I have long been an admirer of all things Apple. I worked for them many years ago (in fact I was at Apple during the several years that Jobs was not). Apparently, it is a very different organisation culturally now than it was then. The question remains would Apple have even survived if Jobs had not returned – and now Apple has been named the most admired company in the US by Fortune Magazine.
Jobs speaks on his demanding reputation:
“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.”
Our role as leaders is to see what is great in everyone and inspire them to fulfil on that greatness… it is to align them to the one vision. But fundamentally it is to make sure they have the resources and the freedom to get the job done.