One story that will always stick out in my mind is that of John Sculley removing Steve Jobs. Many managers use frameworks through which they make decisions, and some of the ones we use in business providing interesting lenses through which to see the events that happened in the lives of these men.
On the one hand you have Steve Jobs. Many years ago, before the success of the iPod and the new generation of Macs, I saw Steve Jobs (probably on the PBS series Triumph of the Nerds) relate that he had hired the wrong guy. The brief background on this statement is that Steve Jobs had hired Sculley away from Pepsi to be a CEO at Apple and their relationship deteriorated to the point that Jobs was stripped of any authority in the company that he had founded. How do like them apples?
It is hard to say who I would have sided with then or even now. Without knowing either man personally, I am cautious of giving an assumption of correctness to either one.
Steve Jobs was a man who, in the media, was portrayed as egotistical and maniacal in the management of his people. In that sense, I think the average person was probably happy to hear that a cocky punk got what he had coming to him.
On the other hand, I like some of the ways he did things. He was always known as the inspirer. Nearly 10 years ago I remember hearing that he would explain to his engineer the value of reducing boot time on a computer. A reduction of even 5 seconds would literally result in saved man lives (economically speaking) each day as hundreds of millions of people wait for their computers to boot. Year after year I think about that as I wait for my Windows machines to boot. I always notice that my computer gets slower with each service pack that I install, until my computer doesn't run anymore. I can reformat the thing and start over, but the latest patching will cripple an old computer (and often times my needs are very simple).
Then you have Sculley. Other than Jobs, I can scarcely find anyone that is willing to say something negative about him in the media (other than for taking an ill-advised job with a company under legal investigation). If I were him, I'd probably be happy with that situation. It also makes me uneasy, however. Having held management roles and having had managers, success or failure at any given moment for a company is not necessarily a result of the manager. Sculley succeeded at Pepsi and became their CEO. He bombed at Apple. The Pepsi taste test campaign was brilliant (attributed to him). Other than that, I don't know what he did with certainty. I've known other wonderful men that served in top capacities at major companies, but in some cases they were riding waves of inertia that had little to do with their talents. In other cases, I've seen managers do things where they are clearly the driving force behind success. In still other cases, I've seen managers look good in spite of their ineptness because of people constantly fighting with them to do the actual correct things.
And now things come full circle and Jobs comes back older and wiser and does some brilliant things. He still manages in a way that makes the skin of some people curl. He decides how a product will be and "the public be damned". But much like Nintendo and their similar approach in launching the Wii, he is successful. In these two cases, it isn't that they don't care about the customer, it is just that they have a passionate belief that what they are doing is the right thing to do and they are willing to face criticism for doing it. I've been in those situations myself. Sometimes you know that nobody in the world world would let you do the thing you think is right and so the opportunity only exists if you are in charge. This approach flies in the face of many modern approaches for product design such as crowd-sourcing for innovation. It isn't that one approach is right and one is wrong every time, but sometimes one is better than the other for a given situation.
At any rate, what a head trip it must be for Steve to be back in the driver's seat of the company he was kicked out of, and doing a bang up job at it too. The media portrays him now as a wise, experienced overseer as opposed to the way he was previously portrayed.
Who would I want to work for, Sculley or Jobs? I guess I'll never know. But if I were to launch a product, I'd love to be inspired by Job's high-minded ideals. I'd also love Sculley's perspectives. I guess the real answer is that I'd love to have either as a consultant, but neither as a boss.
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