Which parts of Steve Jobs should a boss copy?

The easy part to imitate

A boss can imitate the impatient version of Steve Jobs by lunchtime. Reject a presentation, call the work inadequate and insist that everyone is thinking too small. Developing good product judgement takes rather longer.

That is the problem with borrowing a celebrated founder's persona. The most visible behaviour is often easier to copy than the ability which made people pay attention in the first place.

Jobs helped build products people wanted badly. That makes his work worth studying. It doesn't turn every reported interaction into management advice.

Start with what the customer gets

Apple's 2001 iPod announcement led with the idea of a thousand songs in your pocket. The release also described the hard drive, FireWire connection, scroll wheel and synchronisation with iTunes. There was engineering behind the promise, and the promise made that engineering legible to a buyer. Apple's original iPod announcement.

There is something useful to copy there: connect the technical work to an experience someone can understand. Explain what becomes possible, then make the parts work together well enough to deliver it.

For a manager, that might mean asking a team to show the whole journey rather than a list of completed features. Can a person begin, complete the task and recover when something goes wrong? Where is the unnecessary step? What have we made them understand which we could have handled for them?

Those questions are demanding. They also give people something concrete to work on.

Read the awkward accounts properly

Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the original Macintosh team, wrote about what colleagues called Jobs's “reality distortion field”. His account describes persuasive intensity, unrealistic scheduling and positions which could change abruptly. He also recalls ideas being dismissed and later returning as though they had originated with Jobs. Hertzfeld's account.

It is a participant's recollection, not a complete record of every meeting or a neutral measurement of a personality. It should be attributed and read in that spirit.

But it is still a poor basis for a boss deciding that being difficult is the missing ingredient in their organisation. The fact that talented people produced excellent work in those circumstances doesn't establish which parts of the circumstances helped, which hurt, or what they managed despite.

Success is not a controlled experiment. You cannot remove the engineering talent, commercial decisions, timing and thousands of other contributions, then confidently announce that the essential variable was the boss's temper.

Be specific enough to be useful

Suppose a team shows you a confusing piece of software. “This is terrible” may accurately describe your reaction. It doesn't tell them whether the problem is the task, the sequence, the language or the visual design.

A more useful challenge is specific: “I can't tell what happens when I press this. Show me how a new user would know.” You can hold a high standard, reject weak work and expect another attempt without making someone guess which version of you will arrive at the next meeting.

The same applies to deadlines. An ambitious date can force choices. Refusing to hear about dependencies doesn't remove them. If the date matters, decide what can change in scope, staffing or approach, and take responsibility for the trade-off.

None of this requires soft-pedalling. Clear criticism can be uncomfortable. The distinction is whether it helps somebody make the work better.

Copy something which survives without the costume

Study how the product was presented. Study the integration, the decisions about what belonged and what was left out. Ask whether your organisation gives skilled people enough clarity and authority to do comparable thinking at its own scale.

Then judge your behaviour by its effects on the work and the people doing it, rather than by whether it resembles a scene from a founder film.

If the only part of Steve Jobs your team recognises in you is the unpleasant meeting, you have selected a very small part of the story.