Rich Kao

By John Lily    

STEVE JOBS

Like many of us, I’ve been thinking a lot about Steve Jobs the last few days — thinking about the man and his legacy. I’ve been having some trouble even understanding the way I feel, let alone being able to put it into words. Lots of folks have asked me what I think, and have been surprised that I haven’t tweeted or blogged about it yet. So here’s a first shot.

I’m finding my feelings to be pretty complex, which I guess isn’t too surprising given who he was. But for a man I’ve never met, I’m a little surprised about how much of my thinking he’s affected, and how many competing feelings I’ve got.

But some of them are pretty simple.

As a designer, I think it’s impossible to feel anything but pure, unadulterated joy that Steve existed at all. And I really mean that: thank god for him, he changed so much. He wasn’t the first to care about design in technology, and he won’t be the last, but he moved things so much.

He made beautiful software and hardware like nobody had ever seen before. Crucially, he built tools that helped — or completely enabled, really — creatives make their own beautiful work that enriched the world. He completely and utterly validated the view that design could be immensely valuable economically, not just culturally.

Mostly he made it acceptable — desirable! — to believe in and practice great, human-centered design in our work and lives. What a gift.

As a people manager and leader, I really struggled with how to think about him. The stories of how brutal he could be on the people around him — employees, competitors, and everyone else — are legion, and they’re not apocryphal. He could be deeply dehumanizing and belittling to the people around him. Like a lot of people of great vision, which he surely was, he did it all in the name of greatness, of perfection — but I have enough close friends who have been in the line of Jobs’ fire to know how personally destructive it could be, and as a manager I have a hard time with it.

On the other hand, he was an unbelievable leader and motivator.

It turns out that I worked at Apple ATG (Advanced Technology Group) in 1994/5 when I was a grad student at Stanford, and then again for all of 1997, when I moved back here from Trilogy.

I remember being at a talk he gave shortly after returning in 1997 as Interim CEO. A bunch of us employees (I was at ATG at the time) were in Town Hall in Building 4 at Infinite Loop to hear him, and he was fired up. Talked a lot about how Apple was going to completely turn things around and become great.

It was a tough time at Apple — we were trading below book value on the market — our enterprise value was actually less than our cash on hand. And the rumors were everywhere that we were going to be acquired by Sun. Someone in the audience asked him about Michael Dell’s suggestion in the press a few days previous that Apple should just shut down and return the cash to shareholders, and as I recall, Steve’s response was: “Fuck Michael Dell.” Good god, what a message from a CEO! He followed it up by admitting that the stock price was terrible (it was under $10, I think — pretty sure it was under $2 split-adjusted), and that what they were going to do was reissue everyone’s options on the low price, but with a new 3 year vest. He said, explicitly: “If you want to make Apple great again, let’s get going. If not, get the hell out.” I think it’s not an overstatement to say that just about everyone in the room loved him at that point, would have followed him off a cliff if that’s where he led.

He was also a gifted, gifted operator. One of the struggles we were going through when he came back was that Apple was about the leakiest organization in history — it had gotten so bad that people were cavalier about it. In the face of all those leaks, I remember the first all company e-mail that Steve sent around after becoming Interim CEO again — he talked in it about how Apple would release a few things in the coming week, and a desire to tighten up communications so that employees would know more about what was going on — and how that required more respect for confidentiality. That mail was sent on a Thursday; I remember all of us getting to work on Monday morning and reading mail from Fred Anderson, our then-CFO, who said basically: “Steve sent mail last week, he told you not to leak, we were tracking everyone’s mail, and 4 people sent the details to outsiders. They’ve all been terminated and are no longer with the company.”

Well. If it wasn’t clear before that the Amelio/Spindler/Sculley days of Apple were over, it was crystal clear then, and good riddance.

As a leader of people, you have to respect how much he (and more importantly, his teams) accomplished. But I struggle with some of the ways that he led, and how they affected good people.

Still.

