Steve Jobs Had 3 Management Tips For Companies After Previously Hiring 'Bozos' To Run Apple

Entrepreneur Steve Jobs, renowned for co-founding technology giant Apple Inc AAPL, held the CEO role twice, but also saw the company under different leaderships.

Here are the key items Jobs said are important when managing a company.  

What Happened: While Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, neither served as the first CEO of the company.

Instead, the co-founders went out and hired "professional management," which in some cases was a mistake according to Jobs.

"It didn't work at all," Jobs said in a 1985 interview, shared by Fortune. "Most of them were bozos. They knew how to manage, but they didn't know how to do anything."

In the same interview, Jobs shared three qualities that make good managers.

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Three Key Qualities To Manage a Company: One of the key qualities of managing a company according to Jobs is promoting people who never wanted to be a manager in the first place.

"You know who the best managers are. They're the great individual contributors who never ever want to be a manager, but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as that," Jobs said.

An example from Fortune is Jobs promoting Debi Coleman to a financial manager. Coleman was 32 years old at the time and part of the Macintosh team.

Jobs promoted her due to her expertise on financial management. Coleman said in an interview that no other company in the world would have given her the same opportunity.

She said Apple was betting on her skills and organizational strengths outweighing her lack of experience with technology and manufacturing.

Along with promoting top contributors to managerial positions, Jobs underscored the importance of attracting the right talent.

While in leadership positions at Apple, Jobs was involved with recruiting for the technology giant. Jobs was looking for people who were "insanely great at what they did."

"The neatest thing that happens is when you get a core group of 10 great people. It becomes self-policing as to who they let into that group. So I consider the most important job of someone like myself, recruiting."

Jobs also realized the importance of Apple being a collaborative company, which was a key to his management advice.

Having a common vision was always important to Jobs for the company and its employees.

"That's what leadership is: having a vision, being able to articulate that so that people around you can understand it and getting a consensus on a common vision."  

Jobs often referred to Apple as being the "largest startup" in the world, which went along with the collaboration of all employees and a focus on a common vision.

While numerous sources provide business management advice, Jobs’ proven track record may encourage some to heed his insights on appointing skilled contributors as managers, hiring the right team members, and fostering a collaborative company culture.

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Image generated using artificial intelligence via Midjourney.