The shared genius of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs - Nov. 21, 2013: "Yes, these two iconoclasts have disrupted multiple industries, but TED curator Chris Anderson goes much deeper and argues that what Musk and Jobs really have in common is a rare form of design thinking powered by unfettered conviction."
I thought this a very well articulated profile of what makes a great leader, based on these two amazing careers.
He breaks it down to
"system level design thinking": They were not the inventors in traditional sense, but the people able to pull the camera back and imagine the broader ecosystem into which inventions/innovations could become transformative: computing, personal digital devices, payments, electric transport, space travel
"extraordinary conviction": "conviction comes about when the possible future you see aligns with a deeply held view of how the world should be". This is where Jobs' 'reality distortion' comes in. (Of course, one man's conviction to succeed, is many another's path to loss - which is why many of us don't make it, nor should/could we.)
A good George Bernard Shaw quotation at the end: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man"
But what I liked about the article, was that I thought Anderson did identify some core skills that Jobs and Musk had (Job's design and Musk's physics); and it also admitted the role that luck/fortune played - they both needed an early break to give them the larger platform for their ideas. In this way, I think he made these men more accessible, and yet maintained their greatness.
So, perhaps for each of us, we must continue to build on our areas of strength and our self knowledge, continue to think and learn as broadly as we can to gather more inputs and insights about the world, and when the two align, have the courage of our convictions to pursue the opportunity that has just presented itself.
I thought this a very well articulated profile of what makes a great leader, based on these two amazing careers.
He breaks it down to
"system level design thinking": They were not the inventors in traditional sense, but the people able to pull the camera back and imagine the broader ecosystem into which inventions/innovations could become transformative: computing, personal digital devices, payments, electric transport, space travel
"extraordinary conviction": "conviction comes about when the possible future you see aligns with a deeply held view of how the world should be". This is where Jobs' 'reality distortion' comes in. (Of course, one man's conviction to succeed, is many another's path to loss - which is why many of us don't make it, nor should/could we.)
A good George Bernard Shaw quotation at the end: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man"
But what I liked about the article, was that I thought Anderson did identify some core skills that Jobs and Musk had (Job's design and Musk's physics); and it also admitted the role that luck/fortune played - they both needed an early break to give them the larger platform for their ideas. In this way, I think he made these men more accessible, and yet maintained their greatness.
So, perhaps for each of us, we must continue to build on our areas of strength and our self knowledge, continue to think and learn as broadly as we can to gather more inputs and insights about the world, and when the two align, have the courage of our convictions to pursue the opportunity that has just presented itself.
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