Just finished listening to the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. My first experience with audible.com. What a revelation for me as to how I retain information. By listening to the book I caught every word and seemed to remember stories and ideas and concepts much more than I do when I read a book. This could be that Walter Isaacson is a great story-teller and writer — and/or that Steve Jobs is a fascinating character. I realize that I also really like the narrator of the book.
The thought about the narrator has occurred to me because I have now started into Thinking Slow and Fast and I am not so enamoured with either the narrator, or the content for that matter. But maybe I am not far enough into it. And then I thought I’d listen to Jim Collins narrate From Good to Great — again not as compelling as the Steve Jobs experience.
I found the Steve Jobs story full of reasons why business education should be an integrated combination of the analytical and the creative, convergent and divergent with a strong base in the humanities. So often Jobs was balancing (sometimes not very well or at least not “kindly”) the intersection of technology or technological thinking/requirements and the creative — the design and aesthetic components. But it wasn’t just aesthetics for him — it was the way of thinking that got him and his team to where they wanted to me. A simple solution.
I also found the book full of leadership stories — not that Jobs was a role model that we would all want to follow. But that there emerged all sorts of leaders around him — and that he motivated his teams to amazing feats of technology and design. It was about doing the absolute best they could.
It was an inspiring book for me. I liked the idea that the journey is the reward. It isn’t all about the end product (although that is important) — it is also about how we get there.