Individual Leadership Paper

subject Type Homework Help
subject Pages 6
subject Words 3663
subject School University of california
subject Course Organizational Leadership

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I was pleasantly surprised after reading Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs. Initially, I wanted to choose a
leader that I’ve always wanted to know more about and had a profound impact in changing the world.
I’ve always admired how succinct and impactful his presentations were but never realized how that
resonated with all aspects of his life, including what he created. Steve Jobs exemplified ideal leadership
qualities that I seek in motivating others, creating a collaborative environment, negotiating, and
advocating change. Given my personal mission of becoming a better leader, I also wanted learn from
Steve Job’s mistakes and how he compensated his erratic emotions with genuineness and compelling
vision that inspired others, even though at times he was very difficult to deal with. Personally, I’ve
always respected those who were always curious and wondered where the motivation came from and
whether or not it was genuine. For Steve Jobs his motivation was simple, to create the best product and
end to end user experience that the consumers didn’t even know that they needed or wanted. His
endless passion for a perfect harmony of technology and art was his drive to make the impossible
happen for himself and for those around him. This was a key motivating factor of how he led
organizational changes, negotiations, and his teams.
Steve jobs was very young when he created Apple. He was a creative genius but when it came to
working with others, managing employees, and dealing with the corporate structure of a Fortune 500
company, he was very inexperienced. So in 1985, due to differences with the CEO John Sculley, Steve
was ousted from Apple and creative his own company NeXT. Even though he was devastated for himself
and his key stakeholders who were his employees and consumers, this was arguably the best learning
experience he had to reflect on his challenges and what he needed to do next. So when he came back to
the company as the “iCEO” (interim CEO) in 1997, he was better prepared to lead the company and to
change the world. I’ve had a similar experience in my career where I was not successful in leading a
team but since then reflected and identified my shortfalls and have been diligently improving my
leadership skills. I believe that in order to become a better leader professionally and personally,
constant reflection is vital. In my past, I’ve always believed that a leadership style that was successful
with one team should work with another but failed to realize that all team dynamics and personalities
are as distinct. Throughout this course I realized how important it is to pick the right transition strategy
from the beginning and this is exactly what Steve Jobs did when he came back to lead Apple. Knowing
that the change needed to be swift and over-arching, he right away set a clear direction by leading from
“me” to “we”, defining the past, present, and future (Executive Leadership Disciplines). During his
speech at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, he explained why Apple sales have fallen 30% for
the past few years: there are a lot of great people at Apple but they’re doing the wrong things because
the plan has been wrong.” His messaging of the past - of what Apple’s original purpose was, the present
of what the current state looks like, and the future of where they need to go, painted a shared
purpose and a compelling vision. He also motivated commitment by inspiring confidence and energizing
and empowering people by making sure Apple goes back to their creative roots and creating excellent
products (Executive Leadership Disciplines). He got involved in all aspects of the business: product
design, cost reductions, supplier negotiations, and advertising agency reviews. He was the only CEO that
was maniacally involved in marketing and messaging strategy of Apple and created the Think Different
campaign. Apple was about people who think outside the box, who use computers to change the world.
By adopting this mentally, he created print campaigns with iconic historical figures who were his
personal heroes that tended to be creative people who took risks, defied failure, and bet careers on
doing things in a different way. This not only identified Apple’s brand to consumers, but to its employees
as well. Steve adopted the top-down and radical Transformational change type from Ryan Raffaelli,
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Leading Organizational Change and Turnaround STARS framework from HBR, Picking the Right Strategy.
He believed he had to stop the hemorrhaging of the top Apple employees from leaving and to do so, he
wanted to re-price their stock options. Apple stock has become so low that the options became
worthless and Jobs wanted to lower the exercise prices so they can have value again. Even though at the
time this was legal, it was not considered a good corporate practice and the board wanted to review the
legality and impact of the move. However, Steve knew that this was very important and made sure this
was approved quickly. Also in a very bold move, he asked for resignations of all except two board
members and carefully recruited knew ones who shared his vision for Apple. Given the dire state that
Apple was in, Steve practiced Bold Strokes (Ryan Raffaelli, Leading Organizational Change), sending a
signal from the top to the rest of the organization to frame the redirection of the company and
empowered others to act on the vision by getting rid of obstacles and changing structures that seriously
undermine the vision, which was the board.
Not knowing the full story of Steve’s return to Apple in 1997 and from what I’ve learned from this class, I
was most impressed with him taking responsibility and being decisive from the very beginning. He had
ownership in a company that he created and was passionate about bring it back to its principles of
innovation and creating the best product with end to end user experience. This is where his motivation
and courage came and empowered him to do whatever it takes to turn the company around. Reflecting
back on my own experience working in middle management, I don’t remember a time when I was
compelled to take on a team with passion anywhere close to Steve’s during his return. However, I am
passionate about development and success of the people that I manage and I believe assessing the right
strategy in the beginning is critical. I’ve had instances where Realignment strategy was utilized instead
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