Steve was a natural performer who elevated business presentations to something close to high art. But what made him fidgety this day was the prospect of addressing the Stanford University graduating class of 2005. University president John Hennessy had broached the idea several months earlier, and after taking just a little time to think it over, Steve had said yes. He was offered speaking engagements constantly, and he always said no. In fact, he was asked to do so many commencement addresses that it became a running joke with Laurene and other friends who had college or graduate degrees: Steve said he’d accept one just to make an end run around them and get his PhD in a day, versus the years and years it had taken them. But in the end, saying no was simply a question of return on investment—conferences and public speaking seemed to offer a meager payoff compared to other things, like a dazzling MacWorld presentation, working on a great product, or being around his family. “If you look closely at how he spent his time,” says Tim Cook, “you’ll see that he hardly ever traveled and he did none of the conferences and get-togethers that so many CEOs attend. He wanted to be home for dinner.”
Stanford was different, even though speaking there would not turn Steve into Dr. Jobs—the school did not offer honorary degrees. For starters, he wouldn’t have to travel or miss dinner, since it was possible for him to drive from his house to the university in just seven minutes. More important, the university was deeply tied into the Silicon Valley tech community in a way he admired. Its education was first-rate and the professors he’d met through the years, like Jim Collins, were top caliber. Despite being a dropout, he always enjoyed spending time around smart college students. “He was only going to do one commencement speech,” says Laurene, “and if it was going to be anywhere it was going to be at Stanford.”
1）能回家吃饭；2）斯坦福与硅谷联系紧密；3）ROI高，斯坦福学生可以加入苹果Getting around to writing the speech proved to be something of a bother. Steve had talked to a few friends about what to say, and he had even asked the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin for some thoughts. But nothing came of all that, so finally he decided to write it himself. He wrote up a draft one night, and then started bouncing ideas off Laurene, Tim Cook, and a couple of others. “He really wanted to get it right,” says Laurene. “He wanted it to say something he really cared about.” The language changed slightly, but its structure, which summed up his essential values in three vignettes, remained the same. In the days before the event he would recite it while walking around the house, from the bedroom upstairs to the kitchen below, the kids watching their dad spring past them in the same kind of trance he’d sometimes enter in the days before MacWorld or Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Several times he read it to the whole family at dinner.
这就是我们觉得斯坦福毕业演讲这么好的原因！！！From his earliest days, Steve had always been able to spin a tale. But nothing he ever said before resonated this way. The speech has been viewed at least 35 million times on YouTube. It didn’t go viral, in the way of a Web phenomenon of 2015—social networks weren’t as developed or extensive a decade ago. But it gradually became recognized as something truly exceptional, of great meaning to a world of people beyond the Stanford Stadium as well. Its popularity surprised him. “None of us expected it to take off like that,” says Katie Cotton, who headed up communications and PR for Apple at the time.
公关老大都震惊了，哈哈哈Collins has specialized in the study of what makes great companies tick, and what marks the people who lead them. He sees something unique in Steve’s unorthodox business education. “I used to call him the Beethoven of business,” he says, “but that’s more true of when he was young. When Steve was twenty-two, you could consider him a genius with a thousand helpers. But he grew way beyond that. He’s not a success story, but a growth story. It’s truly remarkable to go from being a great artist to being a great company builder.”
“The narrative that was created around Steve 1.0 has dominated,” says Collins. “That’s partly because the story of a man who matured slowly into a seasoned leader is less interesting. Learning how to have disposable cash flow, and how to pick the right people, and growing, and rounding off the sharp edges, and not merely acting strange—that’s not as interesting! But all that personality stuff is just the packaging, the window dressing. What’s the truth of your ambition? Do you have the humility to continually grow, to learn from your failures and get back up? Are you utterly relentless for your cause, ferocious for your cause? Can you channel your intensity and intelligence and energy and talents and gifts and ideas outward into something that is bigger and more impactful than you are? That’s what great leadership is about.”
WHEN I FIRST read the speech online, I remembered an interview I’d conducted with Steve in 1998. We had been talking about the trajectory of his career when, in a rambling aside not unlike the road on the back cover of the last issue of the Whole Earth Catalog, Steve told me about the impact that the Catalog had had upon him. “I think back to it when I am trying to remind myself of what to do, of what’s the right thing to do.” A few weeks after that interview had been published in Fortune, I received an envelope in the mail. It was from Stewart Brand, and it contained a rare copy of that final issue. “Please give this to Steve next time you see him,” Stewart asked. When I did, a week or two later, Steve was thrilled. He’d remembered the issue for all those years, but had never had the time to locate a copy for himself.
The end of the Stanford speech focuses on the Catalog’s back-cover motto, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish,” but my favorite line about the catalog in Steve’s speech is when he describes it as “idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.” This is, in fact, a lovely description of Steve’s companies at their best. He was an empathetic man who wanted these graduates to head off on foolish, hungry pursuits, and who wanted to give them neat tools and great notions as they began their winding journey. Like Jim Collins, I had gotten close enough to Steve to see beyond his harshness and the occasional outright rudeness to the idealist within. Sometimes it was hard to convey this idealism to others, given Steve’s intensity and unpredictably sharp elbows. The Stanford commencement speech gave the world a glimpse of that genuine idealism.
好巧，我也喜欢那一句！！！
“idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.”
Jim Collins, the bestselling author of the management classics Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies and Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t, has a wonderful phrase to describe an essential characteristic of great leaders: deep restlessness. Collins applies the phrase to Steve, one of the two great leaders who inspire him the most (the other is Winston Churchill, the great English politician who was prime minister during most of World War II, from 1940 to 1945, and again from 1951 to 1955). Collins believes this restlessness is far more important and powerful than simple ambition or raw intelligence. It is the foundation of resilience, and self-motivation. It is fueled by curiosity, the ache to build something meaningful, and a sense of purpose to make the most of one’s entire life. 自己何其有幸，在不到30的年纪，就能感受到乔布斯的心境 “The things he was trying to do,” says Collins, “were always hard. Sometimes those things beat him up. But the response to fighti...