Twenty first century leadership techniques

Running head: 21ST CENTURY LEADERSHIP 1

21ST CENTURY LEADERSHIP 7

21st Century Leadership

Richard Long

Dr. Anne Nelson

Bus 302

6/2/2016

Steve Jobs is a who had a great impact on Apple Inc. Steve Jobs was responsible for the establishment of Apple Inc. together his friend Steve Wozniak in his parents garage in 1976. By the time he died in 2011, he had put together the company to be the most valuable company in its time. He was responsible for the transformation of many industries including personal computing, digital publishing, phones, animated movies, retail stores, music and tablet computing. Steve Jobs are remembered in history for applying his imagination to technology and business. The aim of this paper is to discuss the leadership styles of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a transformational leader as he focused on transforming other people by making them better than they were. He was dedicated to encouraging people to help each other and to look out for the company as a whole. When he came back to the organization in 1997, he changed the focus of the company from many computers to only four which had to be known well by customers through vigorous marketing campaigns. He was a leader who created valuable and positive change in his followers. He was a charismatic leader who is a gift that is found in a few people who enable one to have great power and a source to influence other people. H is an individual who was recognized as a strong, charismatic leader in the technology as well as the entertainment industry. He had the ability to captivate a large crowd of people with his spellbinding abilities. The charismatic personality of Steve Jobs allowed him to pull Apple out of crises, allowed him to change the company and even enabled him to force employees to work 90-hour weeks in a joyful mood to meet deadlines that seemed impossible. He had a business charisma which was goal and vision oriented. His charisma, conviction as well as dominating influence made him be fired from Apple when he refused to change the way he believed Apple needed to follow after which he entered the most creative years of his life and which involved producing animated films. Jobs rejoined the company in 1997 when Apple was nearing to be insolvent, and he demonstrated his leadership abilities by slashing the companys product matrix to four products. This rejoining made him stabilize the companys financial position and the companys bottom line. He was an innovative leader who was distinguished from his followers from his great ideas that helped in producing products that changed the world. He made innovations that made customers keep opening their wallets (Lashinsky, 2012). Steve Jobs was an unconventional leader whose management style did not match that one of the textbooks. He was not known for consensus building or consultative approach. He demanded excellence from employees and often issued harsh critics to workers. He was a genius individual who articulated his vision and brought investors, customers, as well as employees to his journey. He was a visionary leader as he made the company grow to heights it had never been. The companys market value of shares had grown from $US 5 billion in 2000 to $ the US 351 Billion in the present day. He was an influential man who learned from his failures and matured from them. He can be termed as a true role model for people desiring to be like him. He was an entrepreneur, manager, a visionary and unconventional leader who lead Apple to become the most cherished company in the world. He had a legacy which was unchallenged and untouched. Steve Jobs charisma, passion for work, as well as self-confidence, cover his negative features, making him the greatest successful leader as well as CEO of that decade. Apple’s organizational structure is the one that has contributed to the companys success. A companys organizational structure helps in creating opportunities for the business to grow. It can, however, have a limitation on how the organization grows. Apple’s organizational structure can be described as a traditional hierarchy structure with other key elements from other types of organizational structures. The success of Apple can be associated with the great innovation as well as the leadership of Steve Jobs. However, the organizational structure of the company is in part responsible for supporting that kind of leadership from Steve Jobs (Kouzes, 2012). Since Tim Cook took over leadership, he began to change the organizational structure. Apple’s organizational structure is characterized by , function-based grouping as well as product-based grouping. The companys structure has helped the company to continue innovating and is linked to the creation of new products that are supported by the organizational structure of the company. Steve Jobs had led an organizational structure that was a traditional hierarchy where he was the one responsible for making all of the decisions. Steve Jobs had led tough guy culture which was characterized by high innovation as well as high-risk taking which was accompanied by a low level of teamwork. Apple has helped to provide resources for human capital development as well as career development. According to the company is that career management is intended to make employees ready for current and future opportunities. Career management is intended to make sure that employees are provided with knowledge and skills that are a need for the success of the business. The company considers career self-management as the key towards its success, believing that such a program can attract, develop as well as retain resourceful and qualified workers. According to Hill (2016), Apple requires its employees to work hard, be committed to the organization and enhance perfectionism wherever one is placed. Instead of promising career progression, Apple emphasizes employees to their own career. The career path of employees