From the people I know who worked with Jobs, he was more than 10% asshole. Being unwaveringly decisive (eschewing discussion) is often considered antisocial (a

From the people I know who worked with Jobs, he was more than 10% asshole. Being unwaveringly decisive (eschewing discussion) is often considered antisocial (although it's admired by some). Brutal honesty is considered "unnecessary" in the corporate environment. I believe this culture contributes to bureaucracy far and above the risk it mitigates. For example, nobody wants to look at evidence that an long-established process is an unnecessary cost-sink. It's safer to leave it alone. Participants (and their allies) will perform all kinds of political and process acrobatics to defend their known knowns. If you are jumping from company to company (which you should every few years outside your stock options), you can see how established companies have internal structures that prevent innovation and shoot themselves in the foot until whole departments are dismantled. At that point, most of the participants look at each other like "what happened?" or "this asshole came in and tore the dept apart". It's a pain point of mine. The more money you make, the more you see this stuff and I'm usually the asshole brought in to break up the status quo (without much political support). I've been successful as often as I have failed. Jobs had much better positioning and was better at identifying the people and tools necessary to inspire change.