“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” Steve Jobs (interview with PBS in 2004)
Steve Jobs believed people from all backgrounds could thrive and achieve greatness. The key to achieving that greatness is creating a culture of excellence. Creating the culture begins with being a great leadership. Here are THREE Insights on leadership from Steve Jobs…
1. "My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better."
Work isn’t good enough. People emulate what they see. People who are hungry to succeed want to work for someone they can learn something from. Helping people get better and achieve their potential means telling them when their work has gone off track. You don’t have to be mean, just direct and explain why the work isn’t up to the organizations standards. Tell them the why and what they can do to improve. It’s a disservice to your employees and, ultimately your customers, to accept mediocrity.
2. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
It can get intense. Leadership isn’t just articulating the vision to everyone around you. A great leader helps everyone see and incorporate the vision. Part of incorporating the vision is creating a culture or environment. Creating the culture and environment isn’t something everyone can do. Some people will cherish the experience and others will resent it.
3. “What can I say? I hired the wrong guy.”
Bad Management leads to implosion. Steve Jobs watched as a decade’s worth of hard work creating a culture with specific values was destroyed. Hiring or placing the wrong people in leadership positions can devastate more than just employee morale. Hire or promote people to management and leadership positions who contribute to the company. Many of them may not want to be managers or leaders, but will step up because they realize no one else can do it better than them.