Maybe it’s too easy to succumb to the charm, or his infamous reality distortion field, but this clip of Steve Jobs presenting plans for a new Apple office campus to the Cupertino, Calif. city council is just wonderful.
Most striking is the disarming humility, candor and utterly “human-scale” personality of the leader of the world’s most valuable technology company. This is a great communicator — and rare business and organizational leader — at work.
What’s also striking is what’s missing — the all too common mask many CEOs wear, the one that demands (or pleads for) deference, creates an air of inaccessability, and fails to connect as a human being with other human beings from whom they need commitment, trust and understanding.
What we know about Mr. Jobs is that he loves to create great products and do great things. Evidently, this desire consumes far more of his intellectual energy than the need most mortals have for large quantities of smoke to be blown at their posteriors.
You are very smart. You are very good at thinking, as a matter of fact. You are filled with knowledge gained in classrooms and from experience. You know what works and what doesn’t.
You manage with your head — your brain. You solve problems. You design and implement processes and systems. You research markets and customer attitudes and behaviors. You understand and work within generally accepted accounting principles. You can work the right buzzwords into conversations, and meetings.
When something goes wrong, you are very good at analyzing it, and understanding what happened, and how. You love numbers; they are comforting, and clear.
You are very smart.
But people solve problems with more than just their brains, don’t they? Are they moved by the spreadsheet only? Do they come to work each morning looking to bring their blood, sweat and tears to a process or a system?
They want to believe. They want to bleed for the right mission, the right product, the right person. They want to win, to taste the fruit of an investment of their talents, their knowledge and their experience. They want to stretch, trust, and be trusted. They want to feel, and to love, and to commit.
These things don’t fit on your spreadsheet. They are not a system or a process, nor is summoning them a system or a process. They are messy and unpredictable, discomforting and hazy.
They are faith, and faith doesn’t live in your brain. It lives in your heart. While it takes brains to solve problems every day, don’t forget people and organizations achieve mastery with their heart as well. It’s a genuine competitive advantage.
“Big brain, tiny heart” is the most common mistake organizations — and leaders — make. “Tiny brain, big heart” is the second most common.
You manage with your brain, and you lead with your heart. You have to do both — deliberately and intentionally — to be great. Simply doing one, or the other, alone makes you and your organization mediocre.
It’s so much more comfortable, most of the time, to live in the fantasy of who we think we are, how we see ourselves and how we think others see us. “My people love me. My people think I’m a great leader.”
The higher up the leadership pyramid you go, you create a fantasy for everybody else. “The boss said we should do this, the boss says it’s a great idea.” The boss’s fantasies become everyone else’s fantasies. The boss says, “we’re a great customer service organization.” And no one challenges the boss’s fantasy because, well, he’s the boss.
All organizations think they’re great at customer service. They got the posters and the talk down pat.
What is the point of these motivational posters? “Commitment. All it takes is all you’ve got.” Nice sentiment. Take it down. No one believes it anyway. The posters are instead like good luck charms; if we hang them there long enough, maybe they’ll become true!
You have to embrace the truth no matter what, no matter how painful, no matter how uncomfortable it is to assault your own biases, your own fantasies, your own ego.
The common.
The unremarkable.
The crowd.
Fear.
Paralysis.
Faithlessness.
Cynicism.
The selfish.
Grasping, hoarding.
Focusing on emotional needs instead of the quality of the solution to the problem.
Love of the title.
Relying on the title for compliance.
Love of one’s own power, influence and control.
“Me first…”
Telling yourself lies.
The perceived immunity of title, power, and position.
Lip service to values and ideals.
Lip service to hard choices on leadership and personal growth.
Superficial attention to improving yourself.
Superficial attention to improving others.
Short-term horizon.
Instant gratification.
Giving up too soon.
Moving on too quickly.
Giving up upon resistance or failure.
Yielding to the demands of unimportant issues.
Entropy.
Gravity.
Unconsciousness.
Great problem solvers are among the scarcest things in the world. There simply aren’t enough of them, and there never will be.
What do the laws of economics teach us about scarcity? That the things of which there are very little or never enough, but which are in great demand, are the most valuable things in the world.
If there’s anything the world needs desperately right now, it’s people who are great at solving problems. In fact, if there’s anything the world always needs, in good times and bad, it’s people who are great at solving problems — in short, who are great at what they do.
No matter what you do, you have an opportunity to be great at it — to solve the problems and challenges you encounter on a daily basis with a high level of skill, and with passion and enthusiasm as well.
Almost without exception, the people in organizational life that I encounter are feeling exceptionally insecure — worried, understandably, about their jobs. A great deal of their energy is spent fretting about their short-term professional safety and security.
I tell them that the only thing they can control — in a time when it seems so much is beyond our control — is their ability to solve problems. It’s also the only genuine source of personal security and safety.
So, put your energy into:
One. Building your problem solving skills. Learn, grow, practice, experiment. It’s the best investment you can make, in good times and in bad.
Two. Embracing the opportunities created by today’s problems. The whole world is being reinvented. It’s painful, of course, but the more innovative and clever you can be, the more adaptive you prove yourself, the better off you’ll be in the long run.
Three. Understanding that the better you and your colleagues are at solving today’s problems right now, the safer and more secure you’ll all be — personally and organizationally.
Four. Being great at helping others be great problem solvers. This is the essence of leadership.
Of course, being a great problem solver is no guarantee of personal economic security in today’s environment. Many people are suffering what is, we hope, short-term pain.
You simply have to have faith that, over the long-term, there is always a place in the world for a great problem solver.