What Would Steve Jobs Do? How the Steve Jobs Way Can Inspire Anyone to Think Differently and Win [Hardcover]

Peter Sander (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 8, 2011

Lead and Succeed Like the World’s Greatest Business Innovator

There’s no accounting for Steve Jobs’s mind. He just didn’t think the way the rest of the world does. Regarded by many as the most innovative and influential business leader of our time, Jobs was a visionary beyond compare. He was why Apple is Apple and everyone else is everyone else.

We can’t transform ourselves into Steve Jobs. How he put his ideas into action, however, was systematic, efficient, focused, and smart. And this you can do.

What Would Steve Jobs Do? presents the six-part business model Jobs applied to make Apple the most valuable publicly traded manufacturing corporation in the world and the global model for business excellence. While the results of this model can be profound, each step is something you can easily focus on with clarity and purpose:

Customer—Understand your customers so well that you know what they want more than they do.
Vision—Don’t stop thinking at “new product”; synthesize your ideas, products, and technologies around a specific game-changing customer issue.
Culture—Create an environment filled with people who consider “can’t” a bad word.
Product—Approach your product as something that can change the world— not just something to beat the competition or get a job done.
Message—Deliver a message so compelling that it becomes an extension of the product itself.
Personal Brand—Make people think constancy, promise, and trust when they think of you.

Steve Jobs was a true original. What we’ve all learned from him is incalculable. And what we can continue to learn from him will shape the world.

Transform your organization, recast your future, and do your part to redefine our world using the wisdom and foresight of the greatest business sage in generations.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Lead and succeed like the world’s greatest business innovator

When it comes to Steve Jobs, everyone from business journalists to the average iPod owner asks the same question: “How did he do it?”

Anyone facing practical business challenges on a daily basis, though, reframes the question to “What would Steve Jobs do?”

Finally, someone answers the question in a way that gives business owners and managers something to work with. What Would Steve Jobs Do? breaks down Jobs’s genius into six manageable parts, which you can use to face today’s toughest business challenges and transform your company into an Apple-style industry leader.

Learn how Jobs viewed the customer. Find out how he built Apple’s culture. Discover his pioneering approaches to marketing, branding, team building, and leading.

Running a successful business today is tougher than it has been in generations—if not ever. No one understood this better than Steve Jobs. He is gone, but his legacy of business creativity and innovation is unparalleled. Surmount every challenge that comes your way and take your business to new heights using these lessons from the greatest innovator of our time.

About the Author

Peter Sander is a researcher, business consultant, and former marketing program manager for a major Silicon Valley tech firm. He is the author of 27 business books on innovation, marketing, economics, and investing. He has an MBA from Indiana University and lives in Granite Bay, CA.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (November 8, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071792740
• ISBN-13: 978-0071792745
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #916,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Seven Reasons to Love/Read this book November 22, 2011

By John Chancellor TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Steve Jobs had a significant impact on all of our lives. As is often the case, we will not truly understand the total impact until we gain some historical perspective. But just a surface look at his major accomplishments will let you know he truly was a remarkable visionary. He took two different companies to the top of their field - Apple Computer with the Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad and Pixar Studios best known for Toy Story.

While this book is not a biography of Steve Jobs, you cannot begin to understand how he accomplished all he did without knowing and understanding at least a brief history of the man. So the first reason is to gain a better understanding of Steve Jobs and his accomplishments. Peter Sanders, the author, does an excellent job of providing a brief history of Steve Jobs and what he accomplished in his relatively short life.

The main purpose of this book is to try to capture the genius of Steve Jobs in such a way that mere mortals will be able to understand how he did what he did and incorporate some of his genius in their own journey.

In Mr. Sanders view, there are six parts to the Steve Jobs' leadership model. The six parts each represent excellent reasons to read this book. Taken together they form the basis for a unique leadership model.

The first part is Customer. Steve Jobs had an uncanny insight into the customer's wants/needs. He did not focus on incremental improvements. His focus was on what would change the customer's life. There is a great leadership lesson here for anyone in business.

