We admire Steve Jobs for what he had accomplished in his relatively short life time. Beyond his talents, we should take a deeper look at his courage. Not many people in the modern time can beat his true courage to stand on his own and not to be fooled by any other.
Forbes magazine published another article by Eric Jackson on “The Ten Life Lessons From Steve Jobs We Should Never Forget”.
It’s amazingly refreshing to notice the 2nd lesson: Don’t tolerate bozos around you. Here is the paragraph:
“Throughout his life, Steve had a great “bozo” detector. He did a super job of not letting bozos proliferate at his companies. He weeded them out if they were there – until they weren’t. You’ll never be perfect at it and neither was Steve but the key thing is that bozos sap energy from you and the best people in the company working with you. Bozos make bozo decisions. Bozos hire worse bozos beneath them. Stamp them out. Don’t let them take root around you.”
For any truly competent people, we can’t agree more on this truth, but very few in our current society besides Steve Jobs had called it out. Don’t we just tolerate bozos a lot more nowadays in the names of team work, collaboration or simply being pleasant?
For company leaders, especially those top leaders who want to bring a business from good to great, Steve’s bozo theory is super important to remember and an effective detector can be essential for success.
However in consulting industry, diplomacy and pleasing personalities are often the necessity to the extent that it could be both the short-term winning card and the long-term poison. Leaders in consulting need to be mindful about how they play the cards to win business and at the same time to stay true to oneself and to the principals. The establishment of a truthful competent image of the company and its people will be forever lasting no matter for providing products or services.