Hmmm … not sure why the first post didn’t … post. So here’s the one that should have started this thread …
I just finished reading a very interesting book, Inside Steve’s Brain
by Leander Kahney. I highly recommend it to anyone who finds the rise
of Apple, or Steve Jobs in particular, interesting. I think there are
some great leadership principles that can be found in the book
(although some I would suggest are not transferable to church
leadership).
At the end of each chapter, Kayney provides a point form overview of
the principles Steve follows. Over the next few days, I’m going to list
some of them for you. If you’re a pastor or leader reading this blog, I
do suggest you grab a copy of the book and read it for yourself.
Chapter One “Focus: How Saying ‘No’ Saved Apple“
Here are the lessons from Steve:
- Get busy. Roll up your sleeves and get to work straight away.
- Face hard decisions head-on. Jobs has to make some hard, painful decisions, but faces the situation head-on.
- Don’t get emotional. Assess your company’s problems with a cool, clear head.
- Be firm. It couldn’t have been easy, but Jobs was firm and fair when he stepped back into Apple and began his drastic reorganization. He knew what had to be done. He took the time to explain it, and he expected the staff to fall in line.
- Get informed; don’t guess. Make a thorough inspection of the company and base your decisions on data, not hunches. It’s tough but fair.
- Reach out for help. Don’t shoulder the burden alone. Jobs asks for the company’s help, and he gets it. The managers help shoulder the burden of any cuts.
- Focus means saying “no.” Jobs focuses Apple’s limited resources on a small number of projects it can execute well.
- Stay focused; don’t allow feature creep. Keep things simple, which is a virtue in a wolrd of overly complex technology.
- Focus on what you are good at; delegate all else. Jobs doesn’t direct animated movies or woo Wall Street. He concentrates on what he’s good at.
I love the last two points on this list. Feature creep is when a company adds too many features to a product and ends up making the product too confusing. Companies are often tempted to do this when offering an upgrade to an exsisting product. In order to make it more appealing, they offer more and more features. We do this in church circles all the time. Rather than focus on the basics and keep the message simple, we add so much that eventually nothing seems to make sense.
Next Up: Perfectionism.
