Obama Should Focus on Jobs, Steve Jobs

Steven Pearlstein Washington Post September 6, 2011

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Itâ??s true â?? President Obama needs to focus on jobs. But not the kind of jobs you are probably thinking of.

Iâ??m talking about Steve Jobs, another young leader who rose fast, hit a wall and came crashing down to reality but somehow managed to muster the brilliance and strength of character to stage the greatest comeback in corporate history.

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The company Jobs launched in 1976 and that kicked him out in 1985 was maybe weeks away from bankruptcy when it brought him back in 1996. Today, Apple vies daily with ExxonMobil to be the most valuable company in the world. Jobs managed not only to revolutionize the world of computing, but telephones, music and animation as well. In the process, he turned himself into a cult hero and his company into a symbol of what American workers and American business and the American economy can achieve.

For brand loyalty, brand equity, no company tops Apple and no leader tops Steve Jobs. And what, after all, is successful politics if not brand loyalty and brand equity?

So, what advice might Jobs give the struggling politician?

A good place to start is Jobsâ??s commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005: â??Donâ??t let the noise of othersâ?? opinions drown out your own inner voice,â? Jobs told the graduates. â??Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.â?

Jobs is famous for having ignored consumer research, ignored critics, ignored the doubters who said something couldnâ??t get done.

â??Jobs doesnâ??t get hung up on the art of the possible,â? explains Steven Levy, a columnist at Wired magazine and author of a biography of Jobs, â??Insanely Great.â? â??He figures out what should be done or how it should work and he keeps at it until he brings the world along. The reason Apple has succeeded is because it doesnâ??t start with compromise, doesnâ??t start with the idea that there are constraints.â?

The implication for Obama: Stop looking at polls, stop responding to everything your critics say. Instead, think big, figure out what the country needs and go for it.

At times, it seemed to many as if Jobs went out of his way to offend people, humiliating colleagues and employees whose work or ideas he found wanting, or dismissing critics with a biting put-down.

â??Steve Jobs is willing to piss people off,â? explains Walter Isaacson, whose biography of Jobs will be published this fall. â??Thatâ??s not always an attractive trait, but it is sometimes very useful.â? Jobs understands one of the great paradoxes of leadership â?? namely, that willingness not to be liked can make you wildly popular.

Whatâ??s not useful, as Obama has discovered, is letting people know how desperate you are not to offend them. It makes you look weak and ineffectual.

It also was in his Stanford commencement speech that Jobs first mused publicly about his illness and his own mortality.

â??Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose,â? he said.

The lesson for Obama is that if you spend your time and energy worrying about losing the White House, youâ??ll probably lose the White House. The biggest risk the president faces is being reluctant to take risks. It only confirms suspicions that he is weak and ineffectual.

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