Steve Jobs' Great Lessons: Permission to Make Mistakes & be an Individual

I was sad to hear of Steve Jobs death.  Truth be told, I'm not a card-carrying member of the Apple fan club.  I still walk around with a Blackberry and use PCs.  For all of Apple's innovation and simplification of technology I have never considered their products to be the holy grail that many avid followers do.  They're great, but not the end-all be-all.

What I love the most about Steve Jobs' impact on the world goes far beyond Apple.  He triggered a paradigm shift in how companies create and revise their products.  He advocated tirelessly for a precious understanding:  that technology should enhance our lives and not complicate them - that design should give us what we need and nothing more.  

I went back to a text version of a speech given at Stanford University a few years ago in which Steve Jobs addressed the touchy subject of death.  I believe that his own words give a great deal of meaning, and perhaps poignancy, to his own passing:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.  And yet death is the destination we all share.  No one has ever escaped it.  And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.  It is Life's change agent.  It clears out the old to make way for the new.  Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away."

Though provoking, huh?

I don't care to use this post to recap Jobs' career, his health problems, or his flaws.  Plenty of other journalists, bloggers and pundits will do that.  

Two things really jumped to mind that I personally learned from watching Steve Jobs' meteoric passage through life.  

1.  His personal trajectory included failure and gave me permission to make mistakes.

2.  He proved that being yourself was always the best solution.

To illustrate lesson one, Job's had this to say about his painful and abrupt termination from the company he founded:

“I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.  The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.  It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life,”

I'm also grateful that it gave him a window in which to turn Pixar into a Hollywood powerhouse that changed forever the face of animation.  Wouldn't the world be a bit poorer without Woody, Buzz, Nemo, and many more iconic characters?

Who was Steve Jobs?  A visionary?  A brilliant inventor?  A perfectionist?  Also a college dropout, a failed executive and a risk-taker.  Like all of us, his life can't be elegantly encapsulated in talking points.

Thank you Steve Jobs for packing a powerful punch in a single button, revolutionizing the technology industry.  Thank you for sticking to your guns when it came to your dreams and passions.  Thank you for proving that although we are all flawed, we are perfect in our own way and should be true to ourselves.

Jobs' once gave some great advice to the next generation about being authentic and following their hearts...

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.  Don't lose faith.   I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.  You've got to find what you love.   And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.  Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven't found it yet, keep looking.  Don't settle...

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.  Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become."

Beautiful.

Everywhere You Go... There You Are

“Everywhere you go, there you are.”

I say this to clients a lot, because they often want to believe that every problem originates from some source outside of themselves.  It’s human nature to deflect responsibility… basic self-preservation instincts from before the dawn of time. But, that instinct to blame and make excuses doesn’t serve people in leadership positions.

In discovering your true self, the very core energy you project to other people shifts.

Like it or not, there is really no fate for us except the one we create. Churchill very wisely said that ‘you create your own universe as you go along’. Do good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people? Of course. But 99% of the things that come to us in life we manifest based on our behaviors.

The beauty of this simple truth is that we can all change our thoughts and behaviors to reflect our true self. And that alignment of external image to internal reality is incredibly powerful. When you get very comfortable in your own skin and become very clear about your beliefs, character and destiny, people are drawn to you and good things begin to happen naturally.

So where do you begin in getting to know your true self?

Values come first. Values dictate how you relate to other people and the world around you.  They guide your behaviors and decisions.  Every great leader understands how to balance the fine line between adaptability and rock-solid certainty about what really matters.  While you have to be ready to shift and change with the demands of your environment, you also have to know what you believe in so that you never compromise your core values.  If honesty is a principle you live by - you can't lie to get a lucrative business deal finalized.  It destroys your credibility.  If good communication is a something you believe in strongly - you shouldn't withhold bad news from your team to avoid hard questions or dissent.  Know and live your values everyday.

Character.  Horace Mann said that 'reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and angels know of us.'  Character differs from values in that it relates more to our most basic understanding of ourselves than our external relationships and interactions.  Character defines your personality and soul at a very deep level and drives the values, strengths and priorities that exhibit in your day-to-day behaviors. Be sure that you never get caught in the trap of linking your character to public opinion or evolving priorities.  If you are a kind and gentle person at your core, your character doesn't change simply because you've been wrongly convicted of a violent crime.  Although your reputation and even your day-to-day values may change based upon your circumstances, your character always remains constant.

The good, the bad and the ugly.  Taking a long, hard look at your strengths and weaknesses is crucial to good leadership.  No one is excellent at everything, so wise leaders know how to leverage the things they are good at and fill in the gaps of their weaknesses with the talents of people around them.  You can't begin to engage in this process unless you've first conducted a realistic assessment of yourself and built a strong base of self-awareness.  Strengths are obviously the fun part!  Our ego loves to focus on the things we're good at.  But often far more critical to success is our understanding of where we fall short, and our ability to admit our weaknesses to others and elicit their help in making things happen.

Vision. Your life, your work and your goals should all converge around a common vision: a big picture view of the purpose for your life and the primary thing you want to accomplish in your time on this planet. Your vision is your enduring purpose. The fundamental reason for existence beyond just making money or survival. It is a perpetual guiding star on the horizon and does not change over time. In essence, your vision is a mental picture of the future you wish to create through endless pursuit of an ideal. It is love, and passion, and the impetus to pursue that which you truly want most out of life.

I hope that by beginning to view your success or failure ratio as a direct result of your own internal make-up and actions, you will move beyond blaming situations or luck for your present day reality and step into a powerful new recognition of your own key role in determining your outcomes and impact.