”. And this advice remains a catalyst for the technological and innovative progress that Apple has at the moment. Tim Cooks (the CEO of Apple now) still follows his rules.

Entrepreneurs should take the example of Steve Jobs and change their attitude towards things that gain value with the birth of new customers in their company. How will you keep them, if you will not do the impossible to satisfy their needs and desires? Only this is impossible.

An entrepreneur must not forget to get out of his comfort zone and follow rules imposed by past experiences, which would benefit the future of a business.

If you want a successful company, you must inspire success. Root in the minds of your employees that only with their maximum effort will the desired goal be achieved.

Work, inspire and bend reality!

©️2020 Sanda Calancea