Steve Job’s Legacy – Be true to yourself
By
I’ve spent the last couple of days reading a lot about Steve Jobs since he passed away. For someone I’ve never met I do feel sad about losing him, I wish I’d ‘made it sooner so I could rub shoulders with him in the same circles and got to know him personally to see what he really was like as a person. There appears to be two sides to him, one that inspires and charms people into creating genius, the other that pushes people to the edge of crazy, ultra secretive, ultra competitive and has to get what he wants. I wonder what I would have made of him personally.
When I grew up, I aspired to be the next Bill Gates, he was the guy I admired and had achieved what I wanted to do in my life. I never really felt I had anything in common with Steve Jobs. I even remember my partner comparing me to Steve Jobs 3 years ago at SambaStream, and even then I didn’t want to be associated with what Steve represented; dictatorial, maybe even an arsehole to a lot of people. At the time my partner wasn’t comparing me in that way, but 3 years later that may have changed…
At university, I never used to care what people thought. I was confident, I was provocative, I could talk in front of lots of people, I could sell too. Not every day, but when I was on fire I could nail it. And somewhere along the way of working for Accenture, in a big corporate, I conformed, and became part of the status quo. I probably lost ‘some fucking self belief’ as Dave McClure would put it, and probably stopped dreaming the impossible. So when I left Accenture to start SambaStream, I lacked clear vision, and I compromised on too many things to accommodate my partners, not easily, but I did. I spent the first year arguing against what I saw was a bullshit ‘collaborative style’ management my partners wanted, a democracy that didn’t work, and in my opinion doesn’t work for any company that is under resourced and under pressure to grow fast as democracies by their very nature are wasteful and inefficient. You only need to look at the difference between India, who claim to be the worlds largest democracy, and China, who’s single state party are on track to bring the largest number of people out of poverty in 30 years and become the worlds next superpower.
The great leaders, like Steve, and my original favorite, Bill, are dictatorial in many ways. They don’t compromise the things they believe to try and make everyone happy. I feel I did that a lot at SambaStream to accommodate one partner in particular that clearly wasn’t the right person for our team, and as a result we built a small company, not the great one we originally set out to be, and it made both of us miserable. And while I wasn’t right about everything, it turned out in the end I was right about a lot, which is why I’m now in charge of launching a new service with huge potential and scale at Alfresco.
And that’s the message that’s hit me the last few days after Steve’s death. You need to believe in yourself, you can’t compromise on the fundamentals without being mediocre and wasting your talents to achieve great things. And yes, you will get in arguments with people along the way, not everyone will enjoy working with you, not everyone will like you or the decisions you make, but its the end result that counts. If Steve had compromised we would never have seen the reaction his death got the last few days, nor the legacy he left. There’s plenty of things not to like about him, but I think that will be forgotten compared to things hes achieved.
And I don’t think it necessarily makes you an arsehole like I assumed before. Just look at the messages from John Sculley and Eric Schmidt, two people he fell out with along the way, their messages of respect and admiration. I don’t think Steve died without a loving family, close friends and loyal employees around him. And because he was true to himself, the respect and admiration of even the people that didn’t agree with him. So what have you got to lose if you’re trying to do the right thing?
Steve’s life has inspired me to never compromise on who I am, or make the wrong decisions just to keep the status quo. I know from experiance that living by these rules makes me happiest, most succesful and ultimately more liked and respected by the people around me, not the arsehole I assumed Steve was 3 years ago. 3 years have taught me that breaking these rules actually brings the opposite, wastes your potential and makes everyone miserable, especially you.
David Gildeh 
And he was half syrian too! 🙂 you actually kinda look like him in that pic
Great blog post!
Just installed Disqus to make commenting easier! Let me know what you think…
Hmmm… I suggest you only be true to yourself and act as a dictator as you describe IF you are two things.
Firstly, you need to be benevolent. Your aims and directions need to be good for all involved at all stages of the process. The ends do not justify the means. Also, the ends need to be positive for all. Otherwise, change your name to Adolf Hitler so everyone can stay clear of you.
