Steve Jobs & the art of Fuck You in Leadership — $200K MBA

I admire Late Steve Jobs for reasons other than the rest of the world does. For something he didn’t have to do. Steve was very, very rich before iPod and iPhone. He could have easily led his life being nice to people, just living famously in silicon valley, making safe bets along the way, and he still would have made out like a bandit.

But, Steve chose the difficult path of reinventing the music industry and the smartphone. That is very hard to do. Why? Being an engineer, I will tell you one thing. Most engineers will push back on everything that is not possible with the current technology. And, that is what has resulted historically in ordinary phones like Motorola Razrs, Palm Pilots and Blackberry Storms. They let you do what you need to do, but there is nothing seductive about them. To reinvent the smartphone, the envelope has to be pushed way past what is possible.

I really don’t want to say that Steve liked being mad. He had just gone through a lot of mediocrity and suffered the results that come at the end of a team where everyone likes each other, but delivers products which they don’t even feel like using.

With passing time, Anger came naturally to Steve though. When asked about the success of Microsoft and his views on Gates, Jobs once said: