Review: Becoming Steve Jobs: How a Reckless Upstart Became a Visionary Leader

I've attempted to read a biog or two about Jobs before (Issacson's was the most recent) and found them generally a bit worthy and dry.

One of the key problems is that I roughly know the trajectory of his life and the major milestones, but want to gain insights into his approaches and thinking beyond the very quotable soundbites he left behind in abundance.

Becoming Steve Jobs is lengthy but highly readable. The chapter headings aren't particularly helpful if you are planning to dip into it.

I scanned through the index and circled areas that looked like they might be helpful - and attacked the book from that angle. It wasn't perfect as I found myself repeatedly dipping into the same pages.

Marketing and sales chutzpah
Jobs was a highly creative marketer and salesman. I enjoyed the story of how he sold their early phone phreaking device by going door to door in colleges asking if it was George's room (an imaginary phone phreaking expert) and if a conversation was struck up - a sale would be attempted.

"Steve had the gift of being able to explain profoundly complicated technology in simple, clear, and even rhapsodic terms."

Becoming Steve Jobs

Buddhist philosophy
Steve considered the monk-like sadhu life, before settling on Buddhism for his spiritual focus.  Key to Buddhism is the sense of always becoming - the notion that you can always strive to improve and for perfection.

The changing language of a project manager
Jobs' language would change over the course of a project. Initially inspiring:

"The work fifty people are doing here is going to send a giant ripple through the universe."

then coaxing:

"The journey is the reward" and "It would be better to miss than turn out the wrong thing". 

to finally:

"Real artists ship". 

Four quadrant product line up
When Jobs returned to Apple,  he focussed the company's efforts around just four products - one per each of the main customer segments they were going after.

This created a clear vision for the company to unite around.

Deep restlessness
Jim Collins (author of Good to Great) suggests that Jobs had something in common with Winston Churchill - deep restlessness. He describes this as:

"...far more important and powerful than simple ambition or raw intelligence. It is the foundation of resilience, and self-motivation. It is fuelled by curiosity, the ache to build something meaningful a, and a sense of purpose to make the most of one's entire life". 

The contrarian taskmaster
Jobs figured out early on that his contrarian thinking (eg treating computers like an appliance when most spoke to an industrial aesthetic) could lead to product breakthroughs - and that he could combine this with uncompromising ruthlessness in team management to deliver the previously unthinkable.

Jobs would later soften his approach.  Here's what he felt about firing later:

"I still do it because that's my job. But when I look at people this happens, I also think of them being five years old, kind of like I look at my kids.  And I think it could me coming home to tell my wife and kids that I just got laid off. Or that it could be one of my kids in twenty years, I never took it so personally before."

Steve Jobs 

Brain Trust
A Pixar innovation - this involved regular meetings between the directors of upcoming films with highly experienced animators and producers. The trust had no authority, but there was an expectation that any comments they made would be deeply considered.

Jobs 3.0
As Jim Collins notes, the tragedy is that we didn't get to see what an older and maturer, say 70 year old,  Steve Jobs would have been like.  He calls this Jobs 3.0.  It's interesting to speculate though. Personally, I think it's likely he'd have found philanthropy in his later years.

Joining the dots
As part of his Stanford commencement speech, Jobs chose a three vignette structure. His first segment covered connecting the dots in your life:

"Again you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and has made all of the difference in my life. "

Steve Jobs

On luck
Steve seems to have learned his philosophy on luck from Pixar's Ed Catmull - you can't control whether you have good or bad luck, but you can prepare for either and that's what really counts.

Opening the kimono
This evocative phrase is given to what happens when another tech company agrees to show some of their research to another.  Apple arguably made the deal of a lifetime when they exchanged shares for access to Xerox PARC's research including a demonstration of an early graphical user interface.

Getting fired from Apple
It took a long time for Jobs to come to terms with getting fired from Apple, but by the time of his Stanford speech he seemed to have done so:

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. "

Steve Jobs

Why a company exists
I'll finish this review with Jobs on companies:

"The company is one of the most amazing inventions of humans, this abstract construct that's incredibly powerful. Even so, for me, it's about the products. It's about working together with really fun, smart, creative people and making wonderful things. It's not about the money. "

Steve Jobs

Verdict: Becoming Steve Jobs does what I hoped it would do, give some insight into his leadership skills.