After watching the video on Steve
Jobs and his attempt at creating NeXT, I was able to better understand the
difficulties he and his team experienced throughout the course of their time
with this corporation before Apple bought his company. It was clear from the
beginning that Jobs was hungry to recreate the success he had achieved at
Apple. Jobs and his team are seen struggling to maintain profits and figure out
ways to compete with their new technology in the higher education market. Through
their difficulties, one thing seemed clear, Jobs and his team needed to keep
their lines of communication open and continue to think outside the box in
order to hold together the NeXT mission and vision.
After completing the Management Assessment
assignment I was intrigued by the accuracy of the results. After speaking with
Tom, it was amazing to hear his knowledge on my personality and attributes by
answering just a few questions on the assessment. While I learned how I fit in
with my current organization, it was also a learning experience as to how my
talents and attributes would fit in with other companies as well. I started to
think of what we learned this week and thought of how well I would fit into
Steve Jobs company NeXT. Would the attributes I offered somehow make me an
asset to the team or would I deviate the team from their missions or visions
somehow?
During my debrief I realized that
while I had a number of strengths in my candidate attributes and
characteristics placements, there were also a few things that were brought to
my attention that I should work on. While I believe that my independence
attributes would allow me to be confident and independent which would fit well
with the NeXT team, I believe that my weakness would most likely be my goal
ambitiousness, goal setting and minimal risk taking. I think these would be my
weakness because it was clear that NeXT had to take a number of risks in order
to become somewhat successful. It was a risk itself to begin starting a new
company after Apple from the ground up. I believe that according to my
personality and the results of the management assessment I probably would have
not been very comfortable with all of the risks the team members that NeXT had
to make.
While I understand there is a certain amount of risk
that one must take in order for the business to be successful. I believe that
some of the choices that were made would have held me back from wanting to continue
with the company all together. It was clear from the retreats that there was a
divide with how much risk Jobs and his team wanted to make. Jobs seemed to be
very comfortable with risk taking and the challenges he would face while many
team members seemed a bit concerned with the consequences of the decision that
were being made. I would have most likely felt the same as these individuals.
One area that I believe I would have
been an asset to the NeXT team is with my problem solving ability and creativity.
I think I would have been able to think outside the box and find solutions to
the problems that NeXT was facing at the time. A major issue with the results
of my attributes though would have probably inhibited me from continuing with
the company at some point because my results show that I am less driven to
create or invent products which is a major part of the goals of NeXT. I think
that due to my motivation to create or invent services over products I would
have been more successful in another part of the corporation which concentrated
on these areas.
Lastly I believe that my multi tasking
abilities, tolerance for interruptions and focus on change would have helped me
a great deal to fit well within NeXT as I have a strong desire for diversity which
is needed in a business which is just starting up. My leadership style would
have also been an added benefit as I fall very close to the middle of both the
X and Y axis, meaning I am well rounded in understanding and recognizing other
leadership styles and being able to adapt to the environment and the issues of
that environment I may be expected to assist in solving.
All in all, I believe that there are
a number of qualities I possess that could have been an added benefit to the
NeXT team however, due to some of the characteristics I hold, I do not believe
that I would have been comfortable in the environment the startup of NeXT had
to experience. I believe that once the company was well established I would
have felt more comfortable with the risk that was taking place at the time.
Cassandra
R.
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