I’m a little uncomfortable with the outpouring of sentiment about people who want to be like Steve. There’s a sort of beatification going on that I think misses the point. He was never a nostalgic man at all, and I can’t help but feel like he would think this posthumous attention was, in a lot of ways, a waste — seems like he’d have wanted people to get back to inventing.

On Twitter yesterday Naval nailed it, as he often does: “I never met my greatest mentor. I wanted so much to be like him. But, his message was the opposite. Be yourself, with passionate intensity.”

That’s it, I think — that’s the biggest message from Jobs’ life. Don’t try to be like Steve. Don’t try to be like anyone.

Be yourself and work as hard as you can to bring wonderful things into the world. Figure out how you want to contribute and do that, in your own way, on your own terms, as hard as you can, as much as you can, as long as you can.

His most lasting message, I hope, won’t be about technology or management or media or communications or even design. The work he did in those areas certainly matters and will continue to — impossible to ignore it.

Still, I think it’s not the main thing, the essential thing.

I hope the message that people really take, really internalize is that being yourself, as hard as you can, is the way to have important and lasting impact on our world. That might be in the context of technology. It might be in the context of technology, or the arts, or sports, or government, or social justice — or even in the context of your family and close friends.

It almost doesn’t matter. The thing that matters most is to figure out what’s important to you, what’s core to you, and do that. Be that. And do it as well as you possibly can, every single day.

1. Always vote for education.
2. If in doubt, order prime rib.
3. Always get out of debt as quickly as possible.
4. Work first, work hard, then play.
5. Read lots.
6. Be loyal to your friends.
7. Never forget your roots.
8. Always remember the author of the books you read.
9. Never pay a bill late.  Never.
10. Don't dress like a slob.
11. Learn Chinese.
12. Go to a good school.
13. Don't put your feet on the table.
14. Exercise daily.
15. See the good in people.
16. Read the NYT or International Herald Tribune.
17. Enjoy sidewalk cafes.
18. Never shirk your responsibility.
19. Be early to appointments.
20. Never be lazy.
21. Be self-motivated; be productive always.
22. Enjoy rum cake.
23. Be loyal to your football team.
24. Be a high achiever.
25. Travel lots.
26. Be an influencer.
27. Speak well.
28. Pay in cash.
29. Be humble.
30. Be hospitable; throw good parties.
31. Honor your parents.
32. Be a giver.
33. Keep a journal.
34. Have integrity.
35. Empty the garbage can completely, and the stuff around it.

(Thanks Mom & Dad)

My take: Despite the all exaggerated statements by both Republicans & Democrats about each other and the president, I do NOT believe they were devils on either side. And I do NOT believe one side understood the stakes better than the other. I DO believe both sides tried their level best to do what was best for the country. It just came down to different "world views" and ideological / philosophical differences on HOW to address the debt. Democratic representation is meant to approximate the people's sentiments and views. I believe the massive struggle over this bill DID represent the deep seated differences in America, and I DO believe the "compromise" bill was PERFECT in it's non-perfect details. Both parties had to swallow some bitter medicine, b/c the country is not perfectly on one side or the other. The Tea Party seems to have come out a bit ahead regarding their agenda, but that's what should have happened b/c that's what 2010 mid-term elections signaled. In the end, the bill in all it's messiness and aggravation did reflect (IMHO), the electorate. To me that's an amazing display of democracy at work, and shows why countries like US are so great. Of course I have my own convictions of what was right and wrong in this bill/debate, but one my one opinion won't rule; it's blended in with everyone else (although I know my "opinion is right"!) Democracy is an imperfect system of governing, but by golly it did what it's advertised to do. President Lincoln said democracy is a gov't "by the people and for the people." We have to live with that until the end of the age, and in the meantime, we must pray God uses it to bless all peoples, as we are commanded to do.

June 20, 2011

This post resumes the series on D.M. Lloyd-Jones' classic book Preaching and Preachers.

When Lloyd-Jones says that people still will come to hear preaching in our contemporary culture, he adds two qualifications—or you might say he has two underlying assumptions. He says: "The answer is that they will come, and that they do come... when it is true preaching. This may be slow work... it is a long-term policy."

