10/15/2024

This 32-year-old Steve Jobs Quote May Be His Best Leadership Lesson Ever

This iconic, often misquoted tip will inspire leaders everywhere

If you’re a fan or follower of entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett, you are probably aware of some of their most infamous quotes floating around the interwebs.

Some are embellished to fit a meme or wrongly attributed to another famous person. Others are factual, and their origins are verifiable. For example, Buffett really said, "You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant." He meant that some things, like building a successful company brand, can’t be hurried.

Then, there’s Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, and the plethora of great quotes related to innovation, technology, mindset and leadership, to name a few. One iconic quote attributed to Jobs isn't verbatim but a more pithy and paraphrased version that people use for a quick copy-and-paste post on their LinkedIn profile, which doesn't do the original version justice. The paraphrased version that has been circulating for years goes like this: "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do." Here's the actual quote: "We’re paying people to tell us what to do. I don't view that we pay people to do things. That's easy — to find people to do things. What's harder is to find people to tell you what should be done."

Please select this link to read the complete article from Inc.