Apple's Leadership Evolution: Comparing Steve Jobs and Tim Cook

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of leadership and management at Apple, focusing on the contrasting leadership styles of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. It begins with an introduction to operations management and its significance in achieving efficiency within an enterprise, specifically in the context of Apple. The report explores Apple's mission statement and corporate objectives, followed by a discussion on leadership qualities and management functions, including planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. The core of the report compares the leadership qualities and managerial skills of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. Steve Jobs is characterized by his passion, creativity, and strong communication, while Tim Cook is noted for his emotional intelligence and organizational skills. The report concludes with a comparative evaluation of the two leaders, summarizing their contributions to Apple's success and providing insights into their distinct approaches to leadership. The report provides a detailed overview of the content, covering Apple's mission statement, corporate objectives, functions of management, leadership qualities, strength and weaknesses of the leaders and their impact on the company.

Formative Project

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
CHAPTER 1....................................................................................................................................4
Introduction, mission statement along with corporate objectives of Apple................................4
CHAPTER 2....................................................................................................................................4
What is leadership along with management functions................................................................4
CHAPTER 3....................................................................................................................................6
What are Leadership qualities and managerial skills with relation to Apple between Steve
Jobs and Tim Cook......................................................................................................................6
CHAPTER 4....................................................................................................................................7
Evaluation of specific strengths and weaknesses of leaders.......................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Operations management is a activity to create a broad level of efficiency in an enterprise
and it involves in planning, designing and operations in context to production procedures
(Barnes, 2018). In this, they can also help to transfer products and services from one place to
another place and involve various procedures and methods that can implement in organisation in
an effectively and efficiently manner. With reference to Apple, it ensure to transform of goods
and services in an efficiently manner. It is helpful for enterprise because it is concerned with
planning, designing and various other functions of management are also considered. It helps
management that each and every aspect of business is considered to designing, productivity and
improvement of quality. It also helps to determine how firms can modify their performance and
identify their financial transactions. Several topics are covered in this report with context to
Apple such as mission statements, objectives, functions of management, various leadership
qualities, strength and weaknesses.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction, mission statement along with corporate objectives of Apple.
Apple was established in Cupertino, California on April 1,1976 by Steve jobs, Steve
Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. It is a multinational company that makes a mobiles, iPods, watches
and many more products they sell their products all around world (Chen, Dong and Shi, 2020).
The firm registered in California who worked at Atari are agreed to become a founder of
enterprise in 10% return share. Apple global annual revenue and income are $274.5 billion in
2020 and it was world largest firm who is most valuable revenue earn in 2020. apple sells their
products