I’m reading a book about early days of Apple. Although many less flattering things can be said about Job, no doubt he is an inspiring character. But he also had the second aspect nailed down. He apparently understood hacker mentality very well, as he had hanged around in hacker clubs through 70s although not being a hacker himself in a traditional sense. He was also very obsessed how things were built, there’s an excerpt in the book which describes his office as a messy place full of gadgets that he had opened to understand how they were built.

You can see a similar obsession for details in Jonathan Ive. Watch this excerpt from the movie Objectified excerpt from the movie Objectified . He is clearly very interested in all aspects of industrial design from technical processes to design. I could imagine that if I were an industrial designer, I would love to work under his leadership.

Thinking back, the best managers – or rather, more generally, leaders – I have worked for haven’t had any formal management training. Also, they never made it to the top management despite of their outstanding results because a) the (formally trained) top management didn’t understand how could they were or b) they weren’t even remotely interested in getting promoted.

Sometimes it’s not obvious to spot this kind of talent and even the person herself/himself may not realize that she/he is an excellent leader. For example, in the army a goofy guy who drove a garbage truck in his father’s firm turned out to be superb leader when we were in the woods. (And, of course, he was never promoted.)

Good luck with the experience b), by the way!