Longtime fans of Apple products may have done some hand-wringing when the CEO mantle passed from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook, but a new profile sheds light on how the current boss is thinking differently about management.
The New York Times published a Sunday profile on Apple CEO Tim Cook that was no April Fool’s joke. The April 1 piece reveals some of the ways the new boss in Cupertino is making his mark in ways that are very different from those of predecessor Steve Jobs.
Most significantly, Cook is taking a very hands-on approach to the recent spotlight thrown on Foxconn, where many of the company’s wildly popular products are manufactured. Only a day before the Fair Labor Association announced the results of the audit commissioned by Apple, Cook was on the ground in China, touring one of those very same facilities.
“In contrast to Mr. Cook, Mr. Jobs never visited the factories in China where Apple’s products were made, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who declined to be identified to avoid antagonizing Apple,” the report reveals.
“During the years when he was chief executive, Mr. Jobs was never as directly engaged with Apple’s effort to audit its suppliers as Mr. Cook was, according to a former Apple executive who declined to be identified,” the report continues. “Still, when Mr. Jobs learned of the more serious violations of its supplier code of conduct -- instances where child labor was used, for example -- he was outraged, this person said.”
It should be no surprise that Cook is more hands-on when it comes to manufacturing -- it’s exactly why Jobs hired him in the first place back in 1997, and Cook is largely responsible for streamlining Apple’s operations over the decade that followed. As it turns out, the CEO’s “blue-collar roots growing up in Alabama” helped give him “an early appreciation for factory work.”
“I spent a lot of time in factories personally, and not just as an executive,” Cook told investors at a conference in February. “I worked in a paper mill in Alabama and an aluminum plant in Virginia.”
Cook’s past experience makes him the perfect leader to address the current Foxconn woes, which could ironically also benefit many of Apple’s competition at the same time, since their products are often manufactured in the same facilities.
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(Photo courtesy of The New York Times)
