The top comment is a very interesting counterpoint to Isaacson's post:

Jonathan Rotenberg 1 week ago

Isaacson has a lot of good facts, but misses HOW Steve led, HOW he made decisions, and HOW he created the products and companies he did. Steve spent his entire life trying to teach a very different approach to business leadership. Most people (including Isaacson) weren't able to listen during Steve's life, because they were so stuck in their own preconceived ideas.

I knew Steve closely for more than 30 years. He introduced me to meditation and Buddhism when I was 18 and he was 26. Steve struggled mightily to try to get Westerners to wake up from their half-alseep, wrong ideas about how business works.

The essence of Steve's approach to leadership are contained in the two-word tagline with which he relaunched Apple in 1997: THINK DIFFERENT. Isaacson projects a lot of his own misconceptions onto what Steve meant by "Think Different." Isaacson mistakenly attributes delusional 'magical' thinking, perfectionism, reality distortion, and artistic exuberance to how Steve did what he did.Steve was a deeply dedicated, disciplined Buddhist practitioner. He followed an Eastern wisdom tradition that is antithetical to many Western theoretical models about business leadership. Buddhism sees competition, free markets, asset-management theories, and much of what is inculcated at Harvard Business School not as first-principles to reify, but as relatively minor, man-made artifacts.The source of all wisdom in Eastern traditions—and what Steve meant in the words "Think Different"—is MINDFULNESS. Mindfulness means paying attention to your present-moment experience as it is received through your sense doors. Where HBS would have business managers pack their present-moment experiences with theoretical frameworks and opinions, "Think Different" means: Drop ALL your theories, concepts & preconceived ideas. PAY ATTENTION instead to the raw reality coming in through your five senses and your mind. This is where you will find real insight and wisdom.In trying to understand how Steve Jobs succeeded as a CEO, Isaacson is like someone who has never played basketball observing what he see as the elements of Michael Jordan's success. Michael Jordan sweats, makes serious expressions on his face, leans as he passes the basketball, etc. This is an outside observer's view who doesn't see things from Michael Jordan's vantage point or and doesn't gets what is going on in Michael's mind.In fairness to Isaacson, he would probably have had to spend several years investigating his own preconceived ideas before he could truly listen clearly & receptively to Steve Jobs. Isaacson did a yeoman job of capturing Steve's life story under very stressful, difficult circumstances. Isaacson has given humanity a tremendous gift in all of his good work.As far the "Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs," however, I don't think Isaacson is even close. One could test whether or not Isaacson's insights work with an empirical experiment. Take two similar portfolios of ten companies. Ask the senior leadership of the first ten companies to read Isaacson's article and follow its advice carefully. Ask the senior leadership of the second NOT to read Isaacson's article. Wait a year and see: Did Isaacson's article make a difference in the performance and effectiveness of the first group? I don't think it would, but I could be wrong. I believe the Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs are still to be written. The true leadership lessons of Steve Jobs are the lessons born of the first high-profile business leader to build a global company from a deep foundational grounding in BOTH Western Capitalism and in Eastern Wisdom traditions. In other words, Steve Jobs was the first Boddhisatva Warrior in history to become a Fortune 500 CEO.

Jonathan Rotenberg
Founder, The Boston Computer Society