Not a "jack of all trades"
Every article I read about Steve Jobs life and career bring me right back to the same place – man, I wish I could be 1% of what he was. Will there ever be another? Very unlikely in my lifetime, anyway. There are so many aspects of our lives that he impacted to be certain, but it is so much farther reaching than the technology, design influences and industry altering impacts. His was a life of unbridled enthusiasm for making things better and recognizing that he could. It has been said that Apple is a tough company to work for if you have a family or need to have a balance – that makes sense. As the quintessential CEO, he expected that everyone would keep his pace – he didn’t want to hire people who wouldn’t give everything of themselves for the tiny little mission of changing the face of our world. Who would? He created what didn’t exist, he broke the mold of what was dictated as “industry standards” and developed a new industry standard, his was the pace to be on if you wanted to change the rules.
Mr. Jobs didn’t try to be everything to everyone, it just ended up that he was the very best at taking an idea and making it beautifully simple, attractive to everyone and with “laser focused” clarity as to what it did. Not an engineer, Mr. Jobs worked at creating what he knew the market would fall in love with, so much so that people will apply the Apple bumper sticker to their cars – a bumper sticker advertising a company! I have yet to see a GE, Home Depot or any other company insignia applied to a bumper – some people even try to remove the fact that the car is a Ford or a Toyota, but the Apple sticker, that shows you are “in the know”.
The Apple symbol has always been and, I assume, will remain synonymous with Steve Jobs. I am not sure there will ever be a company symbol that will have that sort of tie to its founder - ever.
If you look at the Apple symbol as Steve Jobs “resume” – no matter how many things come to mind, you know that he was never a jack of all trades. His was a grand plan indeed, one that he crystallized by saying “I simply want to change the world”.
