There are fourteen practices that HBR urges every CEO to try to emulate.

The first is focus. Jobs was renowned for his ability to cut out extraneous distractions be they worries, or people. It was probably his lifelong practice of meditation that helped him focus.

Simplify. Apple products are the essence of this practice and all the more success for the ability to make things simple.

Take responsibility end to end. Jobs did not just worry about the external look of the product he wanted to know everything was right. He understood the whole.

When behind leapfrog. We always think of Apple as a leader but sometimes it missed an opportunity and when it did it reinvented the idea. Like the ipod over mp3 players. Put products before profit. Echoes here of Facebook and Fast Retailing see my blog What can the Hacker Way teach talent leaders. Dont be a slave to focus groups. This is essentially about anticipating what customers want not waiting until they realise they would like it. Bend reality. This refers to Jobs insistence people could achieve exceptional things, and they did. He never let reality hold him back from demanding exceptional performance of people.

Impute. This is about how he used signals to send a message. Like in the design of the ipad making it have smooth edges so it felt more grab able.

Push for perfection. No more need be said.

Tolerate only A players. Wanting the best and getting it in people.

Engage face to face. He believed this was the way to build bonds and create ideas.

Know both the big picture and the details.

Combine humanities and science. Essentially Jobs understood engineering and also what was attractive to people and joined then together. Working on the boundaries produced better results over being focused in one area.

Stay hungry stay foolish.

Leadership style But this success was short-lived, even with the praise for Jobs' latest design, the Macintosh. IBM was Apple's stiffest competition, and they began to surpass Apple sales. After a falling out with Apple's CEO, John Sculley, Jobs resigned in 1985 to follow his own interests. He started a new software and hardware company, NeXT, Inc., and he invested in a small animation company, Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar became wildly successful thanks to Jobs' tenacity and evolving management style. "Toy Story," Pixar's first major success, took four years to make while the then-unknown company struggled. Jobs pushed its progress along by encouraging and prodding his team in critical and often abrasive ways. While some found his management style caustic, he also developed loyalty from many team members. "You need a lot more than vision you need a stubbornness, tenacity, belief and patience to stay the course," said Edwin Catmull, co-founder of Pixar. "In Steves case, he pushes right to the edge, to try to make the next big step forward." Jobs emphasized the importance of teamwork to his employees. Though he made the final decision on product designs, he knew that the right people would be a company's greatest asset. "Thats how I see business," he said. "Great things in business are never done by one person; theyre done by a team of people." [Related: 7 Lessons from Random Steve Jobs Encounters] At the same time, Jobs knew that he had to be the best leader possible to his teams. According to Jobs' work mantra and ethic, innovation is what distinguishes a leader and a follower. "Be a yardstick of quality," he said. "Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." Thanks to Jobs' expectation of high quality, almost every product he's turned out has been a huge success among consumers and businesses. While Pixar succeeded, NeXT, trying to sell its own operating system to American consumers, floundered. Apple bought the company in 1997, and Jobs returned to Apple as CEO. Working for an annual salary of $1 a year, Jobs revitalized Apple, and under hisleadership, the company developed numerous innovative devices the iPod, the iPhone, iTunes and the iPad. They revolutionized mobile communications, music and even how numerous industries, including retail and healthcare, carried out their everyday business operations. He offered a unique intuition when developing these products. When asked what consumer and market research went into the iPad, Jobs replied, "None. Its not the consumers job to know what they want." [Related: Steve Jobs' Greatest Technology Contributions] Jobs used his experiences, such as growing up in the San Francisco area in the '60s and his world travel, to shape the way he designed the products that made Apple synonymous with success. He criticized the sheltered lives that characterized many in the computer industry. "[They] haven't had very diverse experiences," he said. "So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have." In 2004, Apple announced that Jobs had a rare but curable form of pancreatic cancer. It was this brush with death that helped Jobs focus his energy on developing the Apple products that rose to such popularity in the 2000s. "Almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important," he said. Though he was ill, it was during this time that Apple launched some of its biggest (and successful) creations. iTunes became the second biggest music retailer in America, the MacBook Air revolutionized laptop computing, and the iPod and iPhone broke sales records, while changing the way users consumed content and communicated with each other. Before his death, Jobs commissioned a $138 million yacht, named Venus. Designed to be minimalist, much like Jobs' technological creations, Venus offers structural walls of glass designed

