What has Steve Jobs got to do with Integral Leadership, you ask? I am not sure I can fully answer that nor do I want to take the time now to do so. The point is that Steve Jobs is dead. This man touched the lives of so very many of us, even those of you who still think that in the long run owning a non-Apple computer is less expensive and those of you who have been oppressed for decades by the IBM and Microsoft trained techies of the corporate world.
Steve Jobs touched by life in many ways over the years. When I was an editor of VisionAction, the journal of the Bay Area Organization Development Network back in the 1980s I bought my first Mac, a 256k model, to write the interviews and articles for each issue. Then Apple University gave us a laser printer to publish those newsletters. That was a big deal!
I have owned Macs ever since. We have three of them in the house right now. And they all get used for Integral Leadership Review and for Integral Publishers. Jeannie, my wife, has a new iMac with a big screen because she does a lot of graphics and layout work for our publications.
Well, enough about us and our Macs. The point is again that Steve Jobs is dead. For me, his loss is among the very top of a long list of individuals who seem to me to have been irreplaceable. He goes right up there with Martin Luther King Jr., Jack Kennedy, David Bohm, Indira Gandhi, Gene Krupa, Antonin Dvorak, Ella Fitzgerald and others of their stature. He will be missed by me and many millions of others. I trust he has done his job and prepared others to take the lead.
I am reminded that when Carl Jung was asked by Ira Progoff if he wanted others to become Jungians, Jung responded to the effect that he did not want that. What he wanted was for people to take his work and build on it. I am sure Steve Jobs felt the same way.
To read more about him check out:
(This is also the source of Jobs’ picture above.)