Tim Cook's leadership style has 'reshaped how Apple staff work and think'
A new profile examines how Apple CEO Tim Cook, with "cautious, collaborative and tactical" leadership, honed the Cupertino tech giant into the world's largest company.
Credit: Apple
After the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, both Wall Street and Silicon Valley worried about Apple's future. But, nine years later, Apple's revenue and profits have more than doubled and the company's market valuation is higher than the GDP of Canada, Russia or Spain.
Those gains have been made under the helm of Cook, who succeeded Jobs in August 2011. According to a profile in The Wall Street Journal, the past nine years have seen the tech executive reform Apple to more closely resemble himself.
Compared to Jobs' outspoken devotion to design, Cook is described as much more methodical and focused on finance and social good. Although Apple under Cook has a "more relaxed workplace" environment than Apple under Jobs, staffers said that Cook is similarly "demanding and detail oriented."
The CEO's attention to detail "causes underlings to enter meetings with trepidation." And Cook's precision has "reshaped how Apple staff work and think," the Journal adds.
The Apple executive rarely visits Apple's design studio, which Jobs frequented. At a 2012 meeting to review an early Apple Watch prototype, Cook was absent. Sources say such an absence would have been unthinkable under Jobs.
Also unlike Jobs, who thought Apple's cash was best directed toward research and development, Cook is much more willing to return cash to investors. In 2013, Cook had a three-hour dinner with Wall Street investor Carl Icahn that ended with dessert consisting of Apple logo cookies.
Colleagues and acquaintances who spoke to the Journal said that Cook was a "humble workaholic with a singular commitment to Apple." Even longtime colleagues rarely socialized with Cook, and former assistants said that he doesn't often partake in personal events.
Apple declined to set up interviews with Cook or senior executives, but "helped arrange calls four phone people it said could speak to areas of importance to Mr. Cook such as environmentalism, education and health."
Of those four employees, one had never met Cook, and the others who spent a combined total of a few hours with the chief executive.
The proof of Apple's shift may be in its products. The company has largely failed to release the type of market-disruptive products that Jobs was famous for.
Instead, Apple has dominated accessories that surround the iPhone -- including the Apple Watch, AirPods and services like Apple Music. The Apple Watch has outsold every other watch in the world, while AirPods made up more than half of all headphones sold in 2019.
Credit: Apple
After the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, both Wall Street and Silicon Valley worried about Apple's future. But, nine years later, Apple's revenue and profits have more than doubled and the company's market valuation is higher than the GDP of Canada, Russia or Spain.
Those gains have been made under the helm of Cook, who succeeded Jobs in August 2011. According to a profile in The Wall Street Journal, the past nine years have seen the tech executive reform Apple to more closely resemble himself.
Compared to Jobs' outspoken devotion to design, Cook is described as much more methodical and focused on finance and social good. Although Apple under Cook has a "more relaxed workplace" environment than Apple under Jobs, staffers said that Cook is similarly "demanding and detail oriented."
The CEO's attention to detail "causes underlings to enter meetings with trepidation." And Cook's precision has "reshaped how Apple staff work and think," the Journal adds.
Another time, Cook reportedly got irritated that Apple shipped 25 computers to South Korea instead of Japan. Although some sources said it seemed like a minor accident, Cook warned that "we're losing our commitment to excellence.""Middle managers today screen staff before meetings with Mr. Cook to make sure they're knowledgeable. First-timers are advised not to speak. "It's about protecting your team and protecting him. You don't waste his time," said a longtime lieutenant. If he senses someone is insufficiently prepared, he loses patience and says, "Next," as he flips a page of the meeting agenda, this person said, adding, "people have left crying."
The Apple executive rarely visits Apple's design studio, which Jobs frequented. At a 2012 meeting to review an early Apple Watch prototype, Cook was absent. Sources say such an absence would have been unthinkable under Jobs.
Also unlike Jobs, who thought Apple's cash was best directed toward research and development, Cook is much more willing to return cash to investors. In 2013, Cook had a three-hour dinner with Wall Street investor Carl Icahn that ended with dessert consisting of Apple logo cookies.
Colleagues and acquaintances who spoke to the Journal said that Cook was a "humble workaholic with a singular commitment to Apple." Even longtime colleagues rarely socialized with Cook, and former assistants said that he doesn't often partake in personal events.
Apple declined to set up interviews with Cook or senior executives, but "helped arrange calls four phone people it said could speak to areas of importance to Mr. Cook such as environmentalism, education and health."
Of those four employees, one had never met Cook, and the others who spent a combined total of a few hours with the chief executive.
The proof of Apple's shift may be in its products. The company has largely failed to release the type of market-disruptive products that Jobs was famous for.
Instead, Apple has dominated accessories that surround the iPhone -- including the Apple Watch, AirPods and services like Apple Music. The Apple Watch has outsold every other watch in the world, while AirPods made up more than half of all headphones sold in 2019.
Comments
The article is also minimizing the AirPods when they are in their way just as disruptive as the iPhone and the iPad have been.
Innovation at Apple is alive and well.
The invention of Apple Watch and AirPods were under his clock. Both were statistically more successful than all of Steve's products except iPhone.
Apple Silicon Macs may be the next revolution in computing since the 1970s.
For me, this is something, I would like to be opposite around.
How would any product oriented employee at Apple get inspiration from this man (maybe some bookkeeper..) ?
