Steve Jobs: A Model Failure
October 25th, 2011
As a marketer, as a consumer, as someone who appreciates genius and beautiful design – as a human being – I was tremendously saddened by the death of Steve Jobs.
Every homage to him, every video, every shrine feels right and well-deserved. But there is another side of Steve Jobs that is important, as well.
Steve Jobs was a failure. Not once but several times over. How about the Apple III? It was so poorly designed that Apple suggested owners pick it up and drop it a few inches when it stopped working.
Or Lisa? Now that was a spectacular failure. Though significant in many respects, the grossly overpriced machine survived for about 18 months before it was discontinued. Apple ultimately dumped 2,700 Lisas into a Utah landfill to capture a tax write-off on the unsold inventory.
That was, of course, after Apple had spent $50 million on developing Lisa.
Oops.
But of course, the ultimate Jobs “failure” was getting unceremoniously shoved out of his own company in 1985 by a more politically-astute John Sculley – a big-company executive.
And after getting dumped by Apple, NeXT didn’t do so well, either.
On and on. Over and over.
“We Americans have a terrible habit of distilling stories of our great men and women into simplified and boring sound bites of success while ignoring the long, crooked, difficult, brave roads they took to realize that success,” says Augie Ray, author of a wonderful blog post called The Failure of Steve Jobs and Walt Disney. “We like to believe that success is what defines the American spirit, but the truth is the opposite: failure is what defines the people who achieve greatness.”
I’ve been thinking about how many of us could or would have “come back” from the truly crushing (and very public) failures Jobs endured. Thrown out of your own company? A spectacular product failure? His story is obviously unique, but size these disasters down to something that could happen to any of us and ask yourself what you would do.
How would you feel? Could you still be a leader, a seeker?
This is a dislocating time for many, and everything seems weird. I would advise the average executive as follows: be certain of what you care about, do something about it, and stay focused on what’s really important. Know your story. Believe in your story. And just keep going.
When talking about getting booted out of Apple, Jobs once said, “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.”
No one could have said it better or with more credibility.
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A version of this post was originally published on the Marketing Executive Networking Group‘s blog, MENGBlend.
October 25th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
I don’t understand the mention of Apple II as a failure.
October 25th, 2011 at 2:11 pm
You didn’t mention “Newtwon”….and I’m not an expert on Apple nor much of a fan.
October 25th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Apple III, perhaps?
November 6th, 2011 at 11:10 am
Stephanie, you are so right on this one. I can count many of my own failures, in business and personal life, but the only thing that keeps me going is the fundamental belief in numbers and learnings. You have to try, you have to fail, and you have to do many times to get one great thing right. Maybe two, if you are lucky. Failure and Success are nothing but two sides of same coin – and everyone has that coin. The trick is to toss it as many times as you can without losing faith.
November 8th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
This is actually what makes this country great. You can try and fail and come back again with no stigma. It’s not like that in many (if not most) other cultures, and that is why people in many other countries are so risk-averse.