10 Lessons in Leadership: Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk

By Ian Fineman

Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg are considered to be among the most innovative, impactful, and inspiring entrepreneurs and visionaries of their time. While each is unique and an exemplary leader individually, collectively their public and private experiences with both success and failure provide invaluable lessons to those who seek to lead by first following in the instructive footsteps of the bold, trailblazing minds that gave the world Apple, Tesla, and Facebook.

Now, bestselling author Ian Fineman and veteran technology and business journalist Michael Essany present an eagerly anticipated collaboration that for the first time ever features a bundled collection of each author's celebrated "10 Lessons in Leadership" series.

A must read for entrepreneurs, educators, and the elite minds of tomorrow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sports Entertainment Publishing
• Release date: Dec 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311557728

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10 Lessons in Leadership: Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk

By Ian Fineman

Disclaimer

© 2015 Sports Entertainment Publishing. All Rights Reserved worldwide. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission from the author.

This eBook is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Elon Musk, Tesla, or any representatives thereof.

All information contained in this eBook has been obtained by exclusive interviews, online research, and information freely available in the public domain.

This eBook provides information that you read and use at your own risk.

Steve Jobs: 10 Lessons in Leadership

Introduction

On October 5th, 2011, the world lost one of its greatest innovators, inventors, and inspired artists - Apple co-founder and tech visionary Steve Jobs.

But as the world mourned the loss, it also collectively opened its eyes to the extraordinary life and lessons imparted from his 56 years.

Within three weeks of his passing, the official Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson was published. But since then, as more details of Steve Jobs' personal and professional lives emerged, it became evident that future and potentially more in-depth works about Jobs will follow.

Although many have attempted to decode and decipher the lessons for success taught by Steve Jobs' life, it is obvious from the man's own words that no such lessons for success really exist. What does exist, however, is a collection of lessons in leadership that Jobs' life provided. And auspiciously for those who seek to learn from his magic, it’s only through leadership – on a personal and professional level – that success can be obtained.

In the months that followed his passing, unprecedented insight emerged with regard to the experiences, mistakes, and successes that defined Steve Jobs life. The following pages present the philosophies and values as preached and practiced by Jobs throughout his career, though only some have been well-known until now.

These are the ten supreme lessons in leadership as exemplified by the incomparable life and legacy of Steve Jobs.

Lesson 1: Wait For Nothing

There's only one thing in life that you should enjoy waiting for. And that's for the rest of the world to catch up to your thinking.

When Steve Jobs was a young man, his passion for technology and building things had begun to emerge. At one point in his youth, he wanted to build something but lacked a particular component of the required equipment.

While just twelve years of age, Steve Jobs ventured to build a frequency counter. How did he do it? He certainly didn't wait until he was older and had access to the mature tools and resources of a man attempting a similar feat. Instead, the boy looked up the phone number to Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP.

Steve Jobs called him to inquire about getting parts.

That takes loads of gumption and heaps of impatience - two essential elements in Steve Jobs' success story. He was as a man that which he was as a boy - a restless spirit, eager to achieve, and unwilling to wait.

Those who wait or simply go with the flow, Jobs warned, could never be ahead of their time. And the most common trait among leaders across any field in any industry is foresight.

The story of Steve Jobs boils down to this, says New York Times columnist David Pogue, Don’t go with the flow. Steve Jobs refused to go with the flow. If he saw something that could be made better, smarter or more beautiful, nothing else mattered. Not internal politics, not economic convention, not social graces. Apple has attained its current astonishing levels of influence and success because it’s nimble. It’s incredibly focused. It’s had stunningly few flops. And that’s because Mr. Jobs didn’t buy into focus groups, groupthink or decision by committee. At its core, Apple existed to execute the visions in his brain. He oversaw every button, every corner, every chime. He lost sleep over the fonts in the menus, the cardboard of the packaging, the color of the power cord.

That’s just not how things are done, Pogue adds. Often, his laser focus flew in the face of screamingly obvious common sense. He wanted to open a chain of retail stores — after the failure of Gateway’s chain had clearly demonstrated that the concept was doomed. He wanted to sell a smartphone that had no keyboard, when physical keys were precisely what had made the BlackBerry the most popular smartphone at the time. Over and over again, he took away our comfy blankets. He took away our floppy drives, our dial-up modems, our camcorder jacks, our non-glossy screens, our Flash, our DVD drives, our removable laptop batteries. How could he do that? You’re supposed to add features, not take them away, Steve! That’s just not done!

Steve Jobs never did things the way they had already been done. He did things the way they were supposed to be done in a smarter, more advanced fashion.

The thing that drives me and my colleagues, Jobs once said, is that you see something very compelling to you, and you don't quite know how to get it, but you know, sometimes intuitively, it's within your grasp. And it's worth putting in years of your life to make it come into existence.

Avoiding The Predicament of The Present

Too often companies can get trapped in the present, says Chris Dumont of the Financial Edge, pumping out products with no inspiration. A few examples: In 1998 the first iMac came with no floppy disk drive whereas every other computer manufacturer had still included them at that time. The release of the iPhone did not have a keyboard whereas the Blackberry, the most popular smartphone at the time, had one. It also did not include flash as Jobs saw HTML 5 as the future. Now with the iPad, it promises to be the computer for everyone that the original Mac aspired to be. Through all of these decisions and more there was backlash, but in the end people eventually came around and benefited from this forward thinking. The world would be more innovative if more companies had the same focus.

Steve Jobs didn't