Let me start by saying that Steve Jobs is one of a kind. There is a reason that no other CEO successfully runs their business the way that Steve ran Apple. It’s a generally unsustainable model. For it to work the CEO must know more about what the engineers and designers are doing than they do themselves.
Steve Jobs was not a Harvard MBA. He was not a manage by the number leader. He led by knowing what needed to be done and making sure it happened. There was no immediate concern about EBITDA or quarterly results. If everything else was done right, that would follow. But there was no reason to count every single penny moving through the company.
There is a disturbing trend in the US where non-technical people are running our businesses. MBAs are great, they have very specific skills, but they are limited in their capability to know what is happening on the ground in their company unless they also happened to come from an engineering or technical background. Steve Jobs could actually build and design. He didn’t need others to do it for him. When programmers talked he understood. When the engineers had an issue he could help them solve it.
How are you running your business or group? Do you know the fundamental details? What about the specific daily operating requirements? Steve Jobs (and many of the remaining successful Silicon Valley leaders) prove that long-term success comes from an intimate knowledge of the business.