Steve Jobs on the most important job of a CEO

“The greatest people are self-managing. They don’t need to be managed. Once they know what to do, they’ll go figure out how to do it… What they need is a common vision, and that’s what leadership is. Leadership is having a vision, being able to articulate that so the people around you can understand it, and getting consensus on a common vision.”

Steve continues:

“We wanted people who were insanely great at what they did… and the neatest thing that happens when you get a core group ten great people is that it becomes self-policing as to who they let into that group. So I consider the most important job of someone like myself is recruiting.”

More popular advice from Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs: “There’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product” “One of the things that really hurt Apple was, after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I’ve seen other people get it too—is the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work.” (full article).

Steve Jobs explains the importance of both thinking and doing “It’s very easy for someone to say ‘I thought of this three years ago.’ But usually when you dig a little deeper you find that the people who really did it were also the people who worked through the hard intellectual problems.” (full article).

Steve Jobs reflects on his biggest weakness “I think all of us need to be on guard against arrogance, which knocks at the door whenever you’re successful.” (full article).