Tag: Steve Job

Be your own hero

One of my favorite bloggers happens to be a client. Her name is Nilofer Merchant. Of all the Steve Jobs’ ‘lessons’ that have been gleaned, I believe she has written the best and I share a part of it with you here…

“When I was growing up, I looked for a savior in just about everyone.

There were too many fruitless visits from child protective services. There were too many police cars that arrived to “quiet things down” only to let them flare up again the next day. There were too many visits to the hospital.The police men, the agency representatives, and even the hospital workers seemed unable to do anything about what they clearly knew was a problem. There were still too many holes in the wall from when the rolling pin aimed at me, missed.

Since those adults were unable to help me, it’s no wonder that I started to imagine a hero in my father, whom I did not remember and hadn’t seen since I was a toddler. I created a fantasy life where he rode to my rescue. Finally, when I was 12 years old, I met him again. And, of course, while the specific story is complicated, you won’t be surprised to find out that the person who had abandoned me when I was a baby wasn’t the person who was going to save me years later.

The day I met him, I realized something that would shape the rest of my life: there was no Hero (or Heroine) who was going to save me. I needed to save myself.

So, it’s with that life context that I am watching the beatification of Steve Jobs. Google the term, “Steve Jobs tribute” and you get back 5 million plus results. And I’m fairly sure that’s an undercount. There’s a good reason for this; the Hero Narrative has deep roots in our culture. We find it in history books and religions, in our sports teams and, yes, even in our corporate cultures. We obsess. We deify, as if there is a single defining idea of how innovation works, what makes a leader great, or how success happens.

This is not new. It is the idea of The One and it shows up in many ways: Who will be the next leader of the free world? What nation will be the next superpower? Which visionary company is the single conqueror of industry? (It’s Amazon, it’s Google, it’s Facebook, it’s Apple!). And we have it in management disciplines with debates like: isn’t it better to have one smart person than lots of ordinary people working for our organizations?

But I wonder if this framework is wrong.

Let’s take another look at Steve Jobs’s own example. He didn’t study other people; he followed his own passions. He didn’t seek meaning by trying to emulate someone else’s life, or even emulating the winning business practices of his day — as I’ve written before, he created a clarity of purpose for himself. The same principle can apply to all of us.

via blogs.hbr.org

With all due respect to the Harvard Business Review, I’m going to ask you to follow the ‘via’ link and read the rest of Nilofer’s article and please, comment on it there…

I’m tempted to say that Nilofer is my hero, but I can hear her tell me ‘Dude. Be your own hero!‘ as clear as day in my mind. Her closing words say it all: “The cultural change when people know their own purpose and their own power in creating change is what could change everything: for ourselves, for our organizations, and our economy. So, go ahead and buy that Walter Isaacson book. But, let’s not obsess over being the next Steve Jobs or starting the next Facebook or [whatever]. Let us, instead, be inspired to find our own purpose in the world, and a tribe of people to do it with.”

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The Time We’re Losing

Steve Jobs shows off iPhone 4 at the 2010 Worl...
Image via Wikipedia

We lose time when we check our phone every time it beeps and bings, especially if someone we love is sitting beside or across from us. We lose time every time we turn on the glowing box instead of pursue our future visions and goals. We throw away time every time we agree to an hour meeting when 20 minutes will do. We lose time chasing that extra six cents a gallon we heard they were getting for gas across town, not stopping to think that we’re only getting back $1.30 for that effort.

Every time we don’t say sorry first and end the stalemate, we are losing time. Every time we focus on our regrets, we lose time. Whenever you look in the mirror and judge yourself a failure, you are losing time. Strangely, this made me think of golf balls.

There is not one golf ball in the world that judges itself a failure. Sometimes they land in the hole. Other times, they get lost in the woods. But they are still primarily the same object. The same is true for you. Failure is something about a moment. Failure is a great thief of time. Learn. Embrace your learning. Move. Time only goes in one direction, and that’s away from you.

Make that call. Pick up that course of study. Practice that new idea. Experiment with that plan. Accept that you are who you are, and that change isn’t the goal: awareness and adaptation are the goals.

Set your phone to silent. Check it as infrequently as you can stand. Before we all had cell phones, our children all lived. The boss wants you to be responsive. Fine. Be responsive, but not a slave.

Time, friends, is the most difficult of the currencies to leverage, and we all spend it like it’s free.

This doesn’t mean “hurry.” This means “live.” Live in the way that suggests you know what time it is, with or without a watch. Because it’s your time. And that’s what matters while you still breathe.

And for the bonus round? Think about how you can use your time to extend value to people after you have stopped breathing. That’s why the world is thinking so much about Steve Jobs today. For every flaw you want to mention, for every truth about his temper or his choices, he built a legacy, more than once, with the time he had.

via chrisbrogan.com
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