Steve Jobs: Seven Things to be Learnt About Leadership

As we are faced with the end of the era of Steve Jobs it will be a good time for reflecting upon what we can learn from his leadership style.

1. Leadership should be able to manage the human capital by example. By means of Steve Job’s capacity to imagine the potential of business, leadership can significantly impact the conduct and performance of the human capital. In short handling the human capital becomes critical for the leadership in managing the strategy of an organization in 21st century.

2. An important aspect that relates the leadership to strategic management of an organization is the intellectual capital. What did Steve Jobs essential do in Apple? He managed its intellectual capital. How did he do that? For him managing the intellectual capital involved the capability to give proper direction to knowledge assimilated in the organization in order to generate innovative ideas and evolution of these ideas into final products which are commercialized.

3. For Steve Jobs the competency of leadership in strategic management involved another important element. This was his ability to understand the entire stake holders. He clearly made it a pint to be driven that the stake holders are not just the human capital of the organization but include suppliers and customers.

4. For Steve Jobs the core of the relationship between strategic management and leadership involved his capacity to handle in an effective manner the value adding activities of and uphold over a long term duration improved performance. With environmental dynamism becoming more and more complex, he was well aware that leadership has to act and react appropriately and swiftly to alter the strategies to be adopted suitably.

5. Steve Jobs knew that as a leader he should be able to ascertain on ways to manage circumstances involving complex strategic changes. His style is a proven example of the fact that the effectiveness of leadership in managing the strategy depends on its readiness to create forthright and brave strategic choices.

6. One aspect that Steve Jobs seriously focused upon was that the strategic choices taken up by Apply were absolutely practical even if they could be difficult to achieve.

7. Steve Jobs was capable of comprehending and visualizing the impact of the strategic vision on the internal functions of the organization. He showed that the leadership should own this vision and motivate the human capital to fulfill the vision. By developing like-minded partners both internally and externally the leadership should make possible the implementation of the strategic vision a reality.

Thus from Steve Jobs we learn the important lesson that leadership is a significant prerequisite for successful strategic management.