‘Tim Cook’s Apple’ – Turn Steve Jobs’s ‘work’ into the world’s best trillion-dollar company with a completely different leadership style

After Steve Jobs’s death, Silicon Valley predicted that Apple’s business would fluctuate. Wall Street is skeptical of the way ahead, and loyal corporate customers do not know where the future of Apple’s most popular products will go.

Right now, Apple shares are at an all-time high. The company’s market cap is $ 1.9 trillion – bigger than the GDP of Canada, Russia and Spain. Apple is also the world’s largest company, continuing to dominate the smartphone market.

That achievement says it all, about how an industrial engineer turned Steve Jobs’s creations into “Tim Cook’s Apple”, into one of the most profitable businesses in history.

“Tim Cook’s Apple”

Apple under Steve Jobs, generally shaped by revolutionary new product innovations, completely changed the industry. Meanwhile, Tim Cook has made Apple a place to reflect more than himself, a cautious, cooperative, and clever 59-year-old man.

“Tim Cook’s Apple”, as many former senior executives at Apple say, is a giant corporation that pursues growth by building a product and service empire around its revolutionary innovations. predecessor. Their success has attracted customers in China – helping to boost sales while keeping costs under control.

Apple’s market capitalization outperformed under Tim Cook.

A successful business after a power is transferred to its predecessor is quite rare. Microsoft struggled when Bill Gates gave the throne to his predecessor; GM is in a similar situation.

“At the time of October 2011, people said: It’s over, everything will be messed up,” said Mike Slade – a longtime consultant for Steve Jobs and a former member of Apple’s board of directors. “But now, Tim Cook proves that he did a very good job of his.”

Apple, under Cook, prospered unprecedentedly. Since starting the company in 2011, the year Steve Jobs died, Apple’s revenue and profits have steadily doubled, and their market capitalization has surpassed from $ 348 billion to 1.9 thousand. billion USD.

The company currently holds $ 81 billion in cash, excluding debt, and has paid $ 475.5 billion in dividends to shareholders.

The company’s earnings report last week caused its stock to rise more than 10% in just one day.

“I know I must never imitate him”

Jobs – who has always completely rejected the succession plans chose Cook to lead Apple in part because the leader has always stayed away from the market and focused only on cooperation – a person close to Jobs said. His success surprised even the most discerning because Jobs said that Cook was not a “product maker” but that his colleagues understood the choice. Apple needed a new operating style after losing a person that was almost irreplaceable.

Cook is a relative stranger to the product creators favored by Jobs, and after Jobs died, he didn’t try much to change it either. Instead, he focused on a series of small actions to jointly build a “fortress” around the iPhone: a clock, Airpod and subscription music services, television.

Since taking on the assignment in 2011, Cook has followed his predecessor’s advice, “Don’t ask me what I’m going to do. Do what’s right.” He usually gets up every morning before 4:00 and looks at global sales data. He maintains meetings every Friday with the finance and operations staff – what the team members call “Tim’s date night” because they will spend long hours together during my day. Cook also rarely visited Apple’s design team – a place Jobs frequented.

“I know what I need to do is not imitate him,” Cook told ESPN in 2017. “I will fail to do so. You have to figure out your own path. You have to be. the best version of yourself “.

Cook is described by colleagues and acquaintances as a workaholic with a unique commitment to Apple. Longtime colleagues rarely interacted with Cook socially and insisted that he always kept a clear schedule of personal opinions.

During the Thanksgiving holiday two years ago, guests saw Cook having dinner alone at the Amangiri hotel near Zion National Park. When a guest then approached him, he spoke to the hotel to recharge after a period of exhaustion with the launch of Apple’s latest iPhone.

Although former and current employees say Cook is more relaxing than Jobs, he has his own principles. Cook was irritated when the company mistakenly shipped 25 computers to Korea instead of Japan. “We have lost our commitment to perfection,” Cook said.

Cook’s rigidity also puts pressure on junior staff every time he enters the meeting. “The first question is: ‘Joe, how many units do we make today’, ’10 .000 units’, ‘What is the yield?’, ‘98% ‘. Then he would say:’ Okay, let’s explain 2% of failures. ‘Oh God, I don’t know,’ said Joe O’Sullivan, former Apple CEO.

Joe added that the first day Cook worked at Apple in 1998, he met with employees within 11 hours.

In late 2012, Cook was absent when senior executives from Apple met at the St. Hotel. Regis in San Francisco to see an Apple Watch – their first new product after Jobs.

Such an absence was almost impossible for Jobs. Still, Apple continued to record record profits, Cook began turning their focus to investors who wanted to know what he was going to do with the company’s growing cash pile.

The mind of a “manager” and a “leader”

Wall Street investors, including Carl Icahn, want Apple to pay more dividends for them. In 2013, Cook was surprised to agree to meet Icahn for dinner at his private apartment.

Jobs never believed in giving money to shareholders, and thought it would be better to reinvest Apple’s money in building products. Cook is not like that. He sat with Icahn over a three-hour meal, and then Apple bought back $ 30 billion in stock – an amount that has grown to $ 360.7 billion in eight years. The return of capital to investors has helped attract many other investors to Apple, including Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

“I know what I need to do is not imitate Jobs. I will fail to do that. You have to make your own path. You have to be the best version of yourself.”

Cook extended Apple’s direction toward society. One of his first steps as a leader was to introduce an Apple corporation tied to charity gifts.

In 2014, Cook met personally with Apple executives and said they were gay. He plans to go public and says that it could have a bit of a impact on the market. Apple was stabilizing that time – sales surged after the launch of the iPhone 6.

Cook says he wants to be a role model for young people like him being boycotted or worried about their families not accepting them.

“It’s the best thing I should do right now. I need to do something for them and show them that you can be gay but still be able to live a normal life and do great things in life.”

Cook also changed the board of Apple, replacing leaders who are more marketing and product-minded with financial inclination.

Without Jobs as a product manager Cook called the software, hardware and design leaders together. This approach shows his tendency to be cautious.

Instead of trying to find a new device, Cook found success in building a group of products around the iPhone including watches, headphones, music subscription service and television.

These products have all made a breakthrough, such as the Apple Watch, which outperformed the entire Swiss watch industry and the Airpod accounted for nearly half of all headphones sold worldwide by the end of 2019. Their gross revenue for 2019 reached $ 24.5 billion less than Apple’s peak revenue with the iPad of $ 32 billion – Jobs’ end product.

Now, Cook feels relaxed every time he goes back to his old school. He remains very quiet, often visiting without notice. He can be seen drinking coffee in the alley, working or chatting with students. He also attends football matches, and often buys tickets himself.

Auburn Chairman Jay Gogue said Cook once talked about Colin Powell’s belief that it was a manager’s job to move troops from one point to another while the leader’s job was to get the army where they had never been. now think.

“There is a time when it comes to being a good manager and sometimes it’s necessary to be a good leader. Tim Cook knows that very well,” says Gogue.