Page 163 - Never Fly Solo

136 | NEVER FLY SOLO
you’re going for your dreams or trying to make something big
happen in your business pursuits. For me, this was big—there
was no way I was going to run away from getting my wings.

A LESSON FROM APPLE

When Steve Jobs cofounded Apple Computer, his visionary
prowess allowed him to recruit one of the top executives in
the business world at the time, Pepsi’s John Sculley. Under
Jobs’s vision and Sculley’s leadership, Apple, with its revolu-
tionary graphical user interface and its game-changing use of
“windows” (a concept that Bill Gates would eventually change
the world with), started to establish itself as a real player in
the computer industry.
But behind the scenes, the relationship wasn’t going very
well. Sculley and the other board members were becoming
increasingly frustrated with Jobs’s all-vision, no-leadership
tendencies. Jobs thought his wingmen were covering his six
and supporting him. They weren’t. Instead, in one of the most
talked-about coups in business history, Sculley and the board
fired Jobs from the very company he created. Jobs faced a
major failure before he could ever fully implement his full
vision for Apple Computer.
But there’s a happy ending to this story. Jobs dealt with
the missiles and overcame the obstacles, and when Apple was
in deep trouble in the mid-1990s, the board called him out of
his exile and asked him to temporarily lead the company
again. That temporary appointment turned into Jobs becom-
ing the full-time CEO. And now, without the past failures and
encumbrances in his way, he was able to take Apple to strato-
spheric new heights and reposition the company as one of the
most innovative in the world today.