“Shortly after signing on as chief operating officer at Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg was looking to connect with people in a similar role – No. 2 to a brilliant and passionate young founder,” Poornima Gupta and Peter Henderson report for Reuters. “She called Tim Cook.”
“‘He basically explained nicely that my job was to do the things that Mark (Zuckerberg) did not want to focus on as much,’ Sandberg said of the 2007 meeting that lasted several hours with the chief operating officer of Apple Inc. ‘That was his job with Steve (Jobs). And he explained that the job would change over time and I should be prepared for that,'” Gupta and Henderson report. “While Sandberg has enjoyed a steady run at Facebook, it is Cook’s job that has changed radically since then. Now, the man who was handed one of the more daunting tasks in business – filling the shoes of the late Steve Jobs and keeping Apple on top – may himself need a spot of advice.”
Gupta and Henderson write, “It is unclear whether the spread-sheeting-loving, consensus-oriented, even-keeled Cook can successfully reshape the cult-like culture that Jobs built. Though Cook has deftly managed the iPhone and iPad product lines, which continue to deliver enormous profits, Apple has yet to launch a major new product under Cook; talk of watches and televisions remains just that. Some worry that Cook’s changes to the culture have doused the fire – and perhaps the fear – that drove employees to try to achieve the impossible.”
“Still, he has a tough side. In meetings, Cook is so calm as to be nearly unreadable, sitting silently with hands clasped in front of himself. Any change in the constant rocking of his chair is one sign subordinates look for: when he simply listens, they’re heartened if there is no change in the pace of his rocking,” Gupta and Henderson write. “‘He could skewer you with a sentence,’ the person said. ‘He would say something along the lines of ‘I don’t think that’s good enough’ and that would be the end of it and you would just want to crawl into a hole and die.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in February:
“Those who underestimate Tim Cook do so at their own peril.”
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Apple CEO Tim Cook will prove the naysayers wrong – July 12, 2013