The second part is Vision. He had the vision of what could be and sold the vision first internally and then externally. He let the vision be the driver of decisions. This is extremely vital for anyone running a business. You will only get engaged employees and customers if you have the right vision and get everyone on board.

Culture is the third segment of the Steve Jobs Leadership model. All companies develop a culture, either by plan or by default. If you want to develop a company capable of doing great work, you must take great care to develop a culture that fosters it. Again, some great insights into how culture impacts the results of any company.

Product is the fourth part of the equation. For Apple the product had to be game changing. Instead of following the crowd in simply adding more features onto an existing product, they made the product simple. Cool is the word most often associated with Apple products. Most business people think their product can't be made cool, Jobs showed that almost any product can be cool. If you want game changing products, you must take this approach to your product.

There was probably no one better at delivering a launch message than Steve Jobs. The message is so important but unfortunately one most CEOs delegate to ad agencies or others in the company. Steve was a master at crafting and delivering messages - the fifth segment in the model.

The last segment was brand. When we think of brand, we often think of big name consumer products. But as Mr. Sanders points out, any company or any body has a brand. Most people choose not to consciously manage their brand. Steve Jobs was a master at managing the Apple brand. There are some great lessons for all in brand management here.

This book will give you some great insights into the life of Steve Jobs. He never seemed to focus on money. He did not flaunt his wealth. His focus was on the customer, their wants/needs and how he could change their world. At times he was abrasive but it was generally to protect the brand/product. He would not settle for less than what the company was capable of delivering.

If you love Apple and/or its products, you will gain a lot of insight into what made the company so special in the customer's heart. You will also gain a lot of insight into how you can follow his lead to improve your own company/products.

Excellent book, easy to read and extremely insightful.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommend January 20, 2012

By Russ Buschert

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Finally, a timely business strategy book that is a fast, easy, fun, and valuable read. While Sander provides a very good short history of Jobs and Apple, this book is not just another biography.

There are/were very few people in the world that have the attributes of Steve Jobs and fewer still that are in positions and who have the power to exploit them. Most of us will agree that multiple leadership styles can be very effective, but every once in awhile a leader (business, political, religious, etc.) comes along that simply dwarfs the rest of us. Steve was one of those rare leaders.

I lived and worked in Silicon Valley in the early 80's, played games on an Apple II, and knew people working at Apple and some who left because of Jobs. His mix of passion, skills, shortcomings, and complexity will prevent any of us from successfully copying his leadership persona (or any other giant for that matter).

What I like about this book is that it simplifies the mystique behind Apple and Jobs into 6 basic principles that we might consider in our own endeavors. Many of these principles relate to traditional business strategies, but Sander shows how Jobs' unique focus can yield vastly better results. Best of all, the principles he has identified can be implemented unaccompanied by an outsized personality. There are a number of small business `gems' sprinkled throughout the book as well. Virtually any book about Steve Jobs will be very entertaining and this one is no exception. Beyond that, though, this is one of the very few business books I am recommending to my business colleagues.

Russ Buschert

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The management style of Steve Jobs December 2, 2011

By Mr. Stephen N. Driscoll

Format:Hardcover

In a hundred years' time people will speak of Steve Jobs in perhaps much the same way that we today speak of Henry Ford, John Rockefeller and J.P Morgan. He will be remembered as a visionary and a creative genius, an entrepreneur and perhaps, just perhaps, the greatest business leader of our generation.

Walter Isaacson new biography, Steve Jobs, is probably the best introduction around to Steve's business history, personality and philosophy.

Peter Sander, in this book, does not attempt to provide such a detailed biographical account (he spends only perhaps a hundred pages on this). His main purpose is, rather, to give a distillation of Steve's overall management style. He isolates six components of the Apple business that Jobs focused the bulk of his attention on - customer, vision, culture, product, message and brand. The author spends most of his book expanding on Steve's philosophy with respect to each of these business components, interspersed with a selection of quite interesting anecdotes from Jobs' business career.

The book will be of most benefit to those who wish to better understand the leadership approach that made Steve such a success.