Steve Jobs

It’s been almost couple of years since passing away of CEO of last decade Steve Jobs. I first came to know about Steve Jobs in 2009 when I was in Mumbai doing my masters. My then roommate and friend Faisal showed us the commencement speech delivered by Steve Jobs at Stanford University. After listening to his most famous speech I felt inspired and touched. I read his biography to understand why he was rated so highly. Steve Jobs is one of the few people who could have huge impact on three industries personal computing, entertainment and communication .Below mentioned are some of the principles which gave him great success.

Do what you love: To excel in life we need to find out what is our inner calling. If we do what we love and are passionate about it, then nothing can stop us from excelling. I will quote him here “Your time is limited don’t waste your time living somebody else's life". Anyone who has achieved anything substantial in life was passionate about something and followed his or her heart.

Connecting dots looking back: Many times we don’t understand why certain things are happening to us in the present. Only after many years when we look back we will be able to connect all the dots and understand their significance. Life generally doesn’t give us what we want but it gives us what we need. We have to believe in something like faith, karma and keep on working .Some day we will see the light at the end of the tunnel and realise that the whole effort was not invain.

KISS (Keep it simple stupid): Throughout his life Steve Jobs was obsessed with simplifying things. On seeing a mouse for first time at Xerox he understood its significance and launched Apple II with a mouse. Now people could operate computer more easly. Another example is the development of I phone. All the phones before launch of I phone had many buttons and operating a phone was very difficult. His whole motivation in starting development of I phone was to make the operation of a phone much simpler. He gave target to his engineers to come up with a phone which had only one button. Everyone in team objected saying it was not possible to develop a phone with a single button. But Steve persisted with his idea and result is today most smart phones have a single button.

Team work: The success of apple computers in early 80s made Steve Jobs a very rich man at young age. This made him very arrogant and made him to believe that he could do all things own his own. He stopped listening to others opinion and became a problem for other team members. Finally the Board of Apple decided for better future of the company Steve Jobs should be out of Apple. Ten years in the wilderment away from Apple made him a better person and made him realize the importance of team work.

Manage few things in great way: When in late 90s Steve returned to Apple  it was doing very badly. The company was almost on verge of bankruptcy .Steve jobs realized that problem with apple was that it was working on too many projects and had lost its focus. In total there were 104 projects, Steve selected the best four out of them and discarded the remaining. In this way apple could refocus and come out with products like i mac, i pod, i phone and i pad. All these products were great hit and made apple most successful company in the planet. In later part of his life everyday he would wear a black T shirt and Blue jeans to work. It made his life simpler by not having to decide every day what to wear to office.

Aesthetics: For Steve Jobs aesthetics was very important. All apple products are known for their brilliant design. At most care was taken even in the design of interior of products, even though they are not visible to the customer. This comes from a philosophy that we have to be excellent inside to be excellent on the outside. Steve Jobs always drove a Mercedes Benz car. He used to say “Look at those Germans they think beautifully, they make Mercedes Benz".

Customers dont know what they want: Generally before developing any new product companies do a market survey. In the market survey feedback is taken from customers on what kind of product they want. But as per Steve Jobs this approach is not right, customers can’t say what they really want in future. For example customers never said they want a product like I phone or I pad. Apple anticipated what kind of product will click in the market rather that asking the customer what they wanted.

Ability to sell: Steve Jobs was great at marketing, no one was better than him at creating reality distortion. With his presentations he could lure people into buying apple products. If anyone wants to learn how to make a presentation watch Steve Jobs presentation at launch of I pod.