Jim Dalrymple offers a critique of Bill Taylor’s recent piece about Steve Jobs in the Harvard Business Review.
Bill Taylor complains that Jobs’ leadership style is outmoded and unfit for modern business:
Jobs, for all of his virtues, clings to the Great Man Theory of Leadership — a CEO-centric model of executive power that is outmoded, unsustainable, and, for most of us mere mortals, ineffective in a world of non-stop change.
He also argues that:
The best leaders I know don’t want the job of thinking for everybody else. They understand that if they can tap the hidden genius inside the organization, and the collective genius outside the organization, they will create ideas that will be much more powerful than what even the smartest individual leader could ever come up with on his or her own. Nobody alone is as smart as everybody together.
I’d argue that Jobs does understand that, “nobody alone is as smart as everybody together,” which is why he’s surrounded himself by the likes of Jonathan Ive and Phil Schiller. Bright people with bright ideas. Granted, Jobs may have the final word on which bright ideas are brightest, but that’s not the equivalent of having the “only bright idea in the room.”
As Jim Dalrymple makes clear, execs working at Apple are among the best in the world and:
… could easily run most other companies, but they choose to stay with Steve and Apple.
‘nuf said.