Apple Inc. Leadership Skills: Managing Organizations and Leading People

Running head: APPLE INC. LEADERSHIP SKILLS
MANAGING ORGANIZATIONS AND LEADING PEOPLE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1APPLE INC. LEADERSHIP SKILLS
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Organization description and its objectives.........................................................................2
Leadership practices............................................................................................................4
How leadership affected the organizational culture............................................................6
SWOT analysis....................................................................................................................9
Strengths of apple Inc......................................................................................................9
Weaknesses of Apple Inc.................................................................................................9
Opportunities on Apple Inc...........................................................................................10
Threats of Apple Inc......................................................................................................11
Leadership evaluation........................................................................................................11
Strength..........................................................................................................................11
Weakness.......................................................................................................................12
Recommendations..............................................................................................................13
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................16
References..........................................................................................................................17

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Introduction
Leadership is an important aspect for any organization, as through this process higher
authorities are able to guide influence and direct the work ethics and behavior of employees so
that they are able to achieve specific goals for the organization. Leadership skills lead managers
to boost confidence and zeal in employees, defines the future vision, and motivates the
organization (Bolman & Deal, 2017). Hence, a leader helps to initiate actions, provides
motivation, reinforce confidence, supports with guidelines and helps to build moral and work
environment with the coordination of the employees. Apple is one of the leading tech and gadget
producing multinational company that has been suffering from leadership issues from past few
years (Choudhary, Akhtar & Zaheer, 2013). This assignment is going to discuss search
leadership qualities in the organization Apple. Further, it will be discussing its strength weakness
opportunities and threats with respect to the organization and its leadership for the
recommendations for future aspects improvement will be discussed.
Organization description and its objectives
Apple Inc. is a USA based multinational company having its headquarters in California.
This organization deals in services such as technology, gadgets, software and different other
online services. There is a series of bestselling products of apples including, iPhone, iPad, smart
computers, mac book, smart watch, apple TV, and software such as iOS, macOS and online
stores such as iTunes iOS apple store, mac store and iCloud (Apple Inc., 2018). In the year 1976,
three individuals, Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak founded the company in
California with its first computer namely apple 1. Steve job was one of the best CEOs in the
world who leads the Apple Inc. towards every achievement the organization acquired in its

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journey. In the twentieth century, apple became the leader in innovation, application and
implementation. This made the organization a brand and acquired a worldwide brand value.
However, from last ten years the organization is focusing on simplicity with innovation and
providing customers with quality products. As the apple products are equipped with Mac
operating systems that provides quality service without any complex operation, the company is
able to integrate innovation with simplicity (Apple Inc., 2018).
The working culture of this organization believes in the utilization of its human resources
in excellence and innovation. The prime three aspects of the organizational culture are creativity
and innovation, working under tremendous pressure, high level of secrecy or confidentiality and
focus on diversity or inclusion. As the product is famous for its innovation and creative features,
the employees should have creativity and innovativeness within their personality and for that,
company provides its employees with appropriate environment to work freely (Chan, Pun
&Selden, 2013). The company does not have any dress code provides the employees with their
personalized working space that leads the employees to work in calm and focused manner.
Secondly, as maximum of the projects has specific deadlines, the employees should have the
quality to work under pressure. To make the employees aware of such norms, the CEO himself
works for long working hours and sets examples for his employees. As the apple products are
known for its innovations, secrecy is the primal aspect that the employees have to maintain
within the apple campus (Khan, Alam &Alam, 2015). Furthermore, by including diversity and
inclusiveness within the organization, the company is trying to break a stereotype that mentioned
this organization as less diverse and the company of white people.

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Leadership practices
The meaning of leadership is different from a person who is able to manage 100 people
working in an organization. In recent business world, leadership is an ability to motivate and
influence a group of people, who has the ability to drive the organization towards excellence
(DeRue & Ashford, 2010). While working in the marketing department of the Apple Inc. USA, I
was able to observe the three primary leadership skills of Tim Cook the CEO of Apple Inc.
These leadership practices were developing a way for fellow employees, challenge the old and
slow process and push them to achieve more and finally sharing a vision and mission to the
organization (Heracleous, 2013). The leadership skills of the CEO was able to create a principle
regarding the way the employees should behave with their respective clients or colleagues as it is
important to create a healthy working environment. Furthermore, the leadership was able to
facilitate strategic formulation and implementation as the CEO himself worked for long hours to
set goals for fellow employees. Hence, he led the path and challenged the old and slow pathway
to success. The third strategy was to provide the employee group with vision, mission and
objectives for future strategic implementation. The current vision and mission statement of this
organization is depending on the legacy and brand name of the organization (Kunnanatt, 2016).
Further, after the death of former CEO Steve Jobs, the current CEO Tim Cook has changed the
vision as well as the mission statement and modification was to influence the employees as well
as to stay active in the increasing market competition with respect to innovation. The current
CEO Tim Cook introduced the current vision statement of apple and according to him, the
company will continue to produce innovative and evolving products and the products will be
simple by controlling primary technologies they innovated years ago (Groysberg & Connolly,
2013). Furthermore, the organization will not settle and will achieve excellence and they will be

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targeting markets in which their contribution will mark difference. This detailed vision reflected
by the CEO of the company describes the company’s relative efforts to achieve success and
growth. On the other hand, careful selection of market for its simple, innovative and user-
friendly products determines that the company has its specific customers and therefore the
organization is trying to fulfill the demand of those customers only (Heracleous, 2013). On the
other hand, the mission statement of the company describes the holistic approach of the leaders
about the company and therefore with changing market, the company changed its mission
statement. It states that apple has been able to introduce several bestselling personal computers,
iOS X, and professional software as well as it had brought the revolutionary changes in the
smartphone industry by implementing iOS operating system. Therefore, the company’s mission
is to become the reigning leader in the tech and gadget industry in future years as well
(Kunnanatt, 2016).
Therefore according to the mission and vision statement of the Apple Inc., the objectives
of the higher authority of this leading organization are
1. The company will continue to surprise its customers with latest technologies and
products.
2. It will lead the world in shaping the future prospects of gadgets and technologies
with its innovative ideas.
3. As the brand has a global name and identification, the organization will focus on
expansion of the company, and will make the product available to global
customers through every means such as online or offline retailing.