37 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Said the Best Managers Never Actually Want to Be Managers. Science Says He Was Right

According to the Apple co-founder, the best leaders are great individual contributors, not 'professional managers.'

Steve Jobs obviously didn't build Apple on his own; when he died, the company had approximately 40,000 employees. Since Jobs reportedly interacted with only about 100 employees, Apple naturally employed hundreds of managers.

Here's Jobs, in 1985, on the early process of recruiting and hiring managers:

We're going to be a big company, we thought. So let's hire "professional managers." We went out and hired a bunch of professional management, and it didn't work at all.

They knew how to manage, but they didn't know how to do anything.

I once made the same mistake when I needed to fill a production supervisor position.

The decision eventually came down to two candidates. One had worked in the department for 15 years. He had great technical skills. He excelled at training new employees. He was bright, energetic, and engaging. Even so, the fact he had never held a formal leadership role was a concern. The other had held a variety of leadership positions and had recently led the team that got the plant ISO certified.

So I went the "a good manager can manage anywhere" route and promoted the "professional manager."

Turns out I was right.

And wrong. A good manager can, in fact, manage anywhere, and he was good at managing. He enforced rules. He ensured people followed processes. He conducted performance evaluations, created development plans, tracked results--he definitely filled the role.

But he didn't do the job.

Here's Jobs again:

You know who the best managers are? They're the great individual contributors who never, ever want to be a manager, but decide they want to be a manager, because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.

In my case, I didn't need someone to manage what we already did. I needed someone frustrated by our current level of productivity. Someone irritated by our current level of quality. Someone annoyed by the fact very few shopfloor employees were being promoted to higher-level roles.

I needed someone who wanted to be a manager because that was the only way they could ensure the crew achieved what it was capable of achieving. I didn't need a production supervisor. I needed someone who wanted to get product out the door more effectively and efficiently, and who had the technical skills to make that happen.

As for leadership skills? Those he could learn. (Great leaders are mostly made, not born.)

Plus, his employees would have likely overlooked his lack of professional manager skills. A 2015 study published in Industrial and Labor Relations Review found that having a boss who excels at "ability to get the job done" has by far the largest positive influence on employee job satisfaction.

As the researchers write, "If your boss could do your job, you're more likely to be happy at work."

The next time you make a promotion decision, make sure you consider the great individual contributor who may not want to be a manager, but desperately wants to get things done.

Because success always comes down to what your business accomplishes.

Not what it manages.

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