I didn’t pay much attention to blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan until after he died, and now I’ve gone and done the same thing with Steve Jobs. So if you know of anybody named Steve or Stevie or Stephen or Stephanie who is doing great things and is still with us, let me know.

With Stevie Ray, nothing about his music or his reputation changed. It’s a surprisingly different scenario with Steve J. On the way to the funeral, he was being compared to Thomas Edison. On the drive home, people were already saying, “You know, the trouble with Jobs was …”

So whenever you start getting the feeling that your soul is about to depart your body, it might be a good time to write some serious checks to the people who will be in charge of your reputation. Or maybe it would be better to just put them in your will; sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between impending eternal nothingness and the flu.

Jobs was successful and well-known for a long time, so it’s odd that his story started to look so different so quickly after he passed away. Maybe you knew all about him, but it was never clear to me what role he played in the amazing ascent of Apple Inc. If he wasn’t writing all of the software, what exactly did he do between 9 and 5?

Now it looks as if his particular genius was nagging. Thousands of brilliant designers and engineers worked for him, and Jobs’ job was to push them to do their best. This is not a small deal. Unmotivated companies finish last, no matter how many wacky costume parades they have through the office.

Somebody has to get the load-carriers to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on the product. That’s where Jobs stepped in; he was not easily satisfied.

In the new biography by Walter Isaacson and in various articles, Jobs comes off as a difficult man with a lot of qualities that you wouldn’t want your children to emulate.

But he won big, and the lesson for leaders is that he succeeded through self-confidence and drive. He craved victory, and he carried his Apple workers along with him. But being the guy with the whip isn’t the same as being the guy with all of the brains.

Edison was right there in the workshop with his crew, taking naps on the workbench in between experiments. “Hey, let’s try this” was a viable approach to R&D back then. Now, a leader in any innovative business relies on specialists.

Leonardo da Vinci wrote that “only the inventor matters,” and by that standard, there are a lot of engineers who should be standing on pedestals while they crank out new apps.

Jobs obsessed over the color of an icon? Well, OK, but his machines won fans and buyers because they work well. They also look good, the stores are seductive, and Jobs played a major role in all of that. But those anonymous engineers made the magic happen.

Jobs was the kind of guy who absorbed ideas from other companies, then became outraged when he thought Bill Gates was stealing from him. He was like the rest of us in that respect.

He was the kind of guy who tended to let his audience assume that the best ideas were his. Also not a rare behavior among human beings.

So if you, too, aspire to be a legend, start by hiring the right brains. Finish by taking a little more credit than you deserve. If there’s enough money in it for your minions, they won’t mind too much.

Or at least they won’t say much about it. Not in public. Not until they’re on the way home from your funeral.

Jim Pollock is the managing editor of the Des Moines Business Record. He can be reached by email at jimpollock@bpcdm.com