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Many companies are inextricably tied to their iconic founders\u2014from Mark Zuckerberg being the face of Meta, to Warren Buffett leading Berkshire Hathaway for decades. But when it came time for Tim Cook to take the reins of Apple, the brand\u2019s late cofounder Steve Jobs instructed him to forge his own path at the $3.83 trillion technology giant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[Jobs\u2019] advice to me was \u2018Never ask what I would do, just do the right thing,\u2019\u201d Cook told CBS Sunday Morning <\/em>in a recent interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was a lesson that Jobs had learned while working with Disney\u2014the Apple cofounder was also one of the three founding fathers of Pixar Animation Studios, purchasing the group from LucasFilm in 1986. Entertainment behemoth Disney later acquired Pixar in 2006, and during his work at the company, Jobs picked up on a trend.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had watched Disney go through this paralysis of sitting around and talking about what Walt [Disney] would do,\u201d Cook explained. \u201cAnd he did not want that for Apple.\u201d<\/p>\n The Apple CEO explained that at the time, the business had never had a \u201cprofessional transition\u201d at the chief executive level; the previous successions were always done in a time of \u201cpanic.\u201d However, Jobs wanted to do things differently this time. So he called Cook over to his house and offered him the CEO job\u2014with no pressure to emulate his leadership style.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll never forget that and it was such a gift for me, because he took off of my shoulder this question of, \u2018What would Steve do?\u2019\u201d Cook continued. \u201cI just put my head down and thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to be the best version of myself.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Cook first joined Apple in 1998 after stints at PC-maker Compaq and IBM, less than one year after Jobs had returned as interim CEO. From 2000 onwards, Jobs would lead as the permanent CEO, while Cook worked his way up to high-level positions, becoming the COO in 2005.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over Cook\u2019s nearly three decades at the company, working under Jobs until his passing in October 2011, he learned what principles are essential to the \u201cDNA\u201d of the company. While Jobs advised the current CEO to do his own thing, the cofounder imparted some everlasting fundamentals that will always be core to Apple.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c[Jobs] had the vision that the collaboration was something that would produce great results. That one plus one is equal to three, not two. That if you share an idea and debate it, it gets bigger and better,\u201d Cook explained in the CBS<\/em> interview. \u201cIf you care enough that you call somebody at 10 at night because you just had an idea, that incredible things can come out of that.\u201d<\/p>\n And it\u2019s still true to this day; Cook said the strategy to \u201cargue and debate everything\u201d at Apple meetings, breeding bigger and better ideas, dates back to the origin of the business. Cook spoke on different strengths he\u2019s harnessed within the business, particularly around accessibility, privacy, and education. But he\u2019s sticking with the collaboration culture that Jobs popularized through his decades of leadership.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c[Jobs] had an idea of focus that you say \u2018no\u2019 to a thousand things to say \u2018yes\u2019 to the one that\u2019s truly important,\u201d Cook continued. \u201cAnd that when you do something, you should do it at an excellence level where good isn\u2019t good enough: it has to be insanely great.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout his career, Jobs has advised many on how to step into their own success\u2014from college graduates to leaders of billion-dollar companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, said on Lenny\u2019s Podcast<\/em> in 2024 that Jobs helped him overcome \u201centrepreneurs block.\u201d The Apple cofounder instructed him to do three things: grow your business 10 times larger in two years, get a big customer for the Salesforce automation product, and build an application economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Benioff believed Jobs wanted him to build an app store, so he created AppExchange, later gifting Apple the App Store trademark and the appstore.com domain for Jobs\u2019 help. That advice \u201cdramatically influenced me in my career and my whole life,\u201d Benioff said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz also received some tough love from Jobs that ultimately led him on the path for success. It was 2008, and the coffee chain was in a crisis. After confiding to Jobs about the company\u2019s issues, Schultz was advised to fire his entire leadership team\u2014reasoning they\u2019ll all be gone within nine months anyways. The then-Starbucks CEO found the idea to be preposterous, but said Jobs was ultimately right in the end: all of the team left, except for one.<\/p>\n Jobs also imparted some critical advice for young job-seekers aspiring for greatness: do the work you love. It\u2019s a learning lesson that kept the tech pioneer going after being ousted from the company he had built, and weathering crises like Apple\u2019s near-bankruptcy.<\/p>\n \u201cYour work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do,\u201d Jobs said during his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you haven\u2019t found it yet, keep looking\u2014and don\u2019t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you\u2019ll know when you find it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Apple #CEO #Tim #Cook #late #predecessor #Steve #Jobs #gave #unusual #advice #handed #reins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many companies are inextricabl… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[119,445,266,2005,542,529,624,24,666,2813,15652,15650,522,3744,3989,9734,15651,7481,4532,6704,4877,4874,2510,4711,2311,2511,2577],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cook is bringing his own flair, but sticking to these core principles<\/h2>\n
The advice other business leaders have received from Jobs<\/h2>\n