First, he says, it must be "real preaching," and he later explains that this means preaching done by someone who is gifted to speak to larger groups. And that is a rub. As someone who taught preaching in seminary, I know that only a fraction of the students coming through seminary showed promise of having such gifts. 

There are indeed many "incarnational" approaches to ministry that do not require a gifted speaker, and we should use them all. In fact, I would argue that in a post-Christian culture, preaching will not be effective in the gathered assembly if Christians are not also highly effective in their scattered state. In our times, people will be indifferent or hostile to the idea of attending church services without positive contact with Christians living out their lives in love and service. Therefore the incarnational "dispersed" ministry of the church is extremely vital and necessary.

Nevertheless, it is a mistake to argue that people in our society will not come to hear "real preaching." The fact is that, even in a very post-Christian city, if the preaching is of high quality, people will be brought and will come back. They will be shocked at how convicting and attractive the gospel message is, and they will feel like they've never really heard it before (even if they have been raised in a church).

Is that all that the Doctor meant by "real preaching"—done by someone who is gifted? No, there's more. During a convalescence after surgery in 1968, he visited the churches of many of his ministerial followers to hear them preach, but was distressed by much of what he heard. In response he said, "Once evangelical preaching was too subjective—now it is too objective." (From Iain Murray in "Raising the Standard of Preaching" in Lloyd-Jones: Messenger of Grace, p. 99ff.) In their concern to avoid entertainment and story-telling, their preaching had become too intellectual; it now addressed only the mind "and not the whole man" (p.105). He went on: "We have got the curious notion, 'It's the doctrine that matters,' and ignore this. With the message we have got, it is tragic if we can be cold, lifeless, and dull" (p.106).

In other words, though Lloyd-Jones often warns against being too adapted to the culture, in the end the Doctor argues strongly that preaching must not be dry and intellectual but profoundly life-related, that the preacher's tone must not be affected and "parsonic" but genuine, passionate, and transparent. If you listen to the Doctor's evening sermons in particular, you learn that he was always referring to current events and intellectual trends, often expounding Scripture in order to answer the questions posed by the culture. So the preaching must not be just a "running commentary" or an overly-cognitive explanation of the text, but must have shape and passion and connect forcefully with the heart and life of the congregant.

But the Doctor's assurance that "people will come" rested on two assumptions. First, that it was "real preaching" and the second that "it is a long-term policy." He means an effective preaching ministry takes many years of hard work. Americans of course are impatient and don't like to hear this. But he is right, and I'd add that it takes years of work in two regards. First, it requires the creation of a community, a body of believers who understands not only how to profit from real preaching themselves, but who know how to leverage it in their own ministry to their friends and neighborhoods. The Doctor begins to address this, but not enough for my satisfaction. Second, it requires many years and hundreds of sermons before a preacher becomes as good as they have the capacity to be. Some of that means the preacher staying put and becoming involved enough in the lives of the people and city so as to be able to address their questions and issues well from the Scripture. Some of that means coming to understand the Bible well enough to always make it clear. Some of it means years of repentance and prayer that creates an increasingly holy, transparent character.

In conclusion, I believe that Lloyd-Jones has made his case. I too am willing to affirm the "primacy of preaching" though I think there are many conservative evangelicals who take that to mean that preaching is essentially the only thing a minister has to do and everything else takes care of itself. That is a disastrous mistake. A man who is not deeply involved in personal shepherding, evangelism, and pastoral care will be a bad preacher. A man who can't lead his church well, forming it into a cohesive community, will find (as we noted above) that his church can't really benefit from his preaching. To say that preaching is primary in the church is correct. To make it virtually solitary in practice is not. Some will say that the Doctor made this mistake in his own ministry, and they may be right. Thirty years from now, if anyone cares, they'll be able to point out my glaring errors, too. And yours. For now, I hope more people will accept and embrace what the Doctor has to say about the importance of preaching in our time.