UNCONVENTIONAL THINKING BLOG

I don’t think there’s any question that Steve Jobs is the greatest CEO\entrepreneur of all time.

Yes, Gates, Rockefeller, Kroc– these guys were all wonders in their own right, who lived and worked in another dimension. But Jobs’ ability to create, execute and create again, to rise, fall and return greater than he was in each previous incarnation– all of this makes him the best the world has ever seen. For the US, a national treasure.

Sometimes, we want the impossible to change its mask and emerge as the possible. Sometimes, we know we are deceiving ourselves: that in spite of the fantasy we indulge in, the grand metamorphosis will not occur. We can pray to the heavens for 1,000 years, promise every kind of sacrifice in return for our dream, light candles against the western sky but the impossible remains stubbornly locked in its place.

I have had two clients who have fallen from fabulous wealth and rarefied success to abject poverty and searing shame. Men who allowed their positions atop the human hierarchy to deceive themselves into thinking that they were affixed there for eternity: heroes of their private Rushmores.

Both built and ran major businesses. Both started from scratch and propelled themselves to the apex. Both were risk takers–the way all fire eating entrepreneurs are– and both made the intoxicated mistake of betting the ranch and watching the dealer remove all of the chips from the table when they lost.

Every time I meet someone whose business has or is about to implode, they have this dumb founded look on their faces, as if the disaster rode in under cover of night, without a scintilla of a warning.

The reality is, they had box seats at the gathering storm but preferred to bury their heads in a book called “Denial.”

Right this moment, this very scenario is playing out at thousands, likely millions of companies– including, perhaps, the one that has your name on the door. The impending disaster can be blamed on all manner of straw men, but the culprit is always leadership. Or rather, a lack of it. Yours.

For business people determined to make a difference in life, the competition is not the competition.

Time is.

As Steve Jobs rests in hiding seeking to recover from what must be a life threatening illness, he knows the only real threat to his ability to build on this extraordinary triumphs, is mortality. Put bluntly, that his time may be up.