A mostly overlooked New York Times piece last week described Steve Jobs as "the last tyrant," a guy who "chewed out subordinates and partners who failed to deliver, trashed competitors who did not measure up and told know-it-all pundits to take a hike."
Jobs readily admitted that he wasn't around much for his four kids, and he authorized a last-minute biography of himself because "I wanted my kids to know me." The same kids, he was saying in his sentimental last months, who were the best thing he's ever done. (He also said, "Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." So you got to wonder.)
"People who are crazy enough to change the world are those that actually do," Jobs said.
They're also usually bad bosses, bad spouses and bad parents. Don't agree with me? Well Jobs did. Consider the overwhelming personal foibles of the people who Jobs himself lifts up to this status in his ad, "Here's to the Crazy Ones."
We forgive geniuses their private atrocities to the extent that their public contribution added to the greater happiness, subtracted from the sadness, increased the comfort, decreased the fear, deepened the beauty and countered some of the ugliness.
Steve Jobs is forgiven.
But the fact is, Jobs was not the last tyrant. To the tyrants who remain: You'd better hurry up and make something great.
That, or start being a better human being.
Or both?
And how about the millions of people who never aspire to greatness, but just go about doing good every day — being good moms and dads, good friends and lovers, good but maybe not great employees — and whose collective goodness enables the great companies like Apple and SAS and even Wal Mart to succeed? Sure it takes a genius like Steve Jobs to think up this stuff, but it takes people who are in fact much greater than he is to make it.
Well, Robert you had me until your very last line.
Why do you that believe people who don’t aspire to greatness are inherently “greater” than people who do?
Let me answer for Robert: Because they are the ones who allow the others to become great. Without the salt of the earth people who do the work, the ideas would just remain ideas.
Yes. And vice-versa, Eileen. Without great thinkers, we salt-of-the-earthers would still be living in caves.
When it comes to the value of beans, I prefer to put all human beans on equal footing rather than elevate one kind of bean over another kind of bean.
Know what I mean?
Because my definition of greatness doesn’t include many of the attributes that you yourself implied Jobs had — a huge ego, a lack of regard for his family or anyone who got in his way, etc. etc. My definition of greatness is the accumulation of those “little” good things that ordinary people do every day: loving and providing for the people in their lives, going about their everyday lives doing good work that is necessary for companies to succeed.
But Robert, I note that you come up short of quite declaring that a world with all Worker Bees and no Queens. So don’t the Workers have to appreciate the Queens, just as the Queens ought to (but often don’t, thanks to their Queenly perspective) appreciate the Workers?
Are you really saying the Workers are more virtuous and more important than the Queens. Or are you simply saying: We Workers appreciate the Queens plenty.
This point may seem a little pedantic, but I think it’s pretty important.
We just have to acknowledge there are different types of greatness. So sure, Jobs was a great innovator and inventor who had a valuable and largely positive impact.
I, on the other hand, probably don’t have half the mental agility he displayed through his career. But I am trying to be a great father to my kids.
Assuming I succeed in being a great father (kids are young, so the jury is still out), neither Jobs type of greatness nor mine nor anyone else’s is necessarily more or less valuable in the grand scope of humanity. But I dare say that we’d collectively be screwed if we didn’t have some of both.
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