Steve Jobs vs. King Sejong
By Lee Sang-jin
With the first anniversary of Steve Jobs’s death on Sept. 5, his leadership style gains recognition once again.
The entrepreneur accomplished many ground breaking works in the field of IT; including McIntosh, iTunes, iPod, Appstore, iPhone and iPad. King Sejong the Great who reigned over Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) from 1418 to 1450 achieved numerous feats that can be rarely matched by any other monarchs in the world history.
King Sejong brought Oriental Renaissance to fruition as a scientific dictionary published in Japan in 1983 noted
that the world’s scientific achievements in the early 15th century were made 29 times in Korea, 5 times in China, 26
times in the rest of the world and non in Japan.
His inventions comprise the world’s first rain gauge and an automatic selfstriking clock, a sundial, and Hangeul, which is the 24-character Korean alphabet that linguist Geoffrey Sampson considers one of the greatest achievements of humankind.
King Sejong had reformed many criminal and tax laws through deliberative political processes and nation-wide surveys. Jobs and King Sejong can be characterized as salient figures unparalleled to anyone historically in terms of creativity and seismic but integrated developments. What kind of leadership styles make them rise to prominence?
Some common characteristics have been detected in both of them. First, Jobs took care of product developments as well as monitoring users’ experiences, on an end-to-end basis. His controlling mind concerned the whole gamut of hardware, software and services, not relying on purchasing some parts from external vendors. King Sejong had established firm steps for court meetings: reading classical texts relevant to issues at hand together with his officials, ice-breaking sessions prior to a meeting in order to encourage freewheeling opinions, a three-stage rating system for new ideas, listening to objections and not losing one’s temper, forming a task force to plan further detail and implement the proposed ideas, and a monitoring system in place for reviewing responses from the public.
Second, both of them placed intrinsic value as a cornerstone of their personal and structural foundation. Jobs wanted to build an enduring company which provided great products and believed that profits from the products would ensue.
King Sejong, a man of great vision and deep affection for his people, had utmost regard for the wellbeing of the common people. This was totally different from many other Korean kings’ oppressive leadership and indulgence in retaining power without much regard to the welfare of people.
Third, they both could see the big picture and the details. Jobs had a grand vision on peoples’ demand for IT products with easy interfacing and integrated services for computing, communicating and applications. At the same time, he was meticulous in the clean and neat electric circuit array of the internal parts inside iPad devices. Likewise, King Sejong grasped the overarching vision during his reign and tried to diffuse it to both his officials and people.
He also set up various arrangements to push forward ordinances and promotion policies. For example, he found out that high baby death rates for female government slaves resulted from their return to service a week after giving birth, and ordered a 30-day maternity leave after giving birth. Upon finding the situation remain still unimproved, he later increased this period of leave to 100 days. Finally he added 30 days of maternity leave prior to their delivery, which effectively prevented pregnant women slaves from giving birth en route home from work places. He even allowed their husbands a 30-day leave from work to look after their spouses.
Seemingly both of them have many qualities in common, but many divergences have been witnessed as well.
First and foremost, King Sejong drew most of accomplishments through the democratic consultation and deliberation process where he garnered highranking officials’ understanding and cooperation, imputed meanings to the proposed ideas and suggestions by them, and empowered them to carry out the specified plans with respect to the ideas.
However, Jobs who was charismatic, exceptionally self-confident in the correctness of his belief and intuition asserted dictatorial influence that moved his staff to accomplish more than what was usually expected of them.
He treated his staff in a quite abusive and tough way that emanated from his passion for perfection.
Second, while King Sejong was eager to hear facts and dissent opinions from different sources, Jobs looked down upon market researches or customer surveys. Jobs had leveraged instincts and intuition about desires not yet formed in the market.
It is difficult to ascertain whether the trait theory of leadership or situational leadership serves as contributing factors in the formulation of creativity and superb management in Jobs’ and King Sejong’s works. No single leadership theory may fit the current Korean circumstances. Business leaders in Korea can utilize their skills, traits and behaviors in a constructive manner according to the situation they face.
King Sejong’s management skills and perspectives might be weighed in on higher than those of Jobs in typical corporate and political culture where a unilateral delivery of orders and messages pervades.