Quotes About Leadership

no formal design reviews, so there are no huge decision points. Instead, we can make the decisions fluid. Since we iterate every day and never have dumb-ass presentations, we don't run into major disagreements. On this day Ive was overseeing the creation of a new European power plug and connector for the Macintosh. Dozens of foam models, each with the tiniest variation, have been cast and painted for inspection. Some would find it odd that the head of design would fret

Hertzfeld explained that he needed to get his Apple II DOS program in good enough shape to hand it over to someone. "You're just wasting your time with that!" Jobs replied. "Who cares about the Apple II? The Apple II will be dead in a few years. The Macintosh is the future of Apple, and you're going to start on it now!" With that, Jobs yanked out the power cord to Hertzfeld's Apple II, causing the code he was working on to vanish.

Henry V—the story of a willful and immature prince who becomes a passionate but sensitive, callous but

He also had a trait, so common among innovators, that was charmingly described by his biographer Andrew Hodges: "Alan was slow to learn that indistinct line that separated initiative from disobedience.

Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute

focused, yet he dazzled and baffled colleagues by suddenly changing his mind when he realized he needed to think different.

He didn't invent many things outright, but he was a master at putting together ideas, art, and technology in ways that invented the future. He

Who said your job was to think, spring-wiener?

Look, Steve, you're my best friend, and Apple is your company. I'll do whatever you want.

When one early employee wanted to see the company's organization chart, Noyce made an X in the center of a page and then drew a bunch of other Xs around it, with lines leading to each. The employee was at the center, and the others were people he would be dealing with.

TIM COOK. Steady, calm, chief operating officer hired by Jobs in 1998; replaced Jobs as Apple CEO in August 2011.

The best and most effective way to lead is by letting people do things because they want to do them, not because you want them to.

He did it better because Steve had challenged him," said Atkinson

It was then I realized that I do give a shit about Apple—I started it and it is a good thing to have in the world.

By the summer of 1996 Amelio realized that he had a serious problem.

Jobs's successes came at a cost, since velvety diplomacy was still not part of his repertoire. When he decided that a division of Airborne Express wasn't delivering spare parts quickly enough, he ordered an Apple manager to break the contract. When the manager protested that doing so could lead to a lawsuit, Jobs replied

Stallman was a purist. Torvalds wasn't.

Publicity whiz who guided Jobs early on and remained a trusted advisor.

Stop the train, this isn't going to work," he told Woolard. "This company is in shambles, and I don't have time to wet-nurse the board. So I need all of you to resign. Or else I'm going to resign and not come back on Monday.

At a meeting early in his tenure, Cook was told of a problem with one of Apple's Chinese suppliers. "This is really bad," he said. "Someone should be in China driving this.

I was way too shy ever to be a business leader like Steve.

When they saw what Jobs and Johnson had built, they unanimously approved going ahead. It would, the board agreed, take the relationship between retailing and brand image to a new level.

Jobs's ambition was to build a company that would endure, and he asked Markkula what the formula for that would be. Markkula replied that lasting companies know how to reinvent themselves. Hewlett-Packard had done that repeatedly; it started as an instrument company, then became a calculator company, then a computer company.

I wanted to buy it because I was really into computer graphics," Jobs recalled. "I realized they were way ahead of others in combining art and technology, which is what I've always been interested in.