I am writing a paper on change leadership. I choose to write it on Apple because I believe Apple is the best example of organizational change. When Jobs was fired from Apple, how the company suffered for the wrong kind of change and when Steve was back in Apple, how the company changed in a right way and became the top company in the world. I was wondering, when Steve came back in Apple as a CEO what kind of organizational model or framework did he followed so that later on Apple became so successful? I mean organizational model like the Six-Box, 7S or Star model not the organizational structure.
Steve Jobs was renowned for his autocratic and perhaps even dictatorial style when he led Apple. He micro-managed the business to the extent that one friend told me “when Steve Jobs was in charge, he was really in charge. It seemed that Steve was involved in every decision that Apple made."
In conducting some research about 10 years ago, I found out that Jobs met almost every Monday with his executive management team led by Tim Cook to discuss results the previous week's results and to review the status of key projects in the company. On Wednesdays he had another meeting to focus on marketing and communication issues. On Fridays there was often a meeting with the designers led by Jonathon Ive.
A key information source for my research was a former colleague at McKinsey who subsequently joined Apple. He said that Jobs was very thorough but often unpredictable in these meetings. He did not rely on conventional consulting models like McKinsey 7S or BCG Growth-Share Matrix. Instead, he had subordinates make presentations and then he asked questions. His questions often directed the discussion to (what seemed like) unimportant details about a particular project.
Once a year Apple had a 3-day strategy retreat with about 100 subordinates. The framework for those discussions was SWOT, but my friend said that once again Jobs directed and dominated the discussion. The intended outcome was a strategy but more often than not Apple ended up being driven by Jobs' vision. Key decisions like pricing were often made or changed only a few days before new products were released.
When Apple was led by Jobs, it generally disregarded modern management theories and principles. It thrived on the extraordinary vision and leadership of Steve Jobs as well as 2 trusted lieutenants - Jonathon Ive on the design side and Tim Cook on the operations side. Very personal leadership!
Hello,
Some documentation that could help you to find the answers.
Best regards
I agree with Maris that Steve Jobs was unpredictable and dictatorial leader since he was a very creative person. He hated standard and stiff structures. He aligned the organization with his image about the future and performance. Steve Jobs was obsessed with changing the world with his business ideas, disruptive technologies and services. He was living in the mind of customers and tried to understand their feelings about his products.
Steve Jobs wanted everything to be very simple and very closed to natural phenomena. Just think of the way he conceived the operation of iPhone! The most important for your research should not be the organizational style but the leadership style and the fact that Steve change the organizational culture of Apple when he returned back. He wanted to be in full control of everything in the company and asked always the employees to come out with new and disruptive ideas.
I appreciate Jorge suggestions for reading. Please, consider also as a must:
Walter Isaacson (2011) Steve Jobs, Little Brown, London. (An excellent biography)
Ken Segall (2012) Insanely simple. The obsession that drives Apple's success, Portfolio Penguin, London.
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