A Job Description for the Business Owner - стр. 6

It is amazing to me that people raised in a “civilized” and conformist society still aspire to achieve anything. In my opinion, the desire to achieve is the reason many business owners, while in the process of growing their business, go through an evolving set of goals. Starting with the desire to provide themselves and their families with comfortable living conditions, they eventually discover the desire to achieve something more. I am no exception. Having started a business to create a source of income and opportunities for professional growth, I, too, eventually realized that I wanted to create a really big business game. For whatever reason, it seems that many of us first need to see that we are capable in order to become inspired to create something really worthwhile. From the moment we are born, the world tries to convince us that the only way anybody can become a somebody is by following the rules and being controlled by someone else. It is therefore vital that you come to realize your inner abilities in order to achieve something truly worthwhile.

Take, for example, people who enter the business world right out of school and start successful companies; they all share the same trait. Before going into business, they became experienced and comfortable at managing teams. It's really that simple. A student gets experience as a class president, a member of a student committee, or a project leader; and when the business world becomes accessible, she or he already has a basic understanding of the rules of the game. She knows people need well-defined and achievable goals. She knows people’s activities need to be coordinated, and she also knows a great secret: If you tell a person that something needs to be done and that person supports the group’s goal, he will do his best to make it happen.

Steve Jobs is an inspiring example of such a group leader. His subordinates claimed that he asked for the impossible—that his standards were too high, and that it was technically impossible to make his dreams come true. The engineers thought Jobs was crazy when he asked them to place the Macintosh LC inside a beautiful but tiny case. When Jobs came up with his legendary Macintosh Classic, he was told that nobody needed such a computer. Jobs pushed his employees to work eighty hours a week and did everything possible to help bring his ideas to fruition. He was so difficult to work with that in 1985 the shareholders decided to oust him. As a protest, Jobs sold all of his shares and started other projects. A series of strategically important mistakes for Apple while under the leadership of a CEO who knew about increasing profits but who operated far from the ideology of the company followed, until Jobs returned in 1996 to rescue a failing company.