Comment by stcredzero
8 years ago
What was so impressive to me in that meeting was not the drama so much as it was that Steve Jobs made a decision on the merits to side with John on a technical issue rather than his longstanding and trusted graphics engineer. He overcame his original distaste for the T-shirt and made the right call. Most CEOs would have dismissed John’s comments or paid them lip service.
In terms of diplomacy and tone, Steve Jobs doesn't do well in this story. However, for intellectual and engineering integrity, he's in entirely different league from most US politicians. From what I've seen, the typical US politican would rather puff up and pretend their constituent's majority position is scientific fact than actually engage with science, fact, and expertise.
I think this is a good way to sum up his genius abilities: 1) An ability to see past consensual illusions to engineering and design truths and first principles. 2) A low ability to transmit such insights in a diplomatic way. (Though, given a position of power, his messages are unambiguous and highly persuasive. Effective != moral, however.)
There's enough stories where Jobs could be persuasive when he wanted to; it's just a lot easier to scream at someone if that would work, too. I'm reminded of Lyndon Johnson, oddly enough.
'Tis true we don't know the backstory - but Steve may have tangled with his guy before, he may have tried diplomacy with him and before and found it just didn't penetrate his defenses, or he may have felt the display was necessary to nudge another one or two of his troops who were present. Or he may have wanted to create a viral story to prod his troops and the situation provided him the perfect opportunity. I've known bosses who planned and scripted their explosions (and the topic of them) days or even weeks in advance and then waited for the right moment in front of the right crowd to present itself, if the issue was sufficiently critical, to pop their cork spectacularly. So we can't necessarily assume Jobs was impetuously undiplomatic or just fumbled the diplomacy aspect. I do believe there are instances of Jobs exhibiting diplomacy and politess.