Adam Banks
On Monday 17 January, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced, in a letter to employees, that he would be taking a third leave of absence from the company for medical reasons. During a previous hiatus in 2009, he underwent a liver transplant to treat a rare form of pancreatic cancer. No information has been released about the reasons for his current break, and his letter closed: ‘My family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.’
The media reacted with a degree of respect that might almost have been considered excessive. BBC Radio 4’s World at One didn’t even mention that the leave of absence was for medical reasons. During Apple’s quarterly earnings call, hosted by COO Tim Cook, not a single analyst asked a question about Steve or his health – this despite Wall Street having reacted by wiping several billion dollars off the company’s share price. (The fall was more than recovered after the earnings announcements exceeded all expectations, as we report on page 7.)
Some commentators allowed themselves to ponder the significance of Steve’s temporary loss. Many played it down, including influential analyst Tim Bajarin, who told the LA Times: ‘Apple will continue to grow and thrive [because] the current management team really understands Jobs’ vision. Apple’s products are not created overnight. Products that will come out this year were designed two years ago.’ There was little to support Time magazine’s breathless assertion that ‘the tech world was sent reeling’ and ‘rumours have been swirling’. Rumours, if anything, swirled less than on an ordinary day in the Apple biosphere.
At least, such was the case in public. Behind closed doors, interested parties have no choice but to discuss the effect of the CEO’s private problems on a company whose fortunes directly affect their livelihoods. Apple has indeed thrived during Jobs’ last two absences – but it was not ever thus. After the co-founder was ousted by president John Sculley in 1985, Apple was severely limited in its impact on the computer industry, let alone the popular tech culture it now dominates, by CEOs Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio, both technically capable but socially invisible players who lacked the vision to grow Apple beyond its role as a well-regarded but minor vendor of non-standard PCs and misconceived innovations. Tim Cook – respected within Apple and at his previous company, Compaq, but largely unknown to the wider world – is not obviously a man in the mould of Steve rather than his successors.
Whether sooner or later, Apple will some day be without Jobs, and the truth is nobody knows how that’ll go. What we do know is this: giving one product-focused visionary control of the company succeeded wildly where conventional, competent, cautious management failed. Criticising a lack of succession planning is missing the point. Great things come from human ingenuity, luck and force of will. You can’t make them happen. You can only try not to get in their way.