by the chief engineer of the Apple stores. Between 230 and 260 feet (70 and 79 meters) long, Venus boasts teak decks and seven 27-inch iMacs on board. Though he was aware he might pass away before the boat was finished, Jobs continued to design Venus up until the end. "I know that its possible I will die and leave [my wife] Laurene with a half-built boat," he said. "But I have to keep going on it. If I dont, its an admission that Im about to die." Jobs once said, "I want to put a ding in the universe." After starting personal computers revolution, launching the smartphone craze, changing the age of computer animation, and making technology popular and accessible, he certainly made more than just a ding. [Video: Steve Jobs Most Memorable Moments]

2.1.2.3

Visionary

Steve Jobss innovative mind and idea not only come from his risk taking ch aracteristic also comes from his brand vision. It is believed that Great entrepreneurs are focused on today while the most innovative have a road map of where they will be tomorrow (Gallo 2011, p.221). As complimented by Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, that Steve Jobs always dreams about and anticipate what the customers would expect in the future. Back in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steven Jobs as two hardware experts created Apple Computer in 1976 with vision to make a personal computer that was affordable and with easier interface to be used. And with this vision the Job and Wozniak created their owned version of BASIC provided by Microsoft and their Mac operating system which was developed with a new graphical user interface which was the first in the world to use mouse and screen icons on the screen and this system proved to be a success. And it was believed that later Microsoft was forced to launch a system that followed but improved based on the Mac operating system and that system was the Microsoft W indows (Weihrich & Cannice 2010, p.371). Whats more, the leading and previously considered as adventuresome design of a touch-screen computer without a keyboard which was introduced in 2001 in iPod, and in the iPhone in 2007 had long been speculated by the media and competitors as not working and not viable proved to be a great success could be seen from the long queue waiting to purchase a Iphone 4 and Ipad 2 in white both of which are using the design of touch-screen without a keyboard. According to many employees who had work under Steve Jobs, Jobs is a stern taskmaster who understands the art of the possible with long-range visionary (Waters & Menn 2010).

2.2

Situational leadership

2.2.1

Literature review

Though the leadership trait theory used to be and is still popular in both research actual management practices, there are some problems that the trait theory alone can not explain. Stogdill (1974) who review 163 traits studies on the leadership performed during 1949 and 1970 and he found out that these studies were often inconsistent and even contradictory so he concluded that traits alone could not explain many leadership problems such as the leadership effectiveness. And because of the constraints of the trait theory, other theories were developed to try to explain the leadership practices. Herbert Spencer (1884) suggested that time produced the leader and not the other way around. His theory, known as the situational leadership claimed that different situation call for different leadership characteristics which means that there is no single optimal psychographic profile of a leader (Mehta 2009, p.161). An early situational leadership theory is Kurt Lewins studies which were done in the 1930s, from which and he claimed that there are three leadership styles related to forces within the leader, within the group members and within the situation: autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire (Roussel & Swansburg 2006, p.169). According to the study, autocratic leader makes decisions alone and they focus more on finishing the tasks; democratic leaders are more relationship oriented and concern for people in term of care for teamwork and human relationship; the laissez-faire leaders tend to be permissive and generally abstain from leading the staff.

