About Leadership in Apple:
Steve Jobs, the previous CEO and Co-founder of Apple had always been known to be a very charismatic, simple and intelligent person and more importantly leader. He had always used his vast knowledge from his brain (which I would say is an expert system by itself) to create new products (For example: The iPhone, iPad, iPod and many more) and newer versions of old/current products (For example iPhone 3 came out first and he developed it into the iPhone 4) in order to satisfy the needs of the consumers. He had created all this products from his own ideas and as he once had claimed that he didn’t do market research to know what the customer/potential customers want as he personally believed that “Customers don’t know what they want until we have shown them”. Jobs also used to believe that product comes before profit. He believed that making a good product is much more important than making high amounts of profit as he believed that if a company aims for high profit instead of a good product, they wont do well. Ever since Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple has taken over the position as the CEO of Apple, he has tried to change the style of leadership in the company although there are some similarities. Example: He decided to launch the iPad Mini and iPhone 5s (A newer version to an old product). Till now, Tim Cook has been extremely successful and has presided some of the most successful results any technological company, make that any company has ever reported. Ever since Tim Cook took the position of CEO, on average Apple’s revenue has been around $4 Billion per week, which means that they are making profit of around $1 Billion per week. Despite having so much success, Tim Cook has also made some mistakes as CEO of the worlds 2nd largest information technology company. For example: He hired a retail chief and fired him after 8 months. This shows that Tim Cook, like any other human being makes mistakes but Tim Cook had corrected his mistake quickly before any damage was done to the company. In fact, in the past, Steve Jobs had done the same mistake of hiring the wrong person, but the difference was that instead of Steve Jobs firing that person, Steve Jobs got himself.
Steve Jobs as a Leader
Jobs was known to use charismatic leadership which involves a strong relationship between leader (boss) and follower (employees). Charismatic leaders like Jobs set a clear vision based on values (for example: around 1996-97 when Jobs became CEO, Apple was going through a bad phase and Jobs had a vision to turn that around), model values consistently with vision, tell their followers that they have high expectations from them (example: Steve Jobs used to discuss things with his employees before making decisions) and lastly show that they are confident about and believe on the employees. Charismatic leadership also encourages the exchanging of ideas between employees and bosses and Steve Jobs had adopted this as well.
Jobs was also known to use Transformational Leadership as well which created awareness and acceptance to the firms visions and missions and at the same time encouraged employees to achieve more than they wanted to or thought they could do. In order to be a good transformational leader, one needs to be charismatic, need to be able to motivate inspirationally, intellectual stimulation and lastly individualized consideration, all of which Steve Jobs had. Jobs had achieved this ‘title’ of a transformational leader by achieving most of his goals such as: becoming one of the biggest information technology company in the world, becoming one of the largest phone maker, being the best music software ever and many more.
Tim Cook as a Leader
Ever since Tim Cook took over as CEO of Apple, leadership style in Apple has started to change. Tim Cook is said to be well known for having a methodical and no-nonsense leadership style. Tim Cook has also started to delegate tasks, something which Steve Jobs never did. For example: when there is a meeting regarding the iOS, Steve Jobs used to go through each feature of the software by himself whereas Tim Cook delegates each feature to one person.
Reference:
· Slides week 9
· http://appleisthebestbrand.wordpress.com/
· http://www.forbes.com/sites/sydneyfinkelstein/2013/01/28/steve-jobs-and-tim-cook-does-apple-still-have-the-leadership-it-needs/
· en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
· The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs: http://hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs/ar/1
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