What we can learn from Steve Jobs’ courage.

by Merom Klein, PhD & Louise (Yochee) Klein, PsyD
Co-Directors, Courage Institute International, Jenkintown PA USA & Tuval Israel

Brilliance. What iconic business leader personifies it more than the late Steve Jobs (z”l), co-founder and CEO of Apple? Jobs is the model for seeing around the next corner, over the next hurdle and envisioning game-changing possibilities.

Jobs didn’t always dream up the possibilities by himself. But he could spot a winner — before anyone else could see the game. That’s how he got Apple to grab hold of the technology behind the iPod and made Sony’s Walkman and Discman obsolete. It’s how he changed the face of mobile communications. And the way we use touchscreens.

Steve Jobs could see an inflection point before anyone else “got it.” He could double-down his bet on the right horses. And mobilize a team to drive those horses to the starting gate and out onto the track. To run a race that isn’t won in a single lap around the track.

During his life, we saw a lot of Jobs the inventor. The discoverer. He’s the Thomas Edison of our lifetimes. The epitome of the American child-of-immigrants success story, from rags to riches to rags, and then to riches again. All based on brilliance — and the courage to mobilize teams to grab hold of that brilliance, and use it to be first-in-class and best-in-class.

Now, after his death, we read more about Steve the man. His private life. His struggles. Inflection points that he did not face with courage. And how one of those missed opportunities caught up to him and cost him his life.

“You have cancer.” We don’t know how Steve heard the words. But we know about close friends who’ve received this news and about our own personal experience. The shock. Startle. Fear. The whirlwind, spinning in our heads, that has us recalibrating priorities and struggling to pay attention and hear the rest of what the doctor has to say.

Getting this news is the mother of inflection points. It’s far more gripping than a wake-up call on your performance review. Criticism from your Board. Scathing feedback on your 360-assessment. Disappointing sales results. A loyal lifelong customer who, seemingly without warning, loses interest or defects to a competitor. A team member who, without explanation, dials down his/her enthusiasm. Or a job that gave you security, which is now being restructured or eliminated altogether.

How did Jobs respond to this inflection point? When the doctor said, “Here are your options. Get treatment now,” Steve didn’t act as nearly as decisively as he did when he saw the promise of new technology. He didn’t make bandwidth for this game-changing new priority quickly enough. He didn't double-down his bet on himself or his doctors. And didn’t break free of the trendline that allowed the disease to spread.

If you’re like most business leaders, you’ll face inflection points when the skills that got you here aren’t enough to take you to the next level. At these inflection points, sticking to what you do well won’t be enough to break free of the trendline — where doing what you’ve always done will get you what you always got. In fact, staying the course may actually jeopardize your status, your portfolio of assignments, your working relationships or your health.

Facing a health crisis wasn’t the first time Steve turned a deaf ear to warnings about a critical inflection point. In 1985, Jobs was asked to step down as CEO because of his ego and a brash, petulant know-it-all “management style.” Is it safe to assume that he’d been warned. Jobs probably received 360-feedback from a leadership advisor who didn’t have his brilliance about computers but could see where the trajectory of his passion and impact on the team was taking the company he founded.

When he returned to Apple in 1997, the evidence tells a different story from press reports of triumph, palace coups and vindication. The second incarnation of Jobs was an executive who had become humble enough to strike a balance between making his voice heard as a visionary with special insights and empowering orchestrators who were expected to take initiative and use their own independent judgment. Who was insistent that others lift their game, not just do things “his way.”

From everything we know from working with founders and brilliant senior executives, a personal transformation like Jobs’ doesn’t “just happen.” It takes constant self-vigilance, self-control, trial-and-error experimentation, falling off the wagon and reigning in the temptation to say, “I was justified,” rather than “Oops. I’m sorry. Let me try that again.”

Our clients have heard us refer to this phase of breaking free of old trendlines as “heavy lifting.” They know, like going to the gym and working new muscles, that it can make them uncomfortable. And it takes working with a coach with the courage to have that coach present before, rather than after, they go into the “big game.”

Could Jobs have embraced his personal transformation without being forced out of Apple in 1985, struggled with NeXt for a decade and seen what infusion of courage Apple desperately needed — along with new vision and new products — to come back from the brink in 1997? We’ll never know. We do know that he could have beaten his battle with cancer if he’d have embraced it sooner — and had started earlier to change the trendline.

Which brings us to you, our dear reader. How do you react when someone shows you an inflection point — and advises you to break free of your old trendline? Please G-d, it will be something behavioural rather than cancer — which you can change with heavy lifting rather than surgery and radiation or chemotherapy. Even so, like most of us, you may have a startle or shock reaction. And may get a second opinion.

The test of courage comes after that. If you are a brilliant orchestrator who knows how to navigate a matrix structure and co-ordinate, motivate, oversee and align all of the moving parts in a cross-functional team, what happens when you (like Jobs) find yourself in a more senior management role and have to function as a sponsor, entrusting orchestration to someone who is growing into the role?

If you are a brilliant advisor who can see the future more clearly than anyone else — and can envision game-changing possibilities that will break out of old trendlines — what happens when you (like Jobs) find yourself no longer advising or performing as a soloist? When the job requires you to orchestrate diverse, perhaps dispersed or virtual, teams and relying on thought-leaders from other disciplines? With contrary, divergent perspectives — some of which disagree with yours? And a mix of personalities and lifestyles, some of which don’t have the edge or relentless ambition that you bring to the job?

And, if your role is the same as it’s always been, what happens when the market changes — and payors, customers, investors or regulators put different pressures on your enterprise? Do you have the courage, like Jobs learned to do, to raise the bar? To be loved and respected because you are aspirational rather than reasonable. Insist that people fail quickly and learn from fast iterations rather than never making a mistake. Believe in their potential rather than looking only at their past accomplishments. And ennoble them, not just yourself, to lift the bar higher.

Thanks, Steve Jobs, for leaving us with such a great model. Of brilliance. Of using that brilliance brilliantly. And of room for improvement, which challenges the rest of us to break free of our trendlines — so our teams and our enterprise can break free of theirs.