2.2.2

Leadership behaviours of Steve Jobs

In the early time before Steve Jobs left Apple, he led the company using a laissez-faire leadership style that was believed to contribute the creation of the technology-based products and many of which proved to be quite successful because of the environment brought by the laissez-faire leadership style and such environment did encourage the creativity of the employees (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor 2011, p.170). But there are also constrains of using laissez-faire leadership such as that it is confirmed as being connected with the reason for low productivity (Bass, B. M., Bass, R. & Bass, R. R. 2008, p.451). As for Apple, the laissez-faire leadership style of Steve Jobs become to some extent ineffective and had made the company in disadvantage when competing with IBM after IBMs entry into the PC market. And this was one of the key reasons why Jobs was replaced by the tough John Scully who was known as a top-down decision maker (Clemens & Meyer 1987). And after his return to Apple in 1996 when Apple announced that it would

buy NeXT, Steve Jobs new company for $429 million, Steve Jobs came with the leadership with some differences. He still requested for perfection and he was manipulative and demanding which his employees described as autocratic but such autocratic leadership was focusing on the key project as himself was quoted saying that My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pul l things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects (Kramer 2010). Though laissez-faire leadership style and autocratic leadership behavior seems to be contradicting, they do co-exist in Steve Jobss management practices as the CEO of Apple which people explained as Steve Job is having a personalized leadership which means that his leadership behaviors serves primarily his own interests and obviously money is not the most important thing that he cares about resulting in his only focusing on the key projects in his vision leaving his other leadership roles untouched.

2.3

Charismatic leadership

2.3.1

Literature review

Charisma could be defined as a persons ability to influence others based on a sort supernatural gift and attractive powers (Bertocci, D. I. & Bertocci, D. L. 2009, p.44). Accordingly, charismatic leadership is a relationship between a leader and one or more followers based on leader behaviors and attributes combined with favorable attributions on the part of followers (Pablo & Javidan 2004, p.196). And from this definition we can see that the most significant difference between charismatic leadership and other leadership styles is that under a charismatic leadership the followers are actually enjoying being with such a charismatic leadership as they probably feel inspired, correct and important which means that the leader gains his or her major power from his or her charisma, which is usually a set of characteristic traits, rather than a position power. And from the perspective of the followers, the charismatic leadership could be very effective because one of the most important effects of charismatic leadership is that the charismatic leader is seen as an object of identification by followers who try to emulate his or her behavior and accept higher goals or have more confidence in their ability to contribute to the realization of the company targets (Lussier & Achua 2010, p.339). Below we will check the charismatic leadership and the relative leadership behaviors that Steve Jobs has being the CEO of Apple Inc and leader of other companies.

2.3.2

Case discussion

Steve Jobs is said to be the number one salesperson in Apple as he is always the one put onstage to announce a new product or technology because no one else can communicate better his vision with such high passion than he does and this is also because of the fact that Apples vision for technology is largely Jobss vision for the technology in the future (Pritchett 2006, p.23). To be detailed, Steve Jobs has excellent ability to captivate the audience attention and share with the audience or employees the vision that is in his mind. For example, when he was doing the presentation of the new product Ipad, the tablet PC by Apple which soon become a substitute of the traditional laptop, he would sit down in the sofa with the Ipad on his hands and he also started to open the homepage of an US newspaper to read the news making people vision that they are at home with the new Ipad in a weekend morning to read the interesting news that they love in that days newspaper with the more human touch screen function. And because of his ability to deliver his idea with passion, he is able to become the number one salesperson in Apple using his charisma.

Figure 2 Steve Jobs in the Ipad presentation Source: Latimes.com 2010

On the other hand, Steve Jobs also sources his charisma in leading Apple by his abundant professional knowledge and the technology that he is immersed in for the past 30 years as he started his career as specialist in circuit design with the necessary technical background, and technical background and his profound experience in technology innovation provides him with the knowledge for him show off his charisma in leading the employees including the technicians and engineers. And charisma is also strengthened by his being the cofounder of the Apple Computer which most employees will admire. In a word, as a born leader with strong passion, and charisma and also his interests, vision and profound experience in the PC technology, Steve Jobs managed to motivate the employees to follower his vision and high expectations and also convince the customers to buy Apple products.