is only supported partly by Apple. Workers need to seek information concerning other jobs in different department themselves. Although training is available, employees are told to make the training as well as development programs. I believe that Steve Jobs enhanced workplace productivity and the shared vision of the Apple. He was the idea that if an employee did not share the companys vision, then they were free to go away. He did not entertain laziness and therefore encouraged employees to work hard and to maximize their potential. He emphasized that his role was not to go easy on people, but to make them better. For example, there was an instance in 1981 where he denied the knowledge of his friends who had worked for Apple as he believed that they were no longer assets that the company needed for its success. He believed that his moves regardless of how heartless they seemed were the betterment of the employees, customers, products and for the whole companys success. Steve Jobs encouraged worker productivity by encouraging them to follow their passion since he believed that without passion one cannot work harder, go an extra mile or challenge the status quo as much and he urged people to do what they loved to do. He encouraged creativity among employees, and this stimulated them to work hard as he believed that those are crazy enough to think that they are capable of changing the world then they are the ones that do it. He encouraged the employees and the whole company to risk failure if they wanted to be great and this made employees work hard towards fulfilling the companys goals and improving productivity (Elliot J. &., 2011). Steve jobs required his employees to behave in an ethical manner. He was a servant leader who was a role model for them as he set a direction to be followed by employees when he adhered to the code of ethics. He was also an effective communicator as all of his remarks attracted a crowd who wanted to hear the leaders mind as he had great things to inspire people with and to and motivate employeess to work hard. His effective communication helped to shape the company as he did not encourage laziness or things that were not healthy for the company and this promoted the effectiveness of his performance. Steve Jobs were successful in empowering his employees and in gaining customer loyalty. He often gave wise quotes that were meant for motivating employees to do better, and they helped them to grow and to maximize their potential. The success of the company can be attributed to the high productivity of employees, which was brought by a high level of hard work, commitment, and a desire for excellence from employees. He had encouraged employees engagement which in turn motivated them to grow higher regarding their performance. Steve Jobs also gained customer loyalty when he continued to inspire the company produced goods that satisfied customers and exceeded their expectations. Steve Jobs had an innovation ability that helped to forecast the needs and demands of consumers such that they were ready to buy each of the companys products that came to the market. He was focused on creating great products rather than making profits since he believed that customers would be ready to compensate once they had found good products thereby profits would follow. Great products would have an effect of satisfying clients, thereby generating high profits for the organization (Elliot J. , 2012). There are several helpful practices that can be emulated from the leadership of Steve Jobs that made Apple successful. The first one is the focus since when he returned to the company in 1997, he found the company doing so badly and this had been attributed to the concentration of many computer products. He did not want this practice and therefore opted to reduce the matrix to four computers. All of the rest of the products were abandoned. This action by Steve Jobs saved the organization as it helped the company to concentrate on making the products great which reflected on the companys performance. He only concentrated on a few things that were great and canceled the ones that were dragging the company down. Steve Jobs acknowledged that the best companies are not only capable of coming up with ideas the first ones, but they ensure that when they are behind they leapfrog until they are ahead. This strategy helped the company to surprise competitors even when they thought that Apple was lagging behind. It created products that hit the market with a force that was never to be taken by others. Steve Jobs had the idea that making great products result in higher profits and therefore people ought to concentrate more on making perfect products which will cause the profits to follow. These strategies were used to motivate employee and to transform the organization. The benefits that a company can reap from focus is that it concentrated on the main products that will take it forward and remove distractions. Such a company can satisfy customers and therefore get the benefits of such goods and services. The ability of companies to go ahead of others even when they think they are behind being that it gets to maintain a competitive position. The benefits of concentrating on products rather than profits are that creativity and innovation are promoted which results in high quality products that can last a lifetime, meaning that the incomes will be coming to the business as long as the product is marketable.

References Elliot, J. &. (2011). The Steve Jobs way: ILeadership for a new generation. New York, NY: Vanguard Press. Elliot, J. (2012). Leading Apple with Steve Jobs: Management lessons from a controversial genius. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Hill, C. W. (2016). Strategic Management: Theory & Cases: an Integrated Approach. South-Western Pub. Kouzes, J. M. (2012). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lashinsky, A. (2012). Inside Apple: How America’s most admired-and . New York: Business Plus.