Steve Jobs on Apple’s Management

Steve Jobs at D8

Right now I am currently watching Steve Job’s Interview at the D8 conference, where Steve Jobs is grilled by two journalists, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Jobs revealed an interesting fact about Apple, Inc. When asked what Jobs’ role was at Apple and how much say he has in the products that are made, Jobs’ asked back another question: “Do you know how many committee’s we have here at Apple? …Zero”

It turns out that Apple has one person in charge of each section of their company. Some example sections he mentioned were things like iPhone engineering, iPhone OS development, etc. He said that they meet once a week for three hours, and they have to trust that each section of the company pulls through on their end.

What caught my attention was the notion of trust. Apple is a business run on trust. That means that their leadership must be trustworthy. Truly so, Steve Jobs is not only a pivotal CEO of this time, but he is also a great leader. His passion is consistent with his personal beliefs, and his persistence in perfection is unwavering. In comparison to someone like Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, who exudes an aura far less charismatic and authoritative then Jobs.

A good quote I got from Jobs’ during this interview was “We still run our business like a start-up. In fact, we’re one of the largest start-ups in the world!” This back-to-basics approach to management has done Apple well.