Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired--and Secretive--Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky Page B
Authors: Adam Lashinsky
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version of the long-ago promise by Jobs that Apple would make “insanely great” products. He alsocheekily answered the critics who believed that Apple would crumble when Jobs stepped down. (In his authorized biography of Steve Jobs, released just after Jobs’s death, Walter Isaacson reported that Jobs was “rankled and deeply depressed” by Cook’s comment that “regardless of who is in what job” Apple would continue to do well.) Mr. Back Office just might have more of the Vision Thing than folks had given him credit for.
C ook and each of Jobs’s other key lieutenants embody different elements of what it takes to survive and thrive in the Apple ecosystem. Jobs was smart in surrounding himself with a crew who could function as extensions of himself yet had their own superpowers. He did not hire CEOs-in-training. He let people’s talent define their jobs, not the jobs define the people. Cook was a ruthless systems guy but one who grew to understand that logistics had to serve some higher mission. Jonathan Ive was a talented designer who long before he came to Apple obsessed over making technology beautiful. Since he had no designs on running the company, he enjoyed some of the greatest freedom of any Apple employee. Scott Forstall, an empathic engineer who could channel Jobs, was able to keep his ambition in check long enough to gain control of the two hottest product groups—iPhones and iPads. Whether Forstall will happily remain a supporting player will be one of the great internal dramas of Cook’s tenure.
To succeed in a company where there is obsessive focus on detail and paranoid guarding of secrets, and where employees are asked to work in a state of permanentstart-up, you must be willing to mesh your personal ambitions with those of the corporation. You have to forgo your desire to be acknowledged by the outside world and instead derive satisfaction from being Cn fse a cell in an organism that is changing the world. It is not for everyone. Like the officer candidate who can’t endure the abuse of the drill sergeant, some don’t make it. Even Apple’s board of directors—made up of voluble heavyweights, including former vice president Al Gore, former Genentech CEO Art Levinson, and J.Crew CEO Millard “Mickey” Drexler—toe the line when it comes to Apple. All played a supporting role to Jobs.
If the business consultant Michael Maccoby’s description of a “productive narcissist” perfectly captures the personality of an ascendant Steve Jobs and his profound impact on Apple, his analysis also sheds considerable light on the rise of Tim Cook. Maccoby writes:
Many narcissists can develop a close relationship with one person, a sidekick who acts as an anchor, keeping the narcissistic partner grounded. However, given that narcissistic leaders trust only their own insights and view of reality, the sidekick has to understand the narcissistic leader and what he is trying to achieve. The narcissist must feel that this person, or in some cases persons, is practically an extension of himself. The sidekick must also be sensitive enough to manage the relationship.
Business history is full of such sidekicks. Frank Wells famously played second banana to Michael Eisner at Disney, so much so that Disney-watchers trace Eisner’sdecline in the job to Wells’s untimely death in a 1994 helicopter crash. Donald Keough played the same role to the legendary Roberto Goizueta at Coca-Cola. Sheryl Sandberg, a former top Google executive and Treasury Department chief of staff for Larry Summers, has made herself indispensable to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by running all the aspects of the company that don’t interest the young founder—while not challenging her boss on the areas that do.
For his part, Timothy Donald Cook, who is fifty-one, played the trusted aide to Steve Jobs for nearly fifteen years. He was the perfect casting for Apple’s long-running buddy movie. Where Jobs was mercurial, Cook was calm.
C ook and each of Jobs’s other key lieutenants embody different elements of what it takes to survive and thrive in the Apple ecosystem. Jobs was smart in surrounding himself with a crew who could function as extensions of himself yet had their own superpowers. He did not hire CEOs-in-training. He let people’s talent define their jobs, not the jobs define the people. Cook was a ruthless systems guy but one who grew to understand that logistics had to serve some higher mission. Jonathan Ive was a talented designer who long before he came to Apple obsessed over making technology beautiful. Since he had no designs on running the company, he enjoyed some of the greatest freedom of any Apple employee. Scott Forstall, an empathic engineer who could channel Jobs, was able to keep his ambition in check long enough to gain control of the two hottest product groups—iPhones and iPads. Whether Forstall will happily remain a supporting player will be one of the great internal dramas of Cook’s tenure.
To succeed in a company where there is obsessive focus on detail and paranoid guarding of secrets, and where employees are asked to work in a state of permanentstart-up, you must be willing to mesh your personal ambitions with those of the corporation. You have to forgo your desire to be acknowledged by the outside world and instead derive satisfaction from being Cn fse a cell in an organism that is changing the world. It is not for everyone. Like the officer candidate who can’t endure the abuse of the drill sergeant, some don’t make it. Even Apple’s board of directors—made up of voluble heavyweights, including former vice president Al Gore, former Genentech CEO Art Levinson, and J.Crew CEO Millard “Mickey” Drexler—toe the line when it comes to Apple. All played a supporting role to Jobs.
If the business consultant Michael Maccoby’s description of a “productive narcissist” perfectly captures the personality of an ascendant Steve Jobs and his profound impact on Apple, his analysis also sheds considerable light on the rise of Tim Cook. Maccoby writes:
Many narcissists can develop a close relationship with one person, a sidekick who acts as an anchor, keeping the narcissistic partner grounded. However, given that narcissistic leaders trust only their own insights and view of reality, the sidekick has to understand the narcissistic leader and what he is trying to achieve. The narcissist must feel that this person, or in some cases persons, is practically an extension of himself. The sidekick must also be sensitive enough to manage the relationship.
Business history is full of such sidekicks. Frank Wells famously played second banana to Michael Eisner at Disney, so much so that Disney-watchers trace Eisner’sdecline in the job to Wells’s untimely death in a 1994 helicopter crash. Donald Keough played the same role to the legendary Roberto Goizueta at Coca-Cola. Sheryl Sandberg, a former top Google executive and Treasury Department chief of staff for Larry Summers, has made herself indispensable to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by running all the aspects of the company that don’t interest the young founder—while not challenging her boss on the areas that do.
For his part, Timothy Donald Cook, who is fifty-one, played the trusted aide to Steve Jobs for nearly fifteen years. He was the perfect casting for Apple’s long-running buddy movie. Where Jobs was mercurial, Cook was calm.
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