"Engineering Management Thought of the Week" Jeff Glass

What can I possibly add to the numerous commentaries about the life and death of Steve Jobs that are already permeating the web? Perhaps not much but I want to give it a try with the following perspective: What should early career engineering managers and engineering management students take away from the Steve Jobs phenom.

My first thought is; be careful not to take away too much from the life and death of Steve Jobs. I don’t mean this to be negative and I am as big a Steve Jobs fan as anyone – he was, rather he is, an icon. But what I mean is that the way he managed his life and career may not be a way that most of us should emulate. Or to put it another way, if we try to do things the way Steve Jobs did, it may not lead to success for many of us. Of course, the general characteristics he embodied such as; vision, creativity, persistence, customer centric design, etc. are great for us all to strive for. But let’s face it, people like Jobs (or Bill Gates or Andy Grove or John Chambers or Jack Welch), are icons due to an extremely rare combination of intellect, drive, judgment, perception, and the list goes on. There is a bit of luck and timing involved too but these folks are way out on the tail of any bell curve you want to use to characterize people. So back to Steve Jobs, his incredible ability to change the paradigm of an industry time and time again is truly remarkable and something I do not think can be copied. And some of his management approaches, and life decisions, while accomplishing this may not be right for many of us (for example, see http://blogs.hbr.org/davenport/2011/10/was_steve_jobs_a_good_decision.html). Can you afford to use intuition (or your “gut”) rather than analytics to make major decisions or can you afford to micromanage a process rather than empower the process owners? In many cases Jobs could. And for Jobs, dropping out of school was a good decision (see his Stanford Graduation Speech; http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-2005-stanford-commencement-address/). Would it really be right for you? I could go on but suffice it to say: Choose the exceptional characteristics that you want to integrate into your career but use your own self-awareness and judgment to know the limits for you.

My second thought about the passing of Steve Jobs is simply that we are all mortal. It is somewhat sobering to be reminded that anyone, even someone who has done so much to shape the current world we live in, can die too young. For those of you starting out your careers, I think this supports what you hear from all the career experts – choose something you love to do. As with Jobs, you may be doing it until very close to the end of your time here. But also, and a bit more subtly, it is a reminder that every decision you make until you die is a choice. Whether that choice is to work 12 hours a day or to achieve balance between work and home life, it is your choice. One is not better than the other. As Jack Welch, another management icon, has said, it is not about balance it is about choices. There are only so many hours in the day and so what you choose to do with your time, either way, has consequences. When you make choices, understand those consequences and determine if they are acceptable. Include risk and probability in your assessment as you make these choices and take a long term view. I think Steve Jobs death brings this into focus. He seems to have done what he loved until very close to his death.

Finally, Jobs death puts a spotlight on Leadership: Its importance and its complexity. There are no formulas. Few could have predicted that Steve Jobs could leave Apple, reshape animation entertainment, and return to save Apple, making it the most valuable company in the world. Very smart people asked him to leave Apple, successful leaders in their own right. Jobs himself hired John Sculley, who was not succesful for Apple. For many years I thought that the value we put on leadership in our organizations, as judged by the exorbitant salaries we pay, was over the top, not reasonable. But over the years, as I have observed what great leaders can do for an organization, I have become more and more supportive of such pay. (Of course, there is a limit and I am not referring to the high profile cases where performance does not support such pay or with some of the Wall Street pay that is not related to running a great company – but that is another story). So Jobs is an extreme example of what great leaders can do and how much influence they can have on an organization, an industry and even a society. As with any extreme, there are plenty of characteristics other than great leadership that come along for the ride but the point is simply that leaders can have exceptional impact.

In summary, for early career engineering managers and students about to start their careers; (i) leaders have incredible impact, consider how you can develop your leadership skills for you future career, but remember (ii) it is about choices and every decision you make on your way to a leadership role will impact all aspects of your life so choose based on the consequences of your decision and finally (iii) don’t expect that you can do it the same way Steve Jobs did.