Steve Jobs on Managing Great People
What Jobs talks about
Jobs argues that you don’t really manage great people; you give them a clear common vision and let them figure out the how. In his view, strong leaders describe the project well enough that everyone understands the goal and can work independently.
He reflects on Apple’s mistake of hiring “professional managers” who could manage but not build, saying the best managers are often great contributors who step up because no one else can do the job as well.
Jobs also says Macintosh was powerful because it modeled a better way to work. By showing what a focused team can create, it influenced the rest of Apple and reinforced the value of individual contribution inside a shared mission.
Jobs speaks throughout.
In his words
“You don't have to manage good people.”
“They manage themselves.”
“They don't need a manager. They need a common vision.”
“Most of them were idiots.”
“There's a more effective way to work.”
Key points
- Great people do not need to be managed; they manage themselves.
- A leader’s job is to create and communicate a common vision.
- Hiring managers who know management but not the work can fail badly.
- The best managers are often strong individual contributors who reluctantly take on the role.
- Macintosh became a model for how teams at Apple should work.
- Shared vision and freedom to find non-standard solutions produce better results.
- Individual contribution should be recognized and visibly valued.
Full transcript
You don't have to manage good people. They manage themselves. The main thing is that they know what they need to do, and they'll figure out how to do it themselves. They don't need a manager. They need a common vision. And that's exactly what a leader needs. A leader must have a common vision of the project. He must clearly describe it to his team and make sure that everyone understands it. We've already gone through this stage at Apple when we thought, well, we're a big company, let's hire professional managers. And when we hired a bunch of professional managers, it didn't work out. Most of them were idiots. They knew how to manage, but they didn't know how to do anything. And so, if you're a great person, why do you want a manager who has nothing to learn about? And you know who's interesting? You know who the best managers are? They're great individuals who have made a great contribution to the project, who never even thought about becoming managers, but decided they had to become managers because no one else would be able to do it as well as they did.
But the most powerful way to impact the development of Apple, which I saw, was through my own example. And that was probably why I spent two and a half years of my life on Macintosh. I was trying to say, look, there's a more effective way to work. And then the example of Macintosh affected Apple as a whole. And because people in other projects saw what Macintosh did and looked at Macintosh and thought, hey, they can take a lot of these concepts and apply them, make them better in some ways. And in all the other factories, we're now trying to follow that Macintosh. Every other product team is being modeled after the Macintosh team. The example of Macintosh is able to demonstrate how effectively a group of professionals can work and create when they're united by a shared vision and a common goal and when they're able to freely look for new, non-standard solutions.
The project also showed how much you can achieve if the contribution that a person makes to the project is highly appreciated. Inside the inside case of every Macintosh computer, you'll see what is engraved on the back of every Macintosh computer. This is Apple's way of saying that this innovation product was created by individual people, not by corporations.
Transcribed from the audio with OpenAI Whisper. Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.