DQ 1

In March 2015, Tim Cook (Cook), the CEO of technology giant, Apple Inc. (Apple), was named as the “world’s greatest leader” of the world’s most valuable company by Fortune magazine. Apple, a US-based company, designed, manufactured, and marketed mobile communication and media devices, personal computers, and portable digital music players, and sold a variety of related software, services, peripherals, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications. Despite being regularly compared with his immediate predecessor and legendary founder CEO, Steve Jobs (Jobs), Cook had his own strengths. Since becoming the CEO, Cook had transformed himself from a soft-spoken operations manager to a high-profile leader of an increasingly decentralized, team-oriented culture at Apple. The company also offered dividends and share repurchases to investors for the first time in its history, boosting its stock price. Cook still faced a number of management challenges, including consumers’ disappointment with some of new products like Apple Maps and Siri and the hiring fiasco of John Browett as Apple’s retail chief.

By 2014, Cook was finally stepping out of the shadow of Jobs. In October 2014, Cook announced publicly that he was gay. Cook also used the platform as Apple’s CEO to opine on subjects as diverse as human rights, access to education, female representation on Wall Street, immigration reform, privacy rights, and racial inequality in his home state of Alabama. Cook also took an interest in philanthropy and had plans to give away all his wealth. Under him, Apple was also gradually shedding its image of a sustainability laggard, becoming a much more socially aware and philanthropic company, and working to improve conditions in its overseas factories. By 2015, as markets for Apple’s iPhone and iPad had matured, it was yet to be seen whether a new product like the Apple Watch, or a new service like Apple Pay, or Apple’s acquisition of Beats would restore Apple’s past growth rate or even be financially successful.

What are the chief elements of Tim Cook’s overall leadership and management style? How well is it working? Is his style evolving?
How do you think Tim Cook’s leadership style affects the decision making process at Apple?
DQ 2

Policies and procedures facilitate strategy execution when they are designed to fit the company’s strategy and objectives. Discuss how a company has revised its policies and procedures to provide better top-down guidance to company personnel about how certain things should be done, or implemented a continuous improvement process or activity.
Summarize the change, focusing on the reasons about what was done, and the results.