12. Know both the big picture and the details.
Some CEO’s are great at one or the other of these, but very rarely both. It’s simply not the norm to be talented across the entire spectrum from creative blue sky thinking to attention focused on the minutiae of detail.
But Jobs was one of those who did both very well, throughout his career he was an innovator. In 2000 he had the vision and idea for computers to become the digital hub of music video and photos. In 2010 content was next on the agenda in the form of Cloud, a huge server where user content was uploaded and seamlessly synced between personal devices.
At the other end of the scale was Jobs’ obsession with detail, for instance the type of rivets and screws used across Apple products, the design, colour and packaging of boxes, all in the inexhaustible pursuit of perfection.
As a leader to have that combination of vision and inspiring others towards a bigger picture, alongside a very detailed path of how to deliver that vision, is both rare and uniquely creative.
13. Combine the humanities with the sciences.
Jobs was very clever at appealing and providing for two types of people by intersecting humanities and the sciences, morphing creativity with technology, arts with engineering . He brought together poetry and processes to jolt innovation with an intuitive feel for business strategy.
Whenever on the stage at a product launch in the last decade, at the end Jobs would always make a reference to show the sign of an intersection between the liberal arts and technology in their product. What he believed was the essence to applied imagination and the key to building innovative economies. Other visions included textbooks to artistic creations, magical tools for digi photography, making TV simple and personal.
