Tim Cook’s Changes in Apple Inc.

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Table of Contents

Steve Jobs’ Illness: The Background of the Change
Job’s Apple and Cook’s Apple: Why was the Change Needed?
Potential Consequences of not Implementing the Change
The Change Model Used by the Organization
The Outcomes of the Change Implementation
The Assessment of the Change and its Cause and the Assessment Analysis
References

In 1984, Apple Computers, Inc. shocked the world with its Super Bowl Commercial, ending with the words: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’” (Mac History, 2012). Later, the company shocked the world again by fulfilling that promise and introducing Macintosh. Although most people at that time did not even know how a computer looked or how it could be used, due to a simple design and relatively uncomplicated mechanisms, people accepted the innovation. Moreover, it turned the world.

Apple’s evolution started in 1976 with Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne, and Steve Wozniak, hanging out in Jobs’ parents’ garage. Instead of creating a rock band (which other trios would possibly do in that circumstances), they made their Apple I. Later, Ronald Wayne sold his part of “newly created Apple” for 800$, and Steve Wozniak left Apple as well, which made Steve Jobs the only leader (The Apple Revolution, 2015, para. 1). Now, Apple is one of the richest and most valuable organizations in the world.

Steve Jobs’ Illness: The Background of the Change

Steve Jobs remained successful in leading the company until 2003 when he found out about his health problems. A year later, he disclosed to his employees that he had pancreatic cancer (Steve Jobs’ health problems, 2011, para. 1). He also claimed that he was diagnosed with a rare disease with hopeful survival rates and had surgery, which fully removed the tumor. However, five years passed, and there was the recurrence of the disease. He regularly had medical leaves, and in these cases, Tim Cook, Apple’s executive vice president, was running the company. When in August 2011, Steve left Apple CEO’s position because he could “no longer meet his duties and expectations,” Tim Cook became his successor (Steve Jobs’ health problems, 2011, para. 15). And the company was on the verge of substantial organizational changes.

Job’s Apple and Cook’s Apple: Why was the Change Needed?

When Jobs was CEO, he was the one who made all the calls – everything just had to pass through him. That made the most of the decisions much easier and slowed the whole process down a bit. Besides, Jobs always wanted to gather a strong and talented team, but he was not very interested in his employees. He usually focused on the result and achieving the goal.

Tim Cook, who has succeeded Jobs, is a different person, and a lot of his decisions. Jobs would probably have never made. Cook has even been criticized for that by many people. However, that is not surprising since Cook has succeeded one of the world’s greatest businessmen. Still, it should be admitted that Tim Cook is not an innovative person. He is much more a manager or a leader. Due to all of those people brought to Apple by Steve Jobs, Tim Cook now has an extremely strong and innovative team.

Nevertheless, to keep that team together and make the world believe in him, Cook had to undertake something. He realized that there were people better than he was at technological issues, so he let them innovate and took over the management role. He decided to make the company more people-oriented and collaborative. Besides, he has also shown the world that Apple has changed and is now concerned about global society’s problems.

Potential Consequences of not Implementing the Change

Without those of Cook’s decisions, it would have been hard for him to win the sympathy of Apple’s admirers and keep the team gathered by Jobs together for a long time. He could lose a substantial part of the personnel, especially people who were highly loyal to Steve. Perhaps, in “a slower-moving and the less competitive world,” such nuances would be unimportant (Kotter, 1996, p. 16). However, in a present-day business environment and especially for one of the world’s leading organizations, they are crucial. As Kotter (1996) claims, errors made in times of change are the ones that can be the reason for organizations to fail.

The Change Model Used by the Organization

I would describe Tim Cook as a transformational leader, so the type of organizational change he applied was transformational. He did not build a fundamentally new state and did not use any transitional one (as the transitional approach demands). He also did not strive to solve any critical problem and did not implement any specific interventions (which the developmental type is characterized by). He just wanted to make the company more collaborative and let the world see Apple from the other, more people-oriented side. And for this purpose, he implemented slight changes, always considering people’s response to those and analyzing mistakes on the way (which is exactly what transformational leaders do).

The Outcomes of the Change Implementation

Firstly, as it has already been saying before, Tim Cook is not actually “a product guy” (Yarow, 2013, para. 5). So, he made a wise decision to let people who were better than him in this matter to do their job. The prime example of that is Jony Ive’s promotion. Jony Ive had a vision for the products, which consumers would love, so Tim decided to make him a person who would make the “the final call on products” (Yarow, 2013, para. 5).

Secondly, Tim Cook encouraged collaboration, which led to sweeping changes in the organizational structure and teamwork. The company is no longer as centralized as it used to be. It is “no longer a one-man show” (Yarow, 2014, para. 10). In 2013, Tim Cook appeared on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek with Jony Ive and Craig Federighi, the software developer (Yarow, 2014, para. 10). A bit later, Jony and Craig also gave the interviews to USA Today. In 2014, Federighi and one of Apple’s team members spoke at the Code Conference (Yarow, 2014, para. 10). When Steve Jobs was CEO, only he got all of the magazine’s covers, interviews, and speeches at the conferences.

Finally, Tim Cook started something that Apple had never done with Steve Jobs in charge. Apple contributed to charity. That was one of Cook’s first moves as CEO, and it was the right one. Since 2012, Apple donated 50 million dollars to Stanford hospitals and the same amount of money to Project Red (Yarow, 2014, para. 5). Then the company gave 500,000 dollars to SF Gives (Yarow, 2014, para. 5). Tim Cook even took the Ice Bucket Challenge (Reschke, 2014). That was indeed a smart move since Steve Jobs had been criticized many times because of his disinterest in charity and philanthropy.

The Assessment of the Change and its Cause and the Assessment Analysis

The main method used to evaluate both the cause of the change (Job’s death, Cook’s promotion) and the change itself was people’s reaction and the mistakes analysis. Cook saw how people reacted to him being the full-time CEO and saw the organizational deficiencies and how people responded to the implemented changes. He also concluded if those changes were not accepted. Moreover, Cook was not afraid to apologize if something went wrong by his fault, and that was probably what Steve Jobs would never have done. As an example, after a huge failure of Apple Maps, Tim Cook publicly apologized for the company’s mistake and promised to fix it. Yarow (2014) described this action as “very un-Apple,” and it was (para. 7). Probably, it was the best that Cook could do in that situation. It was still “a big blot on his record, but he handled it well” (Yarow, 2014, para. 7).

From the transformational perspective, such assessments are the most correct. Transformational leaders do not know what kind of new state they want to build, but they move towards it with the help of changing some of the current systems and analyzing the team’s reaction and mistakes on the way.

To conclude, as Tim Cook once mentioned, when Steve Jobs chose him to be his successor, he said, “I never want you to ask what I would have done. Just do what’s right” (Yarow, 2014, para. 1). It seems that Cook has listened to that advice, and that has brought impressive results.