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Go from the bottom to the top

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What we learned

Going through this project my teammates and I have not only learned what it takes to be successful but also what a successful leader looks like. This project has truly shown what it is like to lead but not to only lead a few people but lead a giant company. We saw that it takes a lot of time and effort in order to get out what they put into the company. For example, Tim Cook had to step up has a leader and that's exactly what he did. He has great relationship with his workers which is a great reason why he is such a great leader. Overall, this project taught us many things that we can use to become the leader that we all want and need.

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Tim Cook

Tim Cook was born in rural Mobile, Alabama. He would attend Auburn University with concentration in Engineering in his early 20’s. Tim went on to Duke where he earned an MBA while becoming a Fuqua scholar, top 10% of all business graduates. Before stepping into his role as CEO in 2011, he served as Chief Operating Officer with Apple for a number of years. 

   Tim Cook had large shoes to fill, following legendary Apple CEO and Co-founder Steve Jobs. There was some doubt about his innovative vision, however he has proven to be valuable in other ways. He is described by employees as “thoughtful” and “consensus driven”. Where Steve Jobs exercised high autocratic control, Tim Cook has gone a different route. Tim Cook is a Democratic leader, placing emphasis on building employee relationships. Harvard Business cited him as a “multiplier”, someone who increases employees' innovative ability and overall satisfaction with the job. Apple has been criticized over the past few years for not focusing enough on innovation, but then again this is not Tim Cook’s area of expertise. He is not one to micromanage employees, rather he delegates large portions of work and autonomy to them. This does not equal uninvolved, though. Many high ranking executives within Apple characterize him as “calm, steady, but will slice you up with questions, you better know your stuff”. This is representative of his management style as a whole. He is no Autocratic, in your face, highly controlling manager. Instead, he allows his employees the power to innovate as a behind-the-scenes motivator. Quite simply he recognizes what he does well, and what he does poorly. Tim Cook is not the innovator Steve Jobs was, so he delegates much of that responsibility to those more suited than himself. 

     Tim Cook’s Democratic-style is arguably the most important factor in Apple’s immense success over his time as CEO. Having a Tech giant such as Apple at his disposal certainly predisposed him for vast expansion, but going from a stunning $153,000,000,000 to well over an even more unimaginable one-trillion USD is no coincidence. This success is due in no small part to Tim Cook’s leadership style and ability. Tim Cook excels in Motivating, inspiring innovation, and bringing employees together to make decisions. 

    He is highly tactical, methodical, and more focused on his expertise-- the finances of Apple. Tim Cook has also proved to be more generous to investors, rather than keeping profits for R&D. His commitment to his employees, to his stakeholders, and to his customers is what sets Tim Cook apart.

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Gil Amelio

Gil Amelio got his PHD in Solid State Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Before coming to Apple Mr. Amelio worked as the president and chief executive of National Semiconductor. He initially joined Apple on the board of directors in 1994, he then became Apple’s CEO on February 2, 1996. Under Amelio’s tenure Apple’s stock dropped to a 12-year low. When he took over as CEO, he faced 5 major problems: lack of money, low quality of products, an unfocused research and development department, failing Mac OS operating system and a toxic corporate culture. In an attempt to cut expenditures Amelio cut 5,600 jobs. Other measures he took were to buy NeXT in order to obtain their next-gen operating system, which eventually morphed into OS X. The acquisition of NeXT also brought Steve Jobs back into the company which ended up being one of the factors that lead to Amelio’s ousting as CEO. After a disastrous quarter in 1997 that contributed to the overall deficit of $1.6 billion that accumulated during Amelio’s reign Amelio was asked to leave Apple, he initially protested but ended up taking a seven-figure payout to leave the company. 

