Bobby Knight

        Steve Jobs is what we as a society can define as one of a kind.  Jobs revolutionized the technology business through his innovative ideas and narcissistic leadership style.  Although many critics described Jobs as a harsh leader, he built the world’s most valuable technology company.  When compared to the sports industry, a similar personality to Jobs would be Bobby Knight, Indiana’s all-time winning basketball coach.  Knight has won over nine hundred collegiate games in his career and won the NCAA Championship three times.  Knight’s leadership and management had a similar style to Jobs, often associated with the words harsh, demanding, successful, and cruel.  Both leaders had similar styles due to pushing the boundaries and demanding hard work and success.

        Steve Jobs’ critics often tend to point out the harshness in his personality.  In reality, it was his personality that brought Apple to life as a company.  Without Jobs’ vision, desire for perfection, and persistence, Apple could have died out or been overtaken by another technology firm.  Jobs’ led with high emotion and intensity, often leading to confrontation and verbal abuse.  However Jobs put it best, saying “these are all smart people I work with, and any of them could get a top job at another place if they were truly feeling brutalized.  But they don’t “(Isaacson 4).  People working for Jobs saw his vision and experienced the results.  It was no coincidence Apple became the largest technology company in the world under the direction of Steve Jobs.  When asked about his greatest creation, Jobs responded with Apple the company because it is much harder to sustain a business than build a great product.  Jobs focused on innovation through simplicity by motivating his employees with high energy, extreme emotion, and pushing the limits.

        Bobby Knight’s coaching career was also highly criticized because of how he treated his players, fellow employees, and the media.  Knight was success driven and was an autocratic leader.  During practice, it was common for Knight to be abusive, get in players’ faces, and even kick players out of practice for not performing up to the standards of Knight.  Assistant coaches served as Knight’s alter ego to help comfort players in case Knight’s personality frustrated or tormented them.  Knight was also widely popular among the media because of his aggressive antics and not being afraid to cross the boundaries.  His most popular act was the chair throwing incident during the 1985 season.

        Pushing for perfection is a term Isaacson used to attribute Jobs for his success.  This applies to both Jobs and Knight, as they were both perfectionists in their respective fields.  Both men led their respective teams through well defined tactics but Jobs and Knight went deeper and employed tactics at a micro level.  Jobs was known to hit pause on projects if he didn’t have a feeling that it was perfect.  An example is the development of the iPhone and its casing.  Jobs felt the need to alter the case in order to have the display be the focus and perfect the phone (Isaacson 9).  Knight’s perfection was often found on the practice court.  If practice was not perfect and players were making mistakes, Knight often kicked them out of the gym to refocus them.  Practices were known to last for hours with video sessions to study opponents after practice (Feinstein 75).  Knight made sure his team was prepared in everyway possible to beat their opponent.  Knight and Jobs made sure to keep their competitors behind them, give them no room to catch up or gain an advantage.  By micromanaging product development or team practices, it set up the best chance for success.