> But Geniuses/Leaders - they come but once in a lifetime, and we admire them for that uniqueness.
Oh please. There are 7 billion people in this world. This hero worship has got to stop. By your own admission he was a complete arsehole. His 'vision' was who he could exploit. Look at how he treated Woz. That's not the actions of a visionary, that's the actions of an egomaniac who discovered a route to power.
With respect that's as blinkered a view in the opposite direction. Neither the "Jobs was a genius" nor the "Jobs was an asshole" narratives are incorrect, but neither are complete and as such neither is particularly helpful or enlightening on it's own.
To me at least, what makes Jobs most interesting is what he achieved despite being an asshole and how that played out. He undoubtedly was a thoroughly unpleasant individual and people who worked with him will queue around the block to tell you that, but he also, coming from a pretty low baseline, turned Apple into the largest company in the world by getting many of those same people who will tell you he's an asshole to build genuinely great products.
The most interesting people are rarely one thing or the other - that's what makes them interesting.
I don't know what the big deal about Apple being the "largest company in the world" is. Who was the company that they passed. Exxon Mobile? Shell? They create great products used by billions around the world. No one romanticizes their CEOs, and they're all assholes too.
It's not who they passed on the way up, it's the fact that they did it in 12 years starting from when their company was 60 days from bankruptcy after spending the preceding decade in a seemingly endless death spiral with no future. Do you not remember Apple in 1996? Blackberry right now looks positively bursting with potential by comparison.
But going back to the original point, if that's true you could say that Apple was in a slightly better state than it might have appeared (in that it had leverage over MS that it could use that might not have been obvious at the time) but I don't think it significantly undermines the idea that Jobs did a fairly remarkable job in turning Apple around.
After all, MS and many other companies had far more resources than Apple even with the settlement and none of them had the same level of success Apple enjoyed during that period (or since).
Who says that visionaries can't be egomaniacs? And, in the case of Jobs, who says that he could have been an effective visionary without being an egomaniac?
I don't think I worship Steve Jobs, nor do I think he's a hero. But I don't think anybody can second guess what he accomplished in his many careers. If it had just been the Apple, we could have ascribed that to Woz. Or the Macintosh, we could have suggested Raskin was the key, Or Next was all about Avie Tevanian, or Pixar was all about Lassiter, Or iMacs all about Jonie Ives, or iPod all about Fadell, or Apple 2.0s resurgence all about Tim Cook, iOS was all about Forstall, or the iPhone/iPad...
But, there's a common thread to all of those creations - and yes, behind all of them were massive collaborations of incredibly talented people, lead by inordinately brilliant designers, engineers, and architects - but in the center, unreasonably demanding and pushing, was Jobs.
That's all I think we need to give him credit for, but no less.
I think most companies fail because of the 'culture of mediocrity', especially when they grow. A leader who is unconditionally asshole with a good taste is exactly what keeps the culture fresh and inspired. That's who Jobs was.
Oh please. There are 7 billion people in this world. This hero worship has got to stop. By your own admission he was a complete arsehole. His 'vision' was who he could exploit. Look at how he treated Woz. That's not the actions of a visionary, that's the actions of an egomaniac who discovered a route to power.