Steve Jobs’ Big Five Personality Dimension Essay
1. Customers don’t know what they want. The controversial start when the Steve Jobs come with this phrase “We built [the Mac] for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not.
We weren’t going to go out and do market research” and after more than ten years he come up with this phrase “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them” which is contradicting to current trend of doing things.Generally it is not the way to do or invent things because without proper market research especially to the customer needs and wants, it is almost impossible for the product to be success. Usually the customer and environment will determine the product success in market and how strong it will stand in the competitive market. The way of Jobs doing is way different from the conventional way where he think that if we made a very good thing for him and her team, it will be applicable for everyone. This kind of assumption is acquired you to have a very strong team like what Jobs have.If not, the product will be in big risk.
2. Maintain obsessive secrecy. It begin when the writer from Wired says that “Apple operates with a level of secrecy that makes Thomas Pynchon look like Paris Hilton”. There are pro and cons about this strategy by using obsessive secrecy. By holding the secrecy more in tight, they manage to capture the customer and the market share more. The secrecy will trigger the curiosity among the buyers and they will wait for the product as soon as the product release.
Among the producer they know that the first batch of the product usually will have some problem as it is the early release batch or examination of the market response. Different from the Apple, they will make sure they product is right and functional well at the first time. Other than that, they also will have more share from this strategy and gain more profit to do future investment in order for them to increase quality of their product from the research and development.Such support will allowed them to grow more and gain competitive market. to have this secrecy they also need to invest more in hiring people and keep the people around them to not leak out the information. 3. Project a reality-distortion field. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google Inc.
, has said “He had this extraordinary depth. I have a PhD in this area, and he was so charismatic he could convince me of things I didn’t actually believe” when he met Jobs.To be away from usual is not easy and Jobs manage to get away from the “usual” title by having the brilliant idea and have what it takes to influence people affected directly from what in his mind. Not everyone can make this because this characteristic will need you to have more than what you can see and projection to the future as in reality of today. Ordinary people will unlikely to have this kind of thinking because of the hidden risk that comes across in their mind.
The legendary myth of more cost will be acquired in order to invent product will make them withdraw their idea.Matching the reality on what we have today and what will happen in the future somehow determine the success of the future but Jobs see more than that because he always think what other people might not think. 4. Micromanage every detail. Either a complement or not, Fortune says Jobs as “a corporate dictator who makes every critical decision — and oodles of seemingly noncritical calls, too. ” Managing almost everything from small to all major things has their own positive and negative advantages. It is good to have very detail things like what they have planned in early phase.This will control the quality and assure that they will not away from track.
The negative things about doing too detail works is that not everything need a special intention or care because it will waste time and it will involve more cost. As what Jobs did is, he is very particular person and he need to know everything from the beginning to the end. For him, he needs this because he wants to take control and in charge in everything happen around him. The reason for this most probably because for him this is his life and passions, and he need to do it right at all times.He is the one who will work in very proper manner and looks everything in every single side to make sure everything in order and will work accordingly. 5. Beat people up.
Jeff Goodell describe Jobs as having an “abrasive personality” and “unapologetic brutality” shows that personality of Jobs that he is really serious in what he did. Beating up people doesn’t mean that he want to morally down the people but his expectation as high as what he has in mind. The problem about this is people sometimes cannot read what in his mind and this will trigger what people say “hero-shithead roller-coaster”.He believes people will work more intelligently and more consistent if they know on how to learn from their mistake.
Upfront, Jobs also expect people to do it right for the first time because this will reduce cost and time. This characteristic has bring him to what he is today, as one of the giant brand in the world. Discipline and consistency has one of the personalities that Jobs must keep and carry forward in order to maintain his legacy to the company. Apple now has become what we saw by having this sacrifice all the time since it born with the Jobs.
