Among the eulogies to Steve Jobs’ undoubted genius was a back-handed compliment from the markets on Thursday morning: smartphone manufacturers’ shares rose in Asia, apparently on doubts about whether the US company would be able to repeat its innovative success without its founder.
Jobs left his chief executive role in August, but his premature death puts the task of dispelling those doubts firmly in the hands of his successors. It could be a mistake to assume that, because they lack Jobs’ charisma, they won’t be capable of carrying forward his legacy.
If Jobs’ company thrives without him, it won’t be an accident, according to Jim “Good to Great” Collins and Morten Hansen. They point out in their new book, Great by Choice (which I’ve reviewed for the FT) that “when banished to the high-tech wilderness in 1985 after being ousted from his own company, Jobs never stopped developing, growing, learning, pushing himself”:
In the 12 years away from Apple, Jobs… turned himself from a creative entrepreneur into a disciplined, creative company builder. Jobs always knew how to build insanely great products, but he had to learn how to build an insanely great company.
Philip Delves Broughton emphasised that discipline in an excellent FT column in August. He wrote that Jobs’ management style was inimitable – combining “his enviable aesthetic sense, focus and negotiating prowess” with “a readiness to humiliate and embarrass others” – but the “detail-minded” Tim Cook, now chief executive, was the ideal leader for the post-Jobs era.
Of course, this theory will now be tested in one of the toughest and fastest-moving markets in the world. But doomsayers – and Asian speculators – should probably set aside their nostalgia for the finely tuned sales pitches of Apple’s late founder and think of the company in the way Philip described it:
Despite its west coast cool, Apple has long had more in common with a well-drilled army, with the joint chiefs on top, the privates and contractors down below and a strict chain of command binding them together.
