And the guy is still alive. And still working at Apple in a leadership role. Pretty impressive stuff.
It got me thinking. What can BECA learn from this guy?
Two things jump out.
1) Perseverance. Jobs was unceremoniously forced out of Apple, the company he personally founded, 25 years ago. Ouch.
But he never, ever gave up.
In a 2005 Stanford commencement speech he noted, "Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith."
That brick showed up on BECA's doorstep in August. In a month in which both Coordinators BECA hired for the cities of Matagalpa and Estelí quit, it crossed my mind to pull the plug in those places and retreat to the friendly confines of Masaya, where we have enjoyed a wee bit of success.
But my main man here, Antonio Rodriguez, and I believe in what BECA is trying to do. So, Steve, we're going to stubbornly keep wombling along.
2) Systematic Innovation. I'm not exactly sure how he did it. Was it by surrounding himself with creative people? Or implementing facilitative work processes? Or something else? But he turned Apple into an innovation machine.
I believe that BECA can learn from this and try to adopt a mindset of permanent innovativeness. You know, constantly plumb our students for new ideas. Motivate our team to regularly give suggestions. Survey all of our stakeholders at every opportunity for feedback.
We're coming along.
I can tell you this with some confidence because we've had a lot of bombs.
Individual social projects.Remedial Spanish classes.
Remedial math classes.
Weekend "Course One" screening classes.
Hiring our own teachers.
And now I can add another experiment-gone-bad to this list . . . young, professional university-educated employees.
(In all fairness, Jobs had his share of bombs too.)
However, it can only be through this succession of failures that we stumble upon the things that seem to click.
Thanks for paying attention and understanding that we aren't completely sitting still here in Nicaragua.
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