Change Maestro – Steve Jobs

By :- Kushal Bhardwaj

11BM60085

The facts• Full name: Steven Paul Jobs• Birthdate: 24 February 1955• Birth location: San Francisco, California• Social background: lower middle-class. Father was fixing cars

for a living.• Education: high-school certificate. Dropped out of Reed

College after one semester.• Occupations: chairman & CEO at Apple Inc. + Director at The

Walt Disney Company• Net worth: $5.5 billion according to Forbes' 2010 ranking —

136th richest man on Earth• Annual salary: $1

Family• Biological parents: Joanne Simpson and possibly

Abdulfattah Jandali, political sciences professor from Syria• Adoptive parents: Paul and Clara Jobs, both deceased• Siblings: adoptive sister: Patti Jobs (born 1958), biological

sister: Mona Simpson (born 1957)• Spouse: Laurene Powell (born 1964), married in 1991• Children: Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), with unmarried

girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan. Reed (born 1991), Erin Siena (born 1995) and Eve (born 1998) with wife Laurene.

Steve Jobs

Changes brought on in the Tech field• Revolutionized the tech world completely for each and every single person in the

world by his supreme inventions.• Brought digital technology to the masses.• In 1977, Jobs came up with Apple II personal computers, which were regarded as

one of the first genuine and authentic personal computers of the era. Other computers were available at that time but Steve had a vision of increasing the usability and accessibility of computers to a common man

• While the power of computing formerly had been available only to techies, it was suddenly delivered to classrooms, dens, and offices.

• 1984 brought the introduction of Macintosh and the co-founders were the first individuals to see what the mouse and GUI, graphical user interface were worth. PC would not have experienced a revolution if it weren’t for Mr. Jobs.

Contd.• Rocked the music business with Apple's iPod music player and iTunes online store.

This created a blueprint for the music biz in the Net era. And his Pixar Animation Studios was the first to show that computer animation could be used to tell imaginative, touching stories.

• Steve, through his workings at Pixar, in the 90s, revolutionized the computer graphics in movies. He set the bar too high for computer graphical interface and also guided the animation department of Disney to a safe place. Steve helped saving computer animation and revolutionized how they appear in the movies we see today.

Skills for Communicating Change

Image or Managing change – Director • Steve jobs did make sure the employees understood what was required of them ,

but before they were hired, his employees weren't even allowed to see the machine they would have to work on. This was called “a leap of faith”. When Steve came back to Apple, the place was constantly feeding the press and business partners with rumors about their ongoing projects. The minute he was in charge, it was over. He hung a WWII poster in his desk: “Loose lips might sink ships,” and made it clear to anyone that talking to the press would get them out the door, and quick.

• Communication was largely one sided – ‘After the first three words out of your mouth, he'd interrupt you and say, 'O.K., here's how I see things.'

• Even then Apple has a surprisingly low turnover for a company that instils fear in its employees, and even though ex-staff have spoken out that they were unhappy and paid less than at other similar jobs, they would stay because of the prestige that came with the role.

Communicating with the Outside World

• In 1984, Apple next launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by the now famous $1.5 million television commercial "1984". It was directed by Ridley Scott, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984,and is now considered a watershed event for Apple's success and a "masterpiece".

• "Stevenote" is a colloquial term for the keynote speeches given by Steve Jobs at events such as the Worldwide Developers Conference and previously the Macworld and Apple Expos. Jobs' vibrant speaking style and manner of exciting the crowd was often referred to as inducing a "reality distortion field”. Because most Apple product releases were first revealed to the public in these keynotes, 'Stevenotes' often caused substantial swings in Apple's stock price.

• In recent years, Jobs gave his Stevenotes in an auditorium at Apple's corporate campus. These Stevenotes, in contrast to those presented at the large trade fairs attended by Apple in the past, were by invitation only and were attended only by a relatively small number of journalists, employees, and guests. Similar Stevenotes have also been held at theYerba Buena Center for the Arts like those for the introduction of the iPad in 2010 and Apple's "Rock and Roll" iPod event in 2009.

Some of Steve's typical gestures

The Reality Distortion Field• The Reality Distortion Field or RDF is a term coined by Apple engineer Burrell Smith to

describe Steve’s charisma and his ability to convince you of just about anything. The term was used in the context of working with Steve Jobs (see Steve at work), but is now widely used to describe his charisma in general, especially on stage.

• Such keynotes are an integral part of Steve’s job at Apple. He is the company’s ultimate salesman. At NeXT he was even dubbed so because the company seemed able to close deals only after he showed up and personally convinced prospective customers. It is actually at NeXT that Steve brought his art of delivering keynotes to perfection, the way we are used to it now. Some of his traditional tricks he invented there, e.g. his use of a black and white gradient in the slides background, or some typical Steve phrases such as “it just works”.

• One last thing to note about Steve’s public performance, and interviews he gives to journalists, is his use of the pronoun “we”. He will almost never say “I” but in fact, 90% of the time he is using “we”, he means “I”. This was particularly evident when, during an interview at D5, while Steve was telling an anecdote about Apple’s early days, Walt Mossberg asked him “who’s “we”?” Steve replied: “Well, ME!” In Mona Simpson’s novel about her brother, we learn that this habit of his is also true in private conversation.

Consolidating Change• At the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in

January 2007, Jobs’ quoted ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky:

There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.