This article proves his only distant interest in design, engineering, development. Transpiring into the rest of the oprganisation and translating into late or failed product launches for anything other than iPhone and the transition from trendsetting leadership towards just following others.
A man that probably gets more energy from sellling $45 plastic WatchBands than a brand new Mac design.
What he stands for is supercapitalism by exploiting the less-educated masses and captivating them in the walled garden (symbolized by the SpaceShip). Apparently in a distant, ivory tower leadership style with interest in financial and PR aspects mostly.
As for the apparent fact that Apple “helped arrange calls four phone people it said could speak to areas of importance to Mr. Cook” [sic], I find that extraordinary. Apple almost exclusively no-comments just about everything, so the idea that they would help facilitate quotes for an exec profile that wasn’t an Apple-sanctioned puff piece is very out of character for the company.
But Apple has to be careful, the larger you are the further you can fall, and this of course means they can’t be as lean and fast to market as they could 15 years ago. But so far, the new Cook era products (Watch and Airpods) have been fantastic. In fact, they fit so seamlessly and invisibly into owners lives that they seem obvious yet magical extensions of the wearer. Glasses (and ring?) will only extend in this area.
I suspect the Apple Car area might have been a personal pet project for someone who likely didn’t realise the enormity of it when setting out. I suspect it will have benefited Apple in some ways but must have been (or still is?) a bit of a money pit. Then again, that’s just the nature of things.
This isn’t about defining terminology for terminology’s sake or taking anything at all away from what Apple has accomplished. It’s about recognizing the essence of something that is happening in a broader market sense. The iPhone’s disruptive innovation was its App Store, not the all-screen device itself, because the App Store moved a lot of the value proposition delivered by software from other computing platforms such as laptops, desktops, and terminals connected to servers to hand held devices. The iPhone with its App Store replaced other generally more expensive computers and software delivery platforms with something that fit in your pocket filled with sub $10 apps. The iPhone obviated the need for other personal computers for a lot of folks, especially in emerging economies.
The iPad added to the iPhone’s success, but it was more of a refinement that allowed a new software deliver option to displace a broader range of other computing platforms. The iPad could be considered disruptive to the printed media market, magazines and news papers, but that would be a bit of a stretch because web browsers kind of set the stage for that already. The iPad simply removed some of the compromises inherent to iPhone, i.e., too small of a reading surface, and desktops, i.e., not portable enough. It filled gaps but did not create any new markets.
Apple’s success under Tim Cook has largely been driven by, as you mentioned, flawless execution but also by sustaining innovation. These two things go hand in hand. Doing sustaining innovation correctly and profitably requires flawless execution, much more so than does doing disruptive innovation. With disruptive innovation, which usually occurs from the bottom up, there is usually something about it that captures the attention of enough customers to recognize the greater potential, even if it is not yet perfect. The “something” is often its low price. The Raspberry Pi is a good example of this. For many casual computer users who are non-gamers the Raspberry Pi 4 is all the personal computer they’ll ever need and it’s around $50.
Lastly, innovation when defined as something that delivers consumable value to people and society, is always a good thing. No one form of innovation is inherently better than another. A company like Apple who can continually innovate across the broad spectrum of innovation, including but not limited to, moving the value of inventions into products, sustaining innovation, disruptive innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, cultural innovation, and leadership innovation better than its competitors will probably maintain a dominant position in the markets it serves and help create new markets for a long time. Right now there is no company in the world that is innovating across the broad spectrum of innovation as well as Apple is, but there are a few who are upping their game very quickly, like Tesla. The bottom line is that Tim Cook recognizes that everything Apple does matters, and he’s not conceding any ground to competitors without a fight, which means executing as flawlessly as possible on everything his teams work on every single day.
Also, to prove his successor he wasn’t (...)
Steve Jobs didn’t see relentless innovation as a way to save his company.
He rather founded a company to propell his product innovation dreams
Tesla is a perfect example of a first mover advantage, driven by a charismatic leader, who was not the founder, finding itself with a business model that fails in the marketplace.
Tesla has relatively poor quality control, abysmal service, is not a leader in autonomous driving despite the marketing, has relied on billions in government incentives to survive, has routinely ignored the industry's manufacturing prowess, and is now facing an extinction event as the major automakers release a plethora of competitors.
But investors low him, hence the valuation.
As for Christensen, you might follow Horace Dediu at Asymco.com, reading some of his past posts on Apple, as he actually studied under Christensen. Horace is now mostly involved in micromobility.
Disruptive innovation would require existing business to be disrupted/substituted by new and more comprehensive/immersive product(s)
Like superseding iPod by iPhone, or Mac/iPad product lines with something revolutionary new like the TouchMac, that would cannibalize existing business to launch something bigger and better.
The current Apple (via Catalyst, TouchBar and other compromises) is avoiding the TouchMac as much as it can, now that it has become more dependable to the immense, existing volumes the giant, defensive incumbent as per Tim’s strategy leaving disruptive innovation to leaner, more flexible (startup-) companies.
For example, it will avoid foldable phones (that would challenge/risk iPad sales) as much as it can, until competitors will prove it to be a new indispensible category too which it then will respond.
Note: Samsung is amongst them - it can attack Apple in this arena as it has less to lose in the tablet category
Project Titan had the aim of disrupting the car industry, but it never materialised