Everyone thinks Steve Jobs was an awesome entrepreneur. But his work at Next speaks otherwise

What if the biggest obstacle to Steve Jobs’ early success was actually his own reflection? During his first stint at Apple, Jobs was famous for his "Reality Distortion Field," a mix of charisma, willpower, and fierce manipulation. But this style was highly toxic. He regularly reduced engineers to tears, created destructive internal wars (like pitching the Macintosh team against the Apple II team), and was ultimately fired because he was deemed unmanageable. When Jobs founded NeXT, he did not immediately change. In fact, he doubled down on his worst instincts, micromanaging everything from the color of the factory walls to the shape of the screws. However, the commercial failure of NeXT forced a profound psychological evolution. It was at NeXT where Jobs transitioned from an tyrannical manager into a strategic leader. ## From Micromanagement to Empowerment At Apple, Jobs tried to control every variable. At NeXT, the harsh reality of empty bank accounts forced him to learn a new skill: delegation. He began to trust his brilliant team, which included pioneers like Avie Tevanian (who designed the NeXTSTEP operating system kernel) and Bud Tribble. Instead of dictating every line of code, Jobs shifted his focus to curation. He became an editor rather than an author. He learned to guide the vision while letting his experts handle the execution. In his authorized biography, [Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_(book)), Isaacson notes that NeXT was the crucible where Jobs learned to balance his relentless aesthetic demands with organizational maturity. > "His years at NeXT and Pixar... gave him a broader appreciation for how to build a company that could survive, not just products that could dazzle." > — Walter Isaacson, biographer ## The Pixar Parallel and the Art of Patience While running NeXT, Jobs also purchased the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, renaming it [Pixar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar). At Pixar, Jobs encountered a culture of collaborative storytelling led by creative geniuses like Ed Catmull and John Lasseter. Because Jobs did not understand computer animation the way he understood hardware, he was forced to stand back. He realized that giving creative professionals space to fail and iterate yielded masterpiece results, like *Toy Story*. This hands-off, supportive leadership style rub-off on his management of NeXT. He began to view his role not as a taskmaster, but as an enabler of talent. ## The Birth of the Collaborative Visionary When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he was not the same impulsive 30-year-old who had been kicked out. He kept the core team he built at NeXT intact for decades. His new leadership style combined his signature passion with a newfound collaborative patience. He partnered deeply with designer Jony Ive and operations expert Tim Cook, trusting them with massive sections of Apple's empire. The "failed" decade at NeXT was actually a masterclass in self-correction. Jobs learned that while a dictator can build a great product, only a true leader can build a company that changes the world.