How is Tim Cook’s Apple different? He’s open with investors, doesn’t scare employees

May 24, 2012 6:57 AM
Devindra Hardawar
Devindra Hardawar
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Tim Cook has yet to launch a revolutionary new product since he took command of Apple last August, but, little by little, he’s been shaping the company in his own way — moving it beyond the idol worship of Steve Jobs, and towards more transparency and efficiency.

In a new magazine piece, Fortune dove into Cook’s Apple and discovered that, even though things are now different from the Jobs era, change isn’t necessarily a bad thing for Apple.

“In general, Apple has become slightly more open and considerably more corporate,” wrote Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky. “In some cases Cook is taking action that Apple sorely needed and employees badly wanted. It’s almost as if he is working his way through a to-do list of long-overdue repairs the previous occupant (Jobs) refused to address for no reason other than obstinacy.”

For all of his creative genius, Steve Jobs wasn’t always the easiest person to work with. Cook, not being a product guru, is instead taking more time to listen to investors and Apple employees. Fortune recounts how he attended an investor meeting in February: Cook simply listened (without even checking e-mail), and then gave controlled remarks at the end of the session. That’s a stark contrast to Jobs, who rarely attended investor meetings.

Cook is also less of a terrifying presence to Apple employees, according to Fortune he’s taken to dining with random Apple workers in the company’s cafeteria. Like a good shrink, Cook seems to be listening more to Apple investors and employees, though that could mean some changes in the company’s famously engineering and design-oriented approach to building products.

“I’ve been told that any meeting of significance is now always populated by project management and global-supply management,” Max Paley, a former Apple engineering VP, told Fortune. “When I was there, engineering decided what we wanted, and it was the job of product management and supply management to go get it. It shows a shift in priority.”

We likely won’t see just how different Tim Cook’s version of Apple is until the company unveils the iPhone 5 (or whatever it’s called). We’ve heard that Jobs was actively involved with designing the next iPhone, but now it’s entirely up to Cook to make sure that vision becomes a reality.

  • http://allthatsme.wordpress.com Abhishek Harge

    Reblogged this on A Dreamers Journal and commented:
    Steve’s way might have been scaring employees, putting them into a reality distortion field and tell them how their ideas were total carp. But wasn’t that the fuel to all innovation Apple ever made from Apple I to the iPhone4? Steve never did a market research, an artist always gives his best regardless of what other people have to think about his work.
    People always say Steve Jobs wasn’t always the easiest persons to work with, but they always were glad they worked with in the end, like the original Macintosh team Jobs quoted “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don’t like it if you tolerate B work. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain”.

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