Who was the real Steve Jobs?

If ever you want to take the time to understand the man behind the mythology, be sure to read “Becoming Steve Jobs” (https://amzn.to/2CtFa7P) by Sclender and Tetzeli rather than the biography by Walter Isaacson.

The Walter Isaacson Biography was bitterly disappointing for me. It lacked nuance or depth into Steve Jobs. It painted the guy as a ruthless, self-centered, eccentric genius who was incapable of empathy and lived one tantrum to the next and who never evolved as a leader or a human.

It begged the question why so many people worked for him for decades at a time and why so many produced their best work with him at their side.

I finished the Isaacson book feeling that my gut feelings about Steve Jobs must have been wrong. He must have been a good showman on the stage but behind the scenes, he made everyone miserable.

I knew there must be more to the story. It just didn’t sit right that such a tyrant would command such respect from his peers for prolonged periods. I’ve worked with bullies and they ultimately don’t get much done because people leave them and refuse to give their best for them. Steve must have had more than just a thorny side.

People knew Steve Jobs were also horrified by the Walter Isaacson biography - it wasn't the Steve they knew. They got together and participated in creating "Becoming Steve Jobs" which is much better, nuanced, and shows an evolution of a character that I could relate to.

“Becoming Steve Jobs” captures the other side to Steve Jobs. It shows him as demanding, emotional, intelligent, and ruthless but it also shows him as caring, committed to his friends, warm, compassionate, and with his family life squarely at the center of his world. We learn about the Jobs who inspired people and was articulate and generous. We learn that he was clear to criticise the work for not being world-class but he supported the people to make it better.

It also shows the journey as he evolved from a 20something-year-old upstart, in over his head, incapable of leading a sizable organisation into a 40something-year-old who knew exactly how to lead.

In his 20s, at an age where most people haven't yet lead a team of 10 people, Steve Jobs had 1000s of staff and he was under fire from all sides. He had fierce competition from the marketplace and his own board wanted him out. He dealt badly with it - petulant, self-centered, blaming, irresponsible - all the negative traits of a male in his 20s magnified by 100.

He then grows up. After being given the boot, he matures in his 30s. He builds Pixar but from a distance, letting the team use him as a resource - it becomes a $1B+ business. He marries someone who he is compatible with and starts a family.

He goes back to Apple in his early 40s and finds a company on the verge of collapse. He's faced with endless hard decisions. A lot of projects must be axed and a lot of people need to go - it's messy work. He rebuilds the business from the ground up and empowers a core team of high-performers arround him - Tim Cook, Johny Ives, Phil Schiller, etc. He has insanely high standards, but this is no secret - he makes it clear that Apple isn't a place to work if you want a cushy job. He's not about work/life balance during this time - he's about absolute excellence. Some people love this sort of culture and some hate it. I personally LOVE and really miss that type of culture. If I were a single man without kids, I would personally gravitate towards a company that is insanely demanding and unreasonable. I've worked in high-performance cultures and I relished it.

The people who came up with Steve Jobs through that turnaround era and eventually hit the milestone of the most valuable company on earth describe him as an inspirational, visionary leader who got them to achieve their best work. They say that he was thoughtful, compassionate and a great listener at times and also demanding, unreasonable, direct at other times... but everyone achieved more than they thought possible. He was a magnet for talent and they stuck around. He repelled people that weren't right for the culture he wanted to create at that time.

This book is full of valuable insights and backstories. It shows you an evolution of Steve Jobs’s character that matches his public journey. The book gives you all his flaws in technicolor but never loses sight of the broader context that Steve Jobs was one of the most remarkable men in history. It honors him for his greatness and humbles him before his shortcomings in equal measure.