Secondly, you need to be a one in a billion genius who’s brain can out think a high performing team. I’ve had the luck and pleasure to work with some frighteningly clever people, who definitely deserve to be considered to have genius. However, never have one of these people out classed a high performing team of clever people. So, unless you are one of a frighteningly small number of stellar class genius people on the planet, beware of believing your own BS.
I hate to say it, but by the tone of your missive, I strongly suspect you unlikely to be benevolent and you are strongly in danger of believing your own BS. I suggest that you take a step back, avoid any thoughts of dictatorship and instead work very hard to get good at leveraging collective genius.
Good luck!
I agree – you give too much power to the wrong person you get Adolf Hitler, but if you don’t give enough power to the right person, you get mediocre, no real change, and ultimately everyone pays the price.
Lets take a 1 in a billion ‘genius’ Obama (so you’re assuming there’s only 7 people in the whole world as smart as Obama or Jobs or Gates or Page or…:p). I wonder what it would be like if he had the power and control Jobs did at Apple to make things happen? When he started he had a lot of good ideas that would have helped millions of American’s like the
healthcare bill, and other things that affected the rest of us around the world. But he can’t just say and it is done – it has to go through a ‘democratic’ process which results in watered down policies, many watered down for the sake of party affiliations, not for real issues, so instead of doing what’s right, they do what the status quo demands. In the end everyone loses.
Most people, including myself, aren’t trying to go out there and screw up the world with hatred and killing millions of people. But we do have a dream or vision, about what we’d like to achieve in our lifetime to make the world a better place. In the start-up world, where I live, you can’t attract a team of people to work with you if you’re doing something wrong. I attracted two friends to SambaStream because of the vision, any my own qualities I hope – but guess what, one of them wasn’t right for the vision and creating the
company to get there, which is what I was reflecting on above. Because I didn’t push through what my instinct was telling me at the time, what would have been a ‘dictatoral’ decision to override both of my partners to make the right decision, not the one that upset the least amount of people – we ALL paid the price for the next 2 years. In the end, especially now I’m working with really successful more experienced founders now that I’m learning from, it turns out I was right about a lot of things – and losing that self belief, not sticking to my guns, meant we all lost. I honestly think – that one key decision 6 months in to SambaStream, to ask him to leave, would have significantly altered the trajectory of SambaStream – and who knows maybe I may have the pleasure of having a random visitor to my blog (unless you know me?!) calling me a genius – as whoever solves the problems I’m trying to fix
ultimately is going to be a genius!
I’d also like to clarify what a genius really is. I honestly don’t think Jobs, Gates, Obama or anyone else you may say is a genius are any smarter or more passionate than myself or half the people I know out there, especially in the start-up community. They may have the right combination of things that most people don’t but I bet if Steve hadn’t been born in the Valley, or met Woz, or started Apple, he’d just be some hippie creative director in some unknown company somewhere, and someone else would be ‘Steve Jobs’. Just because you haven’t acheived the same success, it doesn’t mean you’re not as smart, or destined for greatness, or working on something really important. If you’re honestly working on something you believe on, that is your lifes work, you need to be like Jobs or Gates to push through your ideas, make decisions quickly and lead people because most people don’t care as much as you about doing it to the best of their ability, that’s a fact. In my experience, my greatest successes when managing teams, projects and companies have been when I made and pushed through the decisions no one else wanted to make, that had to be made, but noone else wanted to make in order to keep the status quo or fear of failing or upsetting anyone. That is the primary take away I’d like you to take from my blog again – and not the fact I use the word dictator with all its negative connotations.
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my blog, I put it out there so I can start intelligent discussions with like minded people, so as you can see, I do believe my own ‘BS’ as you put it, and I’d turn it around back to you – are you the guy that sits at the back of the room and makes fun of the people who stand at the front, or do you stand at the front and just have a different opinion on the best way to run a team or company?
Great point demonstrated by India vs China. Democracy doesn’t work where there are gross inequalities and conflicting ideals, in countries and companies.
“Don’t settle” is a great message from Jobs himself.