In a new profile of Apple CEO Tim Cook, Reuters spends time painting the two-year veteran of Cupertino’s top spot as deft, methodical, and tough. While he has earned a reputation as more of a delegator and less of a diva than Jobs was, the sources in the article say that he is still a focused CEO who expects results.
A person familiar with Tim Cook’s meeting style said “He could skewer you with a sentence. 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.”
Not bad for a CEO whose own board is deeply concerned.
Reuters notes that when Sheryl Sandberg was given the number two spot at Facebook in 2007, Tim Cook was the first person she called, with Cook giving some great advice on how to thrive in the second seat.
“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.
That niceness is what most of us think of when we hear Tim Cook’s name. According to Beth Fox, a former Apple employee, “It is not as crazy as it used to be. It is not as draconian.” She also notes that most people she still knows at the successful company are staying put.
“They like Tim,” she said. “They tend to err on the optimistic side.”
Tim Cook can be methodically ruthless, as well, and the Reuters piece reminds us all of how quickly Tim Cook took the reins on the iOS 6 Maps issue, bypassing Scott Forestall (who Cook would later fire) and delegating any strategic fixes to Eddy Cue, eventually apologizing to iOS users and placing Jony Ive in charge of the flagship Apple product’s software as well as hardware.
The profile is a great read, so be sure to click through and check it out.
Source: Reuters
Via: CNET
Image: All Things D
