In the 1950s, most Americans probably couldn’t name the CEOs of the largest companies in the United States, including General Motors, United States Steel, and Standard Oil. But these days, some of the most successful businesses have shifted from being faceless bureaucracies to having their products and services inextricably linked to bosses with outsized personalities.
Think Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Steve Jobs of Apple, and Elon Musk of Tesla.
All these leaders have one thing in common: charisma—and in fact, today it’s a quality that many now consider essential for modern-day leadership, says Richard S. Tedlow, MBA Class of 1949 Emeritus Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of the forthcoming book, The Emergence of Charismatic Business Leadership, which will be published September 14.
"A man or woman with a mixture of charm, guile, brilliance, and cruelty who remakes the industry and in some cases society."
“There were charismatic business leaders in the 1950s and 1960s, just as there are CEOs today who are not charismatic,” writes Tedlow. “We are describing a general tendency away from the CEO as the chief mechanic of the business who kept the wheels of the company turning while working out of the public gaze to the CEO as a man or woman with a mixture of charm, guile, brilliance, and cruelty who remakes the industry and in some cases society as a whole and in the process becomes a celebrity.”
In the book, Tedlow takes a close look at the careers of Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, and Jobs, who used their charisma to champion their ambitious vision, create revolutionary new products and services, and attain power and influence. In this excerpt from the book, Tedlow discusses how Jobs unseated an uncharismatic CEO and turned Apple from a struggling company on the brink of bankruptcy into a mammoth success.
Book Excerpt
The Emergence of Charismatic Business Leadership
Richard S. Tedlow
Steve Jobs: Triumph at Apple
Steve Jobs was the only man in the whole world who could have saved Apple in 1997. And Apple needed to be saved. Mismanaged successively by John Sculley, who was kicked out in 1993, Michael Spindler, fired in 1996, and Gil Amelio, a member of the board who took over from Spindler and was fired five hundred days later, the company was failing. Without going into the gory details, Apple’s products had deteriorated, its marketing was dreadful, and its finances would have collapsed had it not been for CFO Fred Anderson’s work. The world of computers was dominated by Microsoft, especially after the introduction of its breakthrough product, Windows 95, in August of 1995.
Apple went shopping for a new operating system in a desperate attempt to remain relevant in the world of Windows 95. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple’s then CEO, Amelio, engineered the purchase of NeXT in December of 1996 for the startlingly high price of $429 million in cash and stock.
NeXTSTEP and WebObjects saved Steve and his investors in NeXT. Steve was at last free from that incubus. Apple not only acquired an operating system, it acquired Avie Tevanian, a gifted engineer, as chief of software. On the hardware side, the equally talented Jon Rubinstein, also from NeXT, became chief engineer.
But what about Steve? What role would he play? We are given to believe that Steve was very much of two minds about his next move. He was not a boy wonder anymore. He was forty-two, with a family and with more than a billion dollars in assets. His marriage was a success. He loved the children he had with his wife and fully acknowledged that he was the father of Lisa Brennan-Jobs, although the mixture of cruelty and kindness with which he treated her would have driven a less innately well-grounded person crazy. Pixar was a screaming success. Those who viewed Toy Story and the productions that followed found them deeply touching. They would not have existed without Steve, who knew a great story when he saw one.
"Apple was circling the drain when the computer industry was booming. ... Did Steve really want to put himself through what was needed to fix this company?"
NeXT was a failure. Steve had wanted to achieve at NeXT what he had wanted to achieve at Apple from its founding in 1976 to his firing in 1985. He still believed that the future was all about the computer. He agreed to act as an advisor to Amelio, promising to “help Gil in any way he asks me to,” illustrating that when Steve offered to help, one was well advised to watch one’s back.
Amelio was an able technologist. He held a PhD in physics from Georgia Tech. He had extensive experience in the semiconductor industry and deeper knowledge of technology than Steve. He might have been a successful CEO in the era of Harlow Curtice in the 1950s. He was utterly without charisma. As he himself wrote, “Some reporters weighed me against Steve Jobs and rated me low on the charisma scale ... I’m a good administrator ... Steve captivates audiences.” Amelio was preparing for Apple’s bankruptcy soon after he became CEO.
At a dinner party one evening at which Larry Ellison was present, it was reported that Amelio described Apple’s situation as follows: “Apple is a boat. There is a hole in the boat, and it’s taking on water. But there’s also a treasure on board. And the problem is, everyone on board is rowing in different directions, so the boat is just standing still. My job is to get everyone rowing in the same direction.” After Amelio left, Ellison is said to have asked another guest, “But what about the hole?” Amelio said the report of this remark was “meant to make me look foolish, and succeeded, but I found [the story] funny nonetheless.” Steve enjoyed telling this story. Doubtless it is among the reasons he felt comfortable doing to Amelio what Sculley had done to him.
Apple was circling the drain when the computer industry was booming. It was obvious to any sentient being that Amelio was not the man to save it. Michael Dell said it should be liquidated. Did Steve really want to put himself through what was needed to fix this company? At one point, he phoned Intel’s Andy Grove at two o’clock in the morning and walked him through the pros and cons. Grove’s advice? “Steve, look. I don’t give a shit about Apple. [He should have.] Just make up your mind.”
"The computer industry creates more has-beens more quickly than any other. Steve was determined not to be one of them."
There are two reasons that only Steve Jobs could have saved Apple in 1997. First, Jobs persuaded Bill Gates to continue supporting Apple by announcing a five-year commitment to writing software, specifically Office for the Mac. Microsoft Office was and still is the standard, and without it, the hole in the Apple boat Amelio described in his comic-opera way would have only grown larger. Jobs also convinced Gates to invest $150 million in nonvoting shares of Apple. Amelio had attempted to negotiate a similar arrangement with Gates and had failed.
Second, Steve was able to endow the work of others with meaning as no one else at Apple could. Fred Anderson, who was hired as chief financial officer in 1996 and did yeoman work keeping Apple afloat financially despite its declining sales, said Steve “understood the soul of Apple. We needed a spiritual leader that could bring Apple back as a great product and marketing company. And nobody else great, who had those skills, was going to take on Apple ... So we had to have Steve.”
So they had to have Steve. They got him. Amelio was summarily ousted on September 16, 1997. He wrote, “I had, along with many others ... been trapped by the charisma and boldness of this unusual man.” Steve became “interim” CEO, a title he held for three years. This is where the i comes from in Apple’s products. The “interim” was dropped in 2000.
In the years from 1997 to his death in 2011, Steve became an icon of the business world—the man who defined charisma in the context of enterprise. Four reasons stand out: the creation of Apple Retail, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. We will take a look at each.
In order to transform Apple into the vehicle to fulfill his ambition, Jobs had to whip the company into shape. His goal was not only to make a dent in the universe but also perhaps, in the far-off and unimaginable future, to put himself on par with Bill Gates. In the words of a book published in 2005, “Like all the best fights, this one is personal. Steve Jobs is going to best Bill Gates. This fight is Shakespearean, elemental, and emotional ...” Jobs had complete, dictatorial control. He selected his own Board of Directors. He was the dog that had caught the freight train. Now he had to figure out what to do with it. The computer industry creates more has-beens more quickly than any other. Steve was determined not to be one of them.
Reprinted with permission from RosettaBooks. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.