Do you think Steve Jobs encouraged conflict?

I've thought about this question a lot.

First, I see nothing in my history of working with Steve Jobs that suggests he thought conflict was good and useful tool.  Rather, I recall several examples where Steve positively and actively worked to resolve conflict.  For example, in 2008 there was a rash of transfers between the iPod and the iPhone software divisions.  A lot of these transfers were driven by a palpable sense of fear within the iPod division that iPod was dying.  People were generally afraid that we were going to come to work one day and find ourselves out of a job, having been made obsolete by iPhone.

What Steve did was gathered us all together and reminded us that the reason Apple works so well is that each team contributes a small piece that compliments what the other teams are doing.  "Where would the iPod be without iTunes?" He asked.  He reminded us that Apple was something much greater than the sum of its parts.  Finally, he challenged us.  He told us that for our organization to be successful, we had to spend every day trying to make the best products we possibly can.  He certainly didn't giving us a rousing pep-talk to go "beat the pants off those guys!"

I think the conflict that existed within and around the organizations he managed was an artifact.  It was an unintended consequence of the fact that he was laser focused on performance.  It wasn't that you came into the office one day and he told you "See that guy over there, you need to do a better job than him."  On the contrary, it was that he said "We're going to make the best product we possibly can, and I'm depending on you and your peers to do your part."  The result was that everyone cared so much that we worked our hearts out.  We, ourselves, strived to excise anything that stood in our way to that end.  Need a log file in order to fix a bug?  You could wait until Monday morning, ask for it, and maybe receive it a few days after.  ...but no!  We're changing the world!  We can't wait until the middle of next week to change the world!  We need it now!  After which, you would call the guy you needed and have him come in after hours to get what you needed.

Also, you've gotta remember who Steve Jobs was.  He was a hippie who bootlegged Bob Dylan tapes, attended Reed College as an observer so as to not make his parents go broke, and walked to the Hare Krishna temple each Sunday for a decent meal.  The reason there was so much conflict around Steve was not that he was some vicious capitalist trying to wring every cent of value out of the people around him.  It was because he cared so much about Apple and the products it built.  He induced you to care, too.  We cared so much that we took each and every product personally.  Our lives are wrapped up in those products.

I broke up with my girlfriend because she said I was working too much.  I was astonished.  Did she not know I was doing something important?  ...something meaningful?  What's the purpose of life if not to do something meaningful?  I was in a rare, only-comes-along-once-in-a-lifetime job where my work was valued, and she said I was spending too much time there?  What was she thinking?  Breaking up with someone is a real, personal, traumatizing conflict.  But it didn't happen for conflict's sake.  It happened because I cared.  I cared more about what I was doing than she did.  I cared like Steve cared.