Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired--and Secretive--Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky
Authors: Adam Lashinsky
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incredibly impressed with the individuals,” he said. (Lurie’s role with Appto ole witle is so important to him that his official AT&T bio states that he has “responsibilities for AT&T’s ongoing operations and relationship with Apple Inc., having led negotiations to bring the iPhone to AT&T.” It notes his brief career as a professional soccer player but doesn’t mention the name of any other AT&T partner.)
Those left behind described excessive whispering and neck craning over empty offices and the absence of VIPs during the meeting, which didn’t officially exist on anyone’s agenda. “We weren’t supposed to know where they were. But we all knew where they were,” recalled someone who had not made it into Steve Jobs’s life raft. “They in turn weren’t supposed to be working while they were there, but they’d do emails and take phone breaks to avoid falling too far behind.”
While versions of the Top 100 exist at other companies, these off-sites are usually more egalitarian in the guest list and contain some training component that suggests to attendees they are being considered to move up the organizational chart. Apple’s approach to career development is yet another way it runs contrary to the norms at other companies. The prevalent attitude for workers in the corporate world is to consider their growth trajectory.
What’s my path up? How can I get to the next level?
Companies, in turn, spend an inordinate amount of time and money grooming their people for new responsibilities. They labor to find just the right place for people. But what if it turns out that all that thinking is wrong? What if companies encouraged employees to be satisfied where they are, because they’re good at what they do, not to mention because that might be what’s best for shareholders?
Instead of employees fretting that they were stuck in terminal jobs, what if they exalted in having found their
perfect
jobs? A certain amount of office politics might evaporate in a corporate culture where career growth is not considered tantamount to professional fulfillment. Shareholders, after all, don’t care about fiefdoms and egos. There are many professionals who would find it liberating to work at what they are good at, receive competitive killer compensation, and not have to worry about supervising others or jockeying for higher rungs on an org chart. If more companies did these things, it might work, and it might not. It might not even work so well at Apple after Steve Jobs hasn’t been CEO for a few years. But if more companies thought about such things, they’d most certainly be more like Apple.
Hire Disciples
O n January 21, 2009, exactly a week after Steve Jobs announced a six-month medical leave of absence, Tim Cook presided over a conference call with Wall Street analysts and investors following the release of Apple’s quarterly earnings. Predictably, the very first questioner wanted to know how Cook would run the company differently from Jobs. The analyst also asked the awkward question on everyone’s mind: Would Cook succeed Jobs if the CEO didn’t return?
Cook didn’t brush off the question with the usual bromides that baseball players and executives are so fond of. “There is extraordinary breadth and depth and tenure among the Apple executive team,” he began, “and they lead 35,000 employees that I would call wicked smart. And that’s in all areas of the company, from engineering t foKo marketing to operations and sales and all the rest. And the values of our company are extremely well entrenched.”Cook certainly could have stopped there. But his emotions were raw at the time, in part because he was genuinely concerned about Jobs’s health. He knew the “Apple community”—customers, developers, employees—was concerned, too. So he continued, as if reciting a creed he had learned as a child in Sunday school:
We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that’s not
Those left behind described excessive whispering and neck craning over empty offices and the absence of VIPs during the meeting, which didn’t officially exist on anyone’s agenda. “We weren’t supposed to know where they were. But we all knew where they were,” recalled someone who had not made it into Steve Jobs’s life raft. “They in turn weren’t supposed to be working while they were there, but they’d do emails and take phone breaks to avoid falling too far behind.”
While versions of the Top 100 exist at other companies, these off-sites are usually more egalitarian in the guest list and contain some training component that suggests to attendees they are being considered to move up the organizational chart. Apple’s approach to career development is yet another way it runs contrary to the norms at other companies. The prevalent attitude for workers in the corporate world is to consider their growth trajectory.
What’s my path up? How can I get to the next level?
Companies, in turn, spend an inordinate amount of time and money grooming their people for new responsibilities. They labor to find just the right place for people. But what if it turns out that all that thinking is wrong? What if companies encouraged employees to be satisfied where they are, because they’re good at what they do, not to mention because that might be what’s best for shareholders?
Instead of employees fretting that they were stuck in terminal jobs, what if they exalted in having found their
perfect
jobs? A certain amount of office politics might evaporate in a corporate culture where career growth is not considered tantamount to professional fulfillment. Shareholders, after all, don’t care about fiefdoms and egos. There are many professionals who would find it liberating to work at what they are good at, receive competitive killer compensation, and not have to worry about supervising others or jockeying for higher rungs on an org chart. If more companies did these things, it might work, and it might not. It might not even work so well at Apple after Steve Jobs hasn’t been CEO for a few years. But if more companies thought about such things, they’d most certainly be more like Apple.
Hire Disciples
O n January 21, 2009, exactly a week after Steve Jobs announced a six-month medical leave of absence, Tim Cook presided over a conference call with Wall Street analysts and investors following the release of Apple’s quarterly earnings. Predictably, the very first questioner wanted to know how Cook would run the company differently from Jobs. The analyst also asked the awkward question on everyone’s mind: Would Cook succeed Jobs if the CEO didn’t return?
Cook didn’t brush off the question with the usual bromides that baseball players and executives are so fond of. “There is extraordinary breadth and depth and tenure among the Apple executive team,” he began, “and they lead 35,000 employees that I would call wicked smart. And that’s in all areas of the company, from engineering t foKo marketing to operations and sales and all the rest. And the values of our company are extremely well entrenched.”Cook certainly could have stopped there. But his emotions were raw at the time, in part because he was genuinely concerned about Jobs’s health. He knew the “Apple community”—customers, developers, employees—was concerned, too. So he continued, as if reciting a creed he had learned as a child in Sunday school:
We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that’s not
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