Critical Thinking About Steve Jobs

In this assignment report gives us some different positions of one person and analyzes that to recognize strength or weakness of myself by using information from Critical Thinking Slides. I also define any changes in my mind when I have an opportunity to comparing my own with the chosen one. All this information was created by individual and collected from the books: * Steve Jobs a biography – Romain Moisescot

* Inside Steve’s Brain – Leander Kahney
* Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson
Throughout the report, by using the theories explained in the module: * Analyze the personal characteristics of the leader that you have chosen. * Explain how do you differ from the leader that you have chosen. * What have you learned (both what to do and what not to do) from the leader? * In what aspect would you like to be different/ better from that leader?

Steve Jobs is the chosen one
Steven Paul Jobs is the full name of Steve Jobs. He is the one who change overview of digital technology industry. He owned more than 230 science license such as computer, smart phone, multi-touch user interface, and a lot of license from another fields as well. Steve was driving Apple from almost bankrupt company to become one of the biggest labels on earth. Thus, we can say without attention that Jobs is the genius and the successful CEO in the world. I. Driver behavior:

Steve is be perfect and autocratic people. We can say that he is “be perfect” in driver behavior. He wants everything doing perfectly and does not care what the others think about. As a sample, Leander Kahney said in his book “Inside Steve’s Brain”: “Jobs is a control freak extraordinaire. He’s also a perfectionist, an elitist, and a taskmaster to employees”. In some situations, it is bad but another manner his employees have more motivated. Because of looking for final destination, Steve is a second Hitler in his Magic Kingdom. He always require his staff to produce everything as perfection as possible such his requirement in Mac, iphone, and ipod, etc. Most of people at lower level are scare him for fear of they could be fired by a little mistake. However, we cannot deny that Steve the one who can mix up all difference ideas from his human resources and produce one thing which everyone wanted. II. Leadership style:

As a leader, Steve always focuses on his individual needs. We can easy to see that he only carry out tasks what he can do better and ignore any grievances from co-workers. He is always looking for a challenge and sometime that is an opportunity. Steve spends time to explore how consumers think and the way people use the products. And then, he produced a favourite work by his own way. But, sometime it fails and Apple III in 1980 is one of strongest examples. By the way, Steve long for contributes for his company and finally was success. III. Conflict management style:

When we read about Steve Jobs’s management style, that we read exactly how we are not supposed to manage people. We explore his competing management style we acknowledge that it very useful sometimes. As we know that Steve Jobs is an autocratic leader so he is always ignore the needs of others and trying to find the challenge for him. Steve thinks that he can decide his own goal without fear of fail and look for partners who challenge his ideas. He confidently said: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” IV. Problem solving skills:

As we all know, Steve Jobs is careful people so he is faced problem with non-emotional, cool, and clear head. At first, he defines the problem and then analyzes that what is the main trouble. From that he shares it to co-workers, listen their ideas and point out what can be make everything done. Finally, he assigns each task for each people then solves it smoothly. One more important make Steve become a good troubleshooter is the way he motivate his employees. He said that: “Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive”-Page 163, Inside Steve’s Brain – Leander Kahney. V. Work preference:

* It is hard to say Steve jobs is extroverted in relationships but we can easy to accept that Steve is a creative person. At Apple’s CEO position, Steve is very careful in attention and talk with others as well. During the weekly meeting, Steve give a lot of feedback for design, interface, software, sometime included hardware until he satisfied with final checked. Furthermore, Steve is good at creative and innovative products. We easy to see that from Mac to iPod, iPad and the iPhone, Steve was bringing people to “think different”. * At “Decision Making”, Steve Jobs is analytical person. Before making every decision, he spent time for discussing SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) with all his staffs. For example, iPod was wasting his time for long discussion to develop iPod or not. After try to giving Windows users taste of Apple’s technology, as a “survival of the fittest”, iPod was explosion with Macs and iTunes. VI. Linking skill:

* Steve jobs is very good at team relationship. He is criticized as the autocratic boss, however he is the “product picker” and the persuader as well. Steve mostly works with his top expert team. He suggests that one hundred members in one team are perfect for him to manage and everyone focusing better. He knows his employees very well especially in their ability. Steve does not know about either how to design hardware or how to write code but he can guarantee that every products work well. “He didn’t create anything really, but he created everything” CEO John Sculley said. For example, at Apple with flat hierarchy, all of designers, programmers, engineers, and managers are working directly with big leader – Steve Jobs. * Steve Jobs is also a quality standards linker. Because of perfectionist, he set very high quality standard for his lower level employees. He said that: “Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles”.

Explore myself and Successful lesson
According to analyze about Steve Jobs, it help me a lot to explore myself about my strengths and weaknesses. There are some differences, lessons from Steve characteristic. First of all, I think that I am being perfect person sometime but not an autocratic monster. When I have an idea about product, I show it for my trusted co-worker and collect their grievances then try to do better. As a leader, I focus more about group needs than Steve because everything will be done speedily by my whole group achievement. In my opinion, team spirit is the key to motivate all members to contribute for group’s destination. As my weakness, proposing is my Problem Solving point. I can analyse the issues but I do not bring a solid idea.

Bringing a suggestion is not enough to convince people. In addition, comparing my own with Steve Jobs, I have learned that I have to change something inside my mind. My first lesson is how to control my mind when fall in to trouble. I need to be calm then solve problem with cool and clear head. Secondly, Steve Jobs’s characteristic teaches me how to challenge myself to improve my power. One more experience for myself that is trying to win people, in the concrete, trying to comprehend my own co-workers/ employees. Last but not least, Steve Jobs is the successful person that I want to be. However, in some aspects I would like to do better from him. In my suggestion, I would like to speed up in making decision based on situation. I realize that Steve too much time to discuss and less confident in apply it to market. In some cases, at a linker, I offer to manage taller hierarchy because I can see clearly all elements of product.

References

* Book: Steve Jobs a biography by Romain Moisescot from <allaboutSteveJobs .com> * Book: Inside Steve’s Brain – Leander Kahney
* Book: Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson
* Website: unique training & development <http://www.uniquedevelopment.com/blog/> * Website: The trouble with Steve Jobs <http://allaboutstevejobs.com/being/3-work/3-work.html> * Website: NewYorkTimes <www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html>