The Wired Apple Article: Controlling My Inner Control Freak

I’ve been thinking about the recent Wired article on Steve Jobs. The upshot is that Jobs is an asshole: controlling, demeaning, aggressive, so fundamentally disrespectful that he parks in handicapped spaces.

But that’s not all he is. Jobs also has a vision of what he wants to do that is so vivid that he is charismatic in almost the original, Old Testament sense of the word:  some version of the spirit flows through him, touches others and makes them so hungry that they will follow him. 

I’ve worked with people who’ve tried to get away with inverting this formula—I scream, therefore, I’m passionate, therefore I must have a vision. Such people usually don’t have vision at all, they just lack manners.

Some of the great creative directors–and Jobs is fundamentally a creative director–have been notoriously soft spoken. Tom McElligott would just say,  “We’re not quite there yet.”  This meant that the creative team needed to come up with dozens of more ideas.  I’ve also seen people with legitimate vision that was slightly undersized: they needed to listen just a little more to others to correct some lack in their concept and they never did.  The clung to their stunted, merely personal, overcherished ideas for too long.

I’m not Jobs; I’m just not that smart; my ideas aren’t that fully formed. Criticism and collaboration usually helps me see how my work could become better.

I’ve also always liked the original hiring policy of Doyle Dane Bernbach, the single most influential advertising agency in the short history of the industry: you need to have talent, because without talent you’re no use to us and you can’t be a bastard, because life is too short to work with bastards. But the Jobs article still haunts me. 

Comments

[Carolyn]

Great post. And yes, Jobs IS a creative director. I have to check out that haunting article, too. Though I want to keep loving Apple.