The untimely death of Steve Jobs, the man behind the iconic Apple computers, Ipad, Iphone and Pixar has brought to life many valuable lessons in life. He is astoundingly a leader and man of vision where many who are in the area of education, leadership and management could learn from. Here are the seven striking things from the self titled article of Erick Jackson The Top Ten Lessons Steve Jobs Can Teach Us - If We’ll Listen.
1. Never fear failure – Many are afraid to do experiments, even innovate and most importantly changes what one has been used to do through the years. Many, in the field of education are succumbed to that culture of fear of going out of their shell, of the box, of their comfort zones. That’s why we tend to live and follow the shadows of others whom we admire instead of just having them as our inspirations instead of doing our own marks, our own legacy. Jobs however didn’t. He went on for his passion. For it, he was later fired by the successor he picked as a CEO only to be taken again, when the Company he himself built is on the brink of collapse. It was one of the most public embarrassments of the last 30 years in business. Yet, he didn’t become a venture capitalist never to be heard from again. He didn’t start a production company and do a lot of lunches. He picked himself up and got back to work following his passion. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and told he only had a few weeks to live. As Samuel Johnson said, there’s nothing like your impending death to focus the mind. From Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech:
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
2. Don’t care about being right. Care about succeeding – I am just like many who worry about what others will say about me. This most of the time limits my ability to try new things. To innovate and course things up. Jobs used this line in an interview after he was fired by Apple. If you have to benchmark on others’ great ideas to make yours better, do it. You can’t be married to your vision of how a product is going to work out, such that you forget about current reality. When the Apple III came out, it was hot and warped its motherboard even though Jobs had insisted it would be quiet and sleek. If Jobs had stuck with Lisa, Apple would have never developed the Mac.
3. Find the most talented people to surround yourself with – There is a misconception that Apple is Steve Jobs. Everyone else in the company is a faceless minion working to please the all-seeing and all-knowing Jobs. In reality, Jobs has surrounded himself with talent: Phil Schiller, Jony Ive, Peter Oppenheimer, Tim Cook, the former head of stores Ron Johnson. These are all super-talented people who don’t get the credit they deserve for it all went to Steve Jobs. Just like the CEO played by Dominic Ochoa in our popular TV series 100 Days, he hired Sophia to do great jobs for him and the company. Though of course he recognizes Sophia’s contribution, still, as the lead role in the company, he takes all the credit.
4. Expect a lot from yourself and others – There were reports of Steve Jobs negative treatment of his employees as a result of himself being a perfectionist. From our own perspective, it would be very humiliating and we’ll of course be furious to have a boss or superior like him. But what it tells us loud in clear is to understand the motive. In the popular theories of leadership, it is the other way around. That is the leaders are the one who should be good listeners, etc. On the contrary, it should not be the case. Understanding Steve Jobs as a great innovator and visionary, the bottom line is that he is in touch with his passion and that little voice in the back of his head. He gives a damn. He wants the best from himself and everyone who works for him. If they don’t give a damn, he doesn’t want them around. And yet — he keeps attracting amazing talent around him. Why? Because talent gives a damn too. There’s a saying: if you’re a “B” player, you’ll hire “C” players below you because you don’t want them to look smarter than you. If you’re an “A” player, you’ll hire “A+” players below you, because you want the best result.
5. Live simply- Even when Jobs can afford to buy elegangly and luxuriously in a billionaire mansion and drive a Porche or a Limousine, he chose to live simply in a house reminiscent of the 60’s. What he has in his home are some few painting stuff, a mercedez in his garage and $100,000 stereo system, the only luxurious equipment he has. It would be funny of a $5 Billion dollar month but it is true.
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 it has made all the difference in my life.
6. Listen to that voice in the back of your head that tells you if you’re on the right track or not – Most of us haven’t put this to good use. When an idea snapped in our mind that we can do something differently and most efficiently, we just neglect the though until it was totally forgotten. For example, an idea of new technique that will help make our pupils become one hundred percent readers in just a semester. Because we might be considering it complicated and difficult to do, set it aside. But just like ordinary dedicated teachers, Steve Jobs has always been a restless soul. A man in a hurry. A man with a plan. His plan isn’t for everyone. It was his plan. He wanted to build computers. When Jobs first saw an example of a Graphical User Interface — a GUI — he knew this was the future of computing and that he had to create it and he did. That became the Macintosh.
7. Anything is possible through hard work, determination, and a sense of vision – When our superiors tell us to do something, don’t say you can’t do it. Only those who don’t have the guts reject new assignments. The same with school heads who as a result of promotion or a long stay in the assignments they learned to love and live with have suddenly need to be moved out to a new place to start all over again. When Jobs returned to Apple in the 1990s, a company he built from scratch, it was weeks away from bankruptcy. For the many, out of pride they wouldn’t desire to go back to a company whom you built disposed you of before. Jobs simply didn’t. His failure before where he learned from, made him succeed to make it the biggest company in the world today.
Just like Steve Jobs, who’s contribution made our lives easy, may all of us, teachers and school administrators be able to make a contribution in our respective stations that many will benefit from even in so doing will not make us popular and unacceptable in the work place where we belong.
(Gilbert M. Forbes is a practicing educator and a public school principal and school administrator for seven years. He regularly reads and blogs and has been active in the area of educational reforms and environmental protection as his personal advocacies.)
Source : http://factoidz.com
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