Book Review: “I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words”

This is a good collection of Steve Job’s quotes. Book is written by George Beahm, a former US Army Field Artillery Officer and author. This book will take most of us less than 60 minutes to read. Approximately 200 quotes. 160 total pages but this includes a number of pages for citations, sources and a Job’s chrono history. This book is the equivalent to reading the Reader’s Digest. Quick, light, easy, breezy. Quotes are organized by broad range of subjects in alpha order (e.g. Branding, Competition, Death (his own) Inspiration, Integration). The quotes are gathered from a wide range of sources from speeches to articles to interviews to media events. Because quotes are organized by subject in alpha order, it does come across a bit disjointed as it goes back and forth over time and subject. You do get a quick pulse of Job’s the man and the genius behind his product development and marketing strategy. If you are Apple/Mac product aficionado or not, you will enjoy this. If you are interested, suggest you buy it on Kindle or IPAD. It’s worth $3.99. A few of my favorite quotes:

APPLE’S CORE-EMPLOYEES: All we are is our ideas, or people. That’s what keeps us going to work in the morning, to hang around these great bright people. I’ve always thought recruiting is the heart and soul of what we do.” (2007)

BEYOND RECRUITING: It’s not just recruiting, it’s building an environment that makes people feel they are surrounded by equally talented people and their work is bigger than they are.” (1997)

CREDO: “The organization is clean and simple to understand, and very accountable. That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity.” (1998/BusinessWeek)

DENT IN THE UNIVERSE: “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful – that’s what matters to me.” 1993/Fortune)

EMPLOYEE POTENTIAL: “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.” 2008/CNNMoney)

EXCELLENCE: “People judge you by your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” 1987)

GRACE UNDER PRESSURE: “I want to see what people are like under pressure. I want to see if they just fold or if they have firm conviction, belief and pride in what they did. (1997)

MAKING BOLD ANNOUNCEMENTS: “I understand the appeal of a slow burn, but personally, I’m a big-bang guy.

NO RESTING ON LAURELS: I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next. (2006)

PASSION: People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true. And the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. (2007)

TEAMWORK: My model for business is the Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people. (60 minutes, 2003)

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everyone else is secondary. (Stanford Commencement Address 2005)

WISDOM: I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates. (2001/Newsweek)