—Steve Jobs at the MacWorld Conference and Expo in January 2007
Retrospect is a powerful tool. Time, or distance from an event, provides the needed cushion, the burning off of the fog, that allows for a more complete accounting of an event, or a life. Occasionally though, the fog concentrates rather than dissipates, and time allows for the invention of myth. Legacies are created that may not be totally deserved. Good people become great. The past becomes better than the present, and preferential to the future. Steve Job’s legacy is no myth, and is well deserved.
I read about Mr. Job's death on my Ipod Touch. What a remarkable tribute to his legacy that I and millions of others learned of his passing on a device of Job’s invention. The uniqueness of that situation can only be mirrored in recent history by the passing of Thomas Edison, 80 years ago. At that time, I’m sure millions realized that the light they read his obituary under, was a gift of his innovation.
Job's legacy is written in stone. It is in the hands and ears and eyes of each of it’s owners. Time won’t - can’t - over-magnify what he has actually accomplished.
Steve was a California kid who thumbed his nose at the establishment, yet excelled at working its tenets to become insanely profitable. He was a college dropout. He was a computer geek who would rather talk about a device’s impact on society than it’s technical makeup. He was a billionaire that was not a Republican. He was a Buddhist in a Christian society. He was rumored to have an incredibly large ego and was infamous for his tirades. Yet, somehow he became the mainstream current that swept up societies across the world and technologically moved them into the future. We didn’t know where the river was leading, but we trusted Jobs could get us there.
How Steve Job’s led his professional life should be a blueprint for each of us as we evaluate our current field of contenders for the Presidency of the United States.
Steve Jobs didn’t close up shop and stop working when money got tight, he sought out investors to buy into his vision. He wasn’t publicly fearful, in fact, he was fearless. He believed that his vision could, and would, take us all to a better place. He never, ever talked about retreating into the past or of living off of his accolades. It would have been easy to do. When he was fired from his own company in 1986, Steve Jobs was a wealthy man. He could have spent the rest of his life talking about the good old days in the early 1980’s. I’m sure the line, “Hi, I’m Steve Jobs and I invented the Apple computer” would have been golden for free drinks in bars all over the country. Innovative people don’t think like that. It’s not in their DNA.
True innovators are always focused on what you and I DON’T see. They are always imagining where the “puck” will be and moving quickly to intercept it. As soon as they are successful, they are already thinking about where it is moving to next, and moving in that direction.
America has always been at her greatest when we are fearless. Fear is the kryptonite of innovation. It causes one to pause, retreat, stop forward progress.
There are presidential candidates today who tell you that America should be run like an American business was run in the past. The sad truth is, the majority of American businesses operating today, will not be here in 20 years. I’m not guessing, that’s an industry pattern. The majority of American businesses stop being innovative at some point during their lifecycle, and choose to harvest. When the harvest eventually becomes lighter, those businesses focus on cutting expenses and corners in an attempt to preserve. I know from first-hand experience.
I worked for a company that, at one time, was the largest retailer of music in the world. They liquidated in 2006, not because the company was incompetent or its employees lazy, but because they attempted to keep business status quo. They refused to see that the music business was evolving and, rather than evolve with it, held on to a business model that was successful in the past, but wrong for the future. As business deteriorated, they ceased moving forward and focused on preserving what they had. It was a death spiral of a strategy. Give the customer less than they were accustomed to, and ask them to pay more for it.
Americans ARE willing to pay more or do more, if- and only if,- they feel as if they are getting more for their investment. Apple, under Steve Jobs is a great example. Their products aren’t the cheapest, in fact they are often the most expensive, but because they offer much more than the competition, consumers willingly pay the asking price.
On the other hand, If two items are identical, Americans ARE NOT willing to pay substantially more for one over the other. Examine discounter Walmart’s growth over the last 30 years. U.S. Walmart store count in 1981, 400 stores. U.S. Walmart store count in 2011, 4500 and growing. Who have they replaced? Almost every regional department store in the country that began cutting service and charging more to preserve what they had, instead of giving a cost-conscience consumer what they truly wanted.
There are those candidates who will tell you that If only we do business as we did in the past, cut spending on government “charity” programs, drill for more oil, create more American manufacturing jobs, and ask less of our citizens then everything will be all right again. We can go back to the way things used to be. We just have to wait out this economic storm until it blows over.
Unfortunately, we aren’t experiencing an “economic storm”. Mr. Springsteen warned us in a song way back in 1985, when he sang, “foreman says these jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back.” We are feeling the initial crash of a tidal wave of change that is sweeping over the entire world. Those who don’t willingly swim in the direction of the wave’s path, have little chance for long-term survival.
In the future, there will be countries that possess clean, cheap, alternative forms of energy. There will be countries, who protect the health and well being of their citizens. There will be economically prosperous societies. They will be successful solely because they innovated, because they pulled their collective heads out of the sand, because they chose to move to where the puck will be. It will have nothing to do with how powerful an existing country is today. In fact, some of those societies who will be successful in the future, may not even exist today.
As citizens, we have the ability to decide whether our country becomes one of those select countries who lead into the future. Fearless, not fearful. Forward thinking, not melancholy for a past that is now cushioned in many minds.
The good “old” days are gone forever. America will not be a manufacturing giant in the industrial sense, ever again. The genie is out of the bottle, the bloom is off the rose, that train has left the station.
The good “new” days are waiting to happen. As the leading country in the world, we are blessed with the affluence and technology to take an insurmountable lead in the race to the future. Never before in our history, have so many resources been available to the average American. Steve Jobs started Apple computer in his garage in 1976 on $1200 of loaned money. He had no internet, no I-Pads, no Facebook, Ebay or Craig’s List. He couldn’t go “on-line” to apply for a business license or find a technical manual. There was no easily accessed forum where the brightest and most competent could easily share with those just learning. Today, it is easier than ever to be an innovator.
I have sat in numerous board meetings that ended with the verdict that we had no choice but to give our customers less and charge them more. The fear of what would happen in the short-term future if we didn’t, outweighed our ability to make bold decisions about what truly needed to happen for our business to survive. In retrospect, we only bought a small amount of time. With passing time, each short term decision was forced more frequently until there was nothing left to preserve.
In the presidential and congressional elections of 2012, we aren’t voting for just a person or people. We aren’t voting for a Democrat or Republican. We are voting for our collective future. It is more important than ever, that your vote is given to the person or people who paint a bold, bright vision of the future and offer the blueprints and leadership to help us get there.
As Americans, if we learn anything from the life of a great innovator like Steve Jobs, it should be this; be fearless of the unknown. We must realize the door of the past has closed, and that provides us all the more reason to hasten our step into the future. A bold, bright future.
