Reaction to discussion below. Do you agree or disagree? Any additional thoughts? It is important to understand that for a business to succeed, being motivated and hardworking does not guarantee a good positive outcome for the company. There are other key factors that have to be in place in order to put the company on a path for success. These factors include effective planning and decision-making with a systematic approach that considers the available information, the goals and objectives of the organization, and the potential outcomes of different decisions. One of the companies I admire the most today is Apple. I because of how it started and all the changes they had to go through to become the company they are today. Apple is well-known for its innovations in hardware, software, and services. Thanks to them, it grew from some 8,000 employees and $7 billion in revenue in 1997, the year Steve Jobs returned, to 137,000 employees and $260 billion in revenue in 2019. Much less well known are the organizational design and the associated leadership model that have played a crucial role in the company’s innovation success. Steve Jobs’ leadership style was autocratic, and I believe transformational as well. He had a meticulous eye for detail and surrounded himself with like minded people to follow his lead. When Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, the company was in the verge of bankruptcy. Before his arrival, the company was divided into business units, making them responsible for their own profits & loss (P&L), this dysfunctional method of conventional management drove managers to fight with one another, over prices in particular. His authoritarian style drove him to, within the same year, fire all of the general managers of this units the same day. The goals and objectives, once the company restructure, were based on two main points. First, Apple competes in markets where the rates of technological change and disruption are high, so it must rely on the judgment and intuition of people with deep knowledge of the technologies responsible for disruption. Long before it can get market feedback and solid market forecasts, the company must make bets about which technologies and designs are likely to succeed in smartphones, computers, and so on. Relying on technical experts rather than general managers increases the odds that those bets will pay off. Second, Apple’s commitment to offer the best possible products would be undercut if short-term profit and cost targets were the overriding criteria for judging investments and leaders. Significantly, the bonuses of senior R&D executives are based on companywide performance numbers rather than the costs of or revenue from particular products. Thus, product decisions are somewhat insulated from short-term financial pressures. The finance team is not involved in the product road map meetings of engineering teams, and engineering teams are not involved in pricing decisions. Ever since Steve Jobs implemented the functional organization, Apple’s managers at every level, from senior vice-president on down, have been expected to possess three key leadership characteristics: deep expertise that allows them to meaningfully engage in all the work being done within their individual functions; immersion in the details of those functions; and a willingness to collaboratively debate other functions during collective decision-making. When managers have these attributes, decisions are made in a coordinated fashion by the people most qualified to make them.
Reaction to discussion below.
Do you agree or disagree?
Any additional thoughts?
It is important to understand that for a business to succeed, being motivated and hardworking does not guarantee a good positive outcome for the company. There are other key factors that have to be in place in order to put the company on a path for success. These factors include effective planning and decision-making with a systematic approach that considers the available information, the goals and objectives of the organization, and the potential outcomes of different decisions.
One of the companies I admire the most today is Apple. I because of how it started and all the changes they had to go through to become the company they are today. Apple is well-known for its innovations in hardware, software, and services. Thanks to them, it grew from some 8,000 employees and $7 billion in revenue in 1997, the year Steve Jobs returned, to 137,000 employees and $260 billion in revenue in 2019. Much less well known are the organizational design and the associated leadership model that have played a crucial role in the company’s innovation success. Steve Jobs’ leadership style was autocratic, and I believe transformational as well. He had a meticulous eye for detail and surrounded himself with like minded people to follow his lead. When Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, the company was in the verge of bankruptcy. Before his arrival, the company was divided into business units, making them responsible for their own profits & loss (P&L), this dysfunctional method of conventional management drove managers to fight with one another, over prices in particular. His authoritarian style drove him to, within the same year, fire all of the general managers of this units the same day.
The goals and objectives, once the company restructure, were based on two main points. First, Apple competes in markets where the rates of technological change and disruption are high, so it must rely on the judgment and intuition of people with deep knowledge of the technologies responsible for disruption. Long before it can get market feedback and solid market forecasts, the company must make bets about which technologies and designs are likely to succeed in smartphones, computers, and so on. Relying on technical experts rather than general managers increases the odds that those bets will pay off. Second, Apple’s commitment to offer the best possible products would be undercut if short-term profit and cost targets were the overriding criteria for judging investments and leaders. Significantly, the bonuses of senior R&D executives are based on companywide performance numbers rather than the costs of or revenue from particular products. Thus, product decisions are somewhat insulated from short-term financial pressures. The finance team is not involved in the product road map meetings of engineering teams, and engineering teams are not involved in pricing decisions.
Ever since Steve Jobs implemented the functional organization, Apple’s managers at every level, from senior vice-president on down, have been expected to possess three key leadership characteristics: deep expertise that allows them to meaningfully engage in all the work being done within their individual functions; immersion in the details of those functions; and a willingness to collaboratively debate other functions during collective decision-making. When managers have these attributes, decisions are made in a coordinated fashion by the people most qualified to make them.
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