Why Steve Jobs Couldn’t Find a Job Today
26th July 2011
Well, to start with, he’s a non-Hispanic white male.
While 1,500 CEOs say that creativity is the single most important quality for success today – and studies bear out the greater success of creative, innovative leaders – the study found that when it came to hiring and promoting practices businesses consistently marked down the creative managers and bypassed them, selecting less creative types!
Quelle surprise.
Don’t forget, the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs some 20 years ago to give his role to a less creative, but more “professional,” John Scully. Mr. Scully was subsequently fired by the Board for creatively investing too heavily in the innovative Newton – the first PDA – to be replaced by a leadership team willing to jettison this new product market and refocus all attention on the Macintosh. Both CEO decisions turned out to be horrible for Apple, and it was only after Mr. Jobs returned to the company that its fortunes re-blossomed when the company replaced outdated industrial management philosophies with innovation. But, oh-so-close the company came to complete failure before re-igniting the innovation jets.