Gil Amelio’s used an autocratic leadership style. An autocratic leadership style is characterized by individual control over all decisions and little input from group members. Autocratic leaders typically make choices based on their ideas and judgments and rarely accept advice from followers. Frank Casanova the director of Apple’s Advanced prototyping laboratory was quoted as saying “He doesn’t appear to be into management by committee. I’ll have more respect for the man if he gets profit sharing back instead of coming by and saying, ‘Hey, how are you?”, in reference to Amelio. Amelio was also cited as denying assistance from his department heads, and frequently entertaining questions from employees but rarely took note in order to act on the information.

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John Sculley

John Sculley began his leadership career at Pepsi-Cola where he became the youngest ever marketing vice-president for Pepsi-Cola in 1970 at the age of 30. At Pepsi-Cola, John Sculley made a name for himself by achieving the company’s first ever consumer-research study, reviving a failing PepsiCo food division, and the Pepsi Challenge advertisement campaign. He would later become the president of Pepsi in 1977 before changing the direction in his career. This change was his move to Apple in 1983. Apple wanted Sculley because of his successful background in business and the successes that he had accomplished. These would generate an image of reliability and stability for Apple. At Apple, Sculley utilized what he knew best, how to market a product and to get consumers to purchase it. With his marketing, Apple was able to extend the lifeline of the Apple II which was getting rather old and this permitted Apple to use that time and money for other projects including the Macintosh project and the Lisa computer. In 1986 a shift in Apple was noticed as John Sculley was named president of Apple and he was acknowledged for the success of the macintosh because of the market that he built and marketing he used to achieve that. Following his transition into the position of being president, it was evident that Apple was much more task oriented and innovative with new releases and ideas. These include the PowerBook, the System 7, the Mac OS X, and one of the first PDAs. Because of the successes he brought to Apple while being president, John Sculley became CEO in 1992 where he envisioned a future that heavily involved the usage of the internet and this would eventually lead to greater success for Apple.

In his career, especially at Apple, John Sculley displayed an autocratic leadership approach. With his incredible knowledge and experience with marketing and understanding of consumers, more often than not Sculley knew what was best for a company and what would bring the most success. However, Sculley trusted the individuals who worked for him and trusted that they would create these ideas to the fullest. With these combinations, a very task oriented and innovative work environment was formed as Apple was constantly looking for new ideas and what the next big thing would be. This is especially seen when Sculley became CEO of Apple and realized quickly that the internet would be a huge success for any company that could get a foothold into it.

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Apple

With our heavy dependence on technology, we needed a technology mogul to meet our demands. Apple to this day is one of the most successful companies that has ever graced this earth. It all started out on April 1st 1976,  when the founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who  were college dropouts at the time, started building computers in Steve Jobs garage. They both thought they could give Microsoft a run for their money after Microsoft was founded just a year earlier. They soon went on to sell a computer called the Apple II that had a monitor, keyboard, and mouse which grossed them over 117,000,000 dollars in 1980. After the majorly successful launch of their second computer they went public in the stock market which greatly benefited their ventures. As the years went on, they had to have another revolutionary product to help them bring even more success. When Apple debuted the iPod it was a worldwide hit. The iPod gave people a chance to listen to music on the go, conveniently, that fits in the palm of your hand. Around the same time Steve Jobs made his first laptop and developed the iTunes store which greatly benefited the company. One of the biggest hits of today is the Apple iPhone which revolutionized mobile phones into smart phones. By adding a good camera and a lot of processing power the Apple iPhone landed the company, in ten years, 8 billion U.S. dollars in 2007 to more than 229 billion in 2017. On October 5th, 2011 Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer which was a massive loss to the company and the world, but his legacy lived on. But the massive success of the iPhone helped develop the iPad which gained traction in 2012. Just before  the passing of Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, the former COO of Apple took on the CEO position of the company he has been the CEO of Apple since. His knowledge and love for the company has greatly benefited us as consumers and the company as a whole. One of the great milestones for the company was when they hit over a trillion dollar market cap on August 2nd 2018. To this day, Apple continues to be the most dominant company in the technology market.