Founders and otherwise visionary leaders in business can be distinguished from managers, even though a manager may be running a company. For one thing, managers may resent leaders for being able to take in a larger view while relegating—even dismissing the petty, which can be so alluring to the managerial mentality. Leaders in turn may view the implementation of a vision as nugatory at best. More abstractly, change as paradigmatic (i.e., shifting from one broad framework to another) has its fans (i.e., visionary leaders), while the status quo has its own defenders (i.e., managers). Vision and big ideas are typically associated with a company’s founder or visionary leader, whereas bureaucracy tends to go with the implementation-focus of managers (including executives). In short, to suppose that leadership and management are the same is to ignore a lot that separates them. In the case of Apple, the shift from leadership to management that occurred with the passing of Steve Jobs may be at least partially responsible for the subsequent decline in the company’s stock price. In this essay, I explore the change at Apple to demonstrate why management should not be conflated with leadership.
Generally speaking, the shift from a company’s visionary founder to status-quo management can introduce political and psychological instability in the organization as managers struggle to fill the shoes of the founder both in terms of ideas and power. Although managers have a sufficient instinct for power to quickly grab up any available power, none of the epigones are likely able to be visionary as they are detail- and control-oriented. Although a way to develop a visionary ability may yet be found, I suspect that the wherewithal is either built into a person or it isn’t. That is to say, none of the managerial executives surviving a founder at a company are likely to stand out as a visionary leader, not to mention as THE visionary leader.
Steve Jobs of Apple is an interesting example of a founder who took quite naturally to being the visionary leader at Apple. Rather than merely being incremental improvements, the product innovations resulting from his unique ideas changed the world. The ipod, for example, stood to make even the laptop obsolete even as it in turn was beginning to replace the television for many young adults. Meanwhile, the smart phone was fundamentally altering the notion of a telephone. Crucially, Jobs could treat the assumptions that we take for granted regarding the products that we use as relics or artifacts of an age, and thus as replaceable. He could envision new products not beholden to those now-antiquated assumptions. This is the dynamic in visionary leadership. Even though questioning taken-for-granted assumptions can be taught, imagination is likely either something someone has or does not have. Hence, it is unlikely that people can be trained to be visionary leaders. Managers in particular may be especially handicapped.
It is thus significant that Tim Cook took over as CEO in 2011 after Jobs died. Cook had come to Apple in 1998 as an expert in sales and operations. According to the New York Times, he created “the efficient supply chain that helped catapult the company into the top ranks of the technology industry.” Being an expert in operations with an orientation to efficiency is tantamount to having “manager” tattooed on one’s back. Perhaps nothing else could be further from visionary leadership. The New York Times observes that whereas Jobs “was famous for his creative vision and flamboyant performances at introductions of the company’s products,” Cook “was known for his behind-the-scenes work—particularly for his shrewd negotiating tactics with suppliers.” Creativity and attention-getting can be associated with visionary leaders, whereas being oriented to tactics “behind-the-scenes” is oriented to implementation and thus managing that which has been set out as a goal. It is quite understandable that the shift from Jobs to Cook was not an easy one for the company.
A year after Jobs’ death, the senior management of Apple was shaken up in a move that Cook formally orchestrated. It has the dull ring of old-fashioned “office politics.” Specifically, Cook pushed Scott Forstall and John Browett out of the company. To be sure, both managers had “stumbled,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Forstall had overseen the new mapping service, which was rushed out, “riddled with bugs.” Meanwhile, Browett had overseen “the faulty implementation of a new staffing formula that cut some employee hours.” In spite of these vulnerabilities, it is also true that the two departures took place “as new fissures” emerged “among Apple executives, after some took on new roles following the death [of Steve Jobs].” That is, the organizational phase of transition from the leader-founder to the manager-executives was a contributory factor.
Pointing to the void that typically exists after the departure of a visionary leader, Forstall observed that there was no “decider” after Jobs had left the company. Having been used to a central authority, the managers did not sufficiently fill the void. They could not. Besides being insufficiently constituted to be viewed as unique, they had been so dependent on Jobs that they did not do enough to make up for the gaps in authority following his death. As a result, problems such as in the mapping service and the staffing formula fell through the cracks organizationally. The mapping service, for instance, might not have been rushed out had there been a process of checks not depending on the system based on a central authority. Therefore, Scott Forstall and John Browett were not completely to blame for the failures attributed to them.
Whereas Steve Jobs’ “outsize personality had kept managers in check” by “always casting the winning vote or by having the last word,” Tim Cook was not able to keep the clashes from manifesting out in the open. For instance, Ive and Forstall “clashed so severely” that “they avoided being in the same room together.” Previously, they had always just let Jobs decide. With that option gone, the additional pressure of decision-making exacerbated the acrimony. Ive and Forstall could no longer simply push their unresolved disputes to Jobs’ desk. Either the two men had to resolve their own disputes, or the problems fell through the cracks.
By announcing “Now the Tim Cook era at Apple Inc. really begins” after the shakeup, the Wall Street Journal erred in implying that Cook had acted as a leader. Whereas managers at the company had “lived in constant fear of falling victim to a Jobs’ tirade or a whim,” Cook was “pushed into” firing Forstall and Browett in order to “steady the ship.” Such a muted, or “small picture,” response is a good indication that Apple had moved into the manager-executive stage. It is no wonder that Apple’s stock fell nearly $100 in six weeks. According to the Wall Street Journal, the firings failed “to address the question of who will fill [Steve Jobs’] role as Apple’s ultimate decider on products.” Being pushed into incrementally stabilizing an organization without addressing the more fundamental issue does not evince leadership. A visionary leader acts proactively in keeping organizational politics from getting out of hand because they are trivial in relation to the leader’s vision. In fact, the vision should include making that fundamental issue obsolete by “reimagining” the organization itself.
For a CEO, such “re-imagining” can or even should include society itself. Steve Jobs doubtlessly imagined a very different world with his product ideas. In contrast, when Cook was asked while testifying before a U.S. Senate committee why two-thirds of Apple’s global pretax income in 2011 had been recorded in Ireland even though only 1% of the company’s customers were located in that low corporate-tax state in the E.U., he replied, “Unfortunately, the tax code has not kept up with the digital age.” Had he been a visionary leader, he most likely would have used the opportunity to present his vision of an alternative basis for corporate taxation that is in sync with the age. Instead, he “trenched in,” insisting that Apple had paid taxes on all of its profits. Even though a Senate report had found that Apple had paid little or no corporate taxes on at least $74 billion in the previous four years, Cook insisted, “We pay all the taxes we owe, every single dollar.” Astonishingly, Sen. McCain credited Cook with managing “to change the world, which is an incredible legacy for Apple.”
Sources:
Jessica E. Lessin, “Apple Executives to Exit,” The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2012.
____________, "Apple Shake-Up Signals Tim Cook Era,” The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2012.
Danny Yadron, Kate Linebaugh, and Jessica Lessin, “Apple CEO Defends Tax Practices as Proper,” The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2013.
Nelson Schwartz and Brian Chen, “Disarming Senators, Apple Chief Eases Tax Tensions,” The New York Times, May 22, 2013.
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