Leadership Fridays: Lessons from Steve Jobs and Apple

My co-pastor forwarded me this piece by Lawson Stone which has some classic quotes from Steve Jobs and thoughtful commentary on Jobs' leadership from a biblical perspective.

An excerpt:

[Jobs on using focus groups to determine product development] 'It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what’s the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’'

This last is my favorite:

'It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them…'

I always think it’s a little sad when Christian institutions get so confused about their identity and mission that they actually start framing their curriculum and programs based on focus groups and market research, reverently termed “empirical data,” rather than first and primarily consulting their own deepest awareness of God’s call and working in their midst."

Read the whole thing here.

Additional Resources
Powerless But No Chicken