More than five years after Steve Jobs’ death, a third of Australians rank the former Apple CEO as the ultimate dream boss, according to a new study.
The research was conducted by PR agency Hotwire, which asked respondents to list the five CEOs they would most like to work for. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson took first place with 40 percent of the votes — but Jobs came in second with 33 percent.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg matched Jobs at 33 percent, while SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Satya Nadella from Microsoft, ranked fourth and fifth. The rest of the top 21 included tech-driven business leaders like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, HP’s Meg Whitman and IBM’s Ginny Rommetty.
Hotwire Australia country manager Mylan Vu said the results show that people seek CEOs who are innovative and progressive. Interestingly, Jobs proved most popular among younger respondents aged 18 to 24, who wouldn’t even have been in — or would just have been entering — the workforce when Jobs died.
Male respondents in the survey said they wanted to see more innovation and vision from CEOs, while females deemed communication and flexible workplaces most important.
“The current and next generations of workers will be looking to Australian business leaders for innovative and tech-driven ideas, and there’s a huge opportunity to engage with the workforce through simple communication and by listening to employees’ desires for flexible work environments,” Vu said.
While there’s absolutely no doubting Jobs’ position as the most influential CEO of our age, given his notorious lack of flexibility and oftentimes abrasive communication skills, it seems that maybe a few of the Australian respondents might want to go back and reread key passages from Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography.
Source: CIO