2.4 Leadership style organization effectiveness

of

Steve

Jobs

and

Organization effectiveness which could be defined as the companys ability to create acceptable outcomes and actions (Yaeger & Sorensen 2009, p.309) is considered as having closed relationship with the leadership behaviors. There are a number of approaches to measure the organization effectiveness and performance, and below will use the Strategic Constituencies model to measure the effectiveness of Apple Inc under Steve Jobss leadership as the CEO.

Strategic Constituencies, or sometimes referred as the participant satisfaction (Keeley & Zedler 1978), measures the organizational effectiveness by examining the companys ability t o meet the needs and expectations of the strategic constituencies or stakeholders who are all those groups and individuals who are affected by and/or affect corporate goals (Owens 2008, p.200). In other words, the Strategic Constituencies model match between an organizations activities and stakeholders expectation. Below lets check whether the key stakeholders such as the users, employees and shareholders have obtained what they desire from Apple Inc.

2.4.1

Strategic Constituencies Analysis Customers

In the perspective of the users, Apple has been the top in a number of satisfaction surveys in many of its product categories. For example as the table below shows, in 2010 Apple enjoyed the highest customer satisfaction score than other PC brands, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The score of 86 is the highest for Apple, and it has a lead of 9 points even compared the second brand Acer which only score 78.

Table 1 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Source: Zdnet.com 2010

And for another blue chip product, the Iphone, according to the results released by J.D. Power and Associates 2011 U.S. Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study, for the fifth consecutive years Iphone has been placed on the top of the satisfaction study (News.cnet.com 2011). And from the global mobile phone sale and revenue data (sees appendix 1), Apples Iphone series have topped the global mobile phone market in term of revenues and in term of phones shipped, it is No.4 globally. These data all suggest that the Apple products have enjoyed very high customer satisfaction and meet and even exceed the expectation of the users.

2.4.2

Strategic Constituencies Analysis Shareholders

In the perspective of the shareholders, the most important indicator of the organizational effectiveness is the profit that the company creates which has close relationship with their own interests; and according to the second quarter financial results in 2011 released in April 20 2011, Apple has a record 83 percent revenue growth, 95 percent profit growth and record iPhone sale growth at 113 percent (Apple.com 2011). With all these sale and profit digits, there is no way the shareholders would become dissatisfied.

2.4.3

Strategic Constituencies Analysis Employees

Table 2 Employee satisfaction report Source: Mac.blorge.com 2009

Though explosions, suicide and other major issues still surround Foxconns Apple manufacturing center in China, in a strict sense, these have nothing to do with the Apple Inc, and whats more from the employee satisfaction report above, we can see that employees are more satisfied with the company and with Steve Jobs ever than before. But for a long time, it seems that not all the staffs will love Apple and Steve Jobs so much. According to an senior employee in Apple, there are very few happy retirements at Apple below the executive level and many had left the company with the thinking that Love the products, hate the company because of the mistreatment they received in Apple (Typepad.com 2005). But now it seems that a growing business can cover a number of issues and seemingly employees are quite content with the job they are doing.

2.4.4

Steve Jobs leadership and organization effectiveness

According to the Strategic Constituencies analysis we have above, the key stakeholders are very satisfied with Apple Inc, and a conclusion could be made that Apple has high organization effectiveness by meeting or even exceed the expectations from the key interest groups. And to a high extent does the leadership of Steve Jobs shape the companys performance and effectiveness that it achieved today, the reasons are three fold: firstly, from a broad sense, Steve Jobs provides Apple the vision and major direction that it is using today which is the major reasons that it is growing so fast and together the employees, shareholder

and user satisfactions come; secondly, Steve Jobs exerts higher expectations for the employees to achieve and he also spreads his passion among the followers for them to achieve such expectations through his charismatic leadership behaviours; thirdly, without Steve Jobs, Apple would not be what it is today, the leadership that he has is important to shape the organization effectiveness and performance.