Apple Thoughts: Steve Jobs Isn't A Role Model

"Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor has sparked a bit of a controversy on his Harvard Business Review blog by suggesting the heretical idea that — shock! — Steve Jobs might not be the best role model for other business leaders. Apparently, it’s deeply offensive to suggest that what makes Steve great are the exact qualities that typically make for bad management at most companies. He micro-manages every aspect of Apple, has been known to fire people with minimal cause, and perennially runs the risk of out-shining his company — which is particularly problematic when his health problems continue to cast into doubt his long-term prospects as CEO."

And yet Apple continues to thrive, proving yet again that when you run a company (instead of blathering on in a blog or newspaper about those who do) you follow your guts not some pre-defined formula for success. That's why Steve Jobs is the success he is and Apple is the company it is. In the article, numerous times, Bill Taylor mentions the saying "Trust the art, not the artist." I say it's the artist that makes the painting, not the theory of the painting that makes the artist.

The truth is, there's nothing about Bill Taylor that equates to real-world business experience. Unlike Jobs, Taylor has never been a CEO of a company. In his own bio he calls himself a writer, speaker, and entrepreneur, although except for founding the massive flop Fast Company which, as far as I know, no one outside of Silicon Valley reads at all, none of his business ventures have brought him any great successes otherwise he wouldn't be blogging for a publication.

He may be a successful writer, but he's not been a successful CEO, proving that he's probably spent entirely too much time talking about business theory and not enough time actually doing business. At least he's good at linkbaiting, though.

Jobs succeeds because he broke the mold. That's the whole point. He does things his way. Anyone who claims to know business should understand that. Maybe that's the way business should be done, not trying to see how to fit school training into the real world.