The first thing that must be kept in mind was that Steve Jobs was not just a member of the 1%. He was, like Michael Jordan or William Faulkner, in the top 1% of the 1% or, in other words, not a normal person or “Child of God like any other” at all. We are talking about a group of people for whom being born with at least one transcendent talent is a necessary but not sufficient condition. They also develop a degree of obsessiveness about honing their skills that at best borders on mental illness and usually goes beyond. For those rare people willing to look under the hood of fandom, the unifying characteristic of this group is an almost complete inability to form relationships with normal, healthy people. Society usually negotiates a de facto contract with heroes like this, accepting (and ignoring) the dark sides – the vicious competitiveness, the rampant alcoholism, the assholery – in return for the benefits, whether they be works of art, championship rings or iPads. The need to closely identify with members of this club is understandably aspirational, but also contains a healthy dose of wishful, delusional thinking.
In a corporate sense, it is not enough to have one leader, no matter how talented or charismatic. It is also necessary to attract other uber-talented people but even more importantly, a leader like Jobs must drag all of his employees into his obsessive, driven world at least to some extent. You do not do this with Montessori, self-actualization based techniques or with monetary incentives. You do it with fear – fear of being fired, excluded, publicly belittled or not living up to your own self-image. Greatness rarely, if ever arises from comfort, happiness and complacency and by all accounts, Apple achieved greatness through its CEO’s ability to extend his ruthless, obsessive, unsettled, perfectionist nature into every corner of the company. By being a asshole.
It is true, as McNichol illustrates, that many hundreds of idiot managers with little hint as to the true extent of Jobs’ abilities will copy his affectations to the detriment of their staff and society at large. But Jobs, like Jordan and Faulkner before him, are not examples to be followed or even really to be fully understood. To attempt to do so is largely a conceit, an attempt to glean their advantages without the internal misery, single-mindedness and self-exclusion from normal life that the development of their talents required.
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In a corporate sense, it is not enough to have one leader, no matter how talented or charismatic. It is also necessary to attract other uber-talented people but even more importantly, a leader like Jobs must drag all of his employees into his obsessive, driven world at least to some extent. You do not do this with Montessori, self-actualization based techniques or with monetary incentives. You do it with fear – fear of being fired, excluded, publicly belittled or not living up to your own self-image. Greatness rarely, if ever arises from comfort, happiness and complacency and by all accounts, Apple achieved greatness through its CEO’s ability to extend his ruthless, obsessive, unsettled, perfectionist nature into every corner of the company. By being a asshole.
It is true, as McNichol illustrates, that many hundreds of idiot managers with little hint as to the true extent of Jobs’ abilities will copy his affectations to the detriment of their staff and society at large. But Jobs, like Jordan and Faulkner before him, are not examples to be followed or even really to be fully understood. To attempt to do so is largely a conceit, an attempt to glean their advantages without the internal misery, single-mindedness and self-exclusion from normal life that the development of their talents required.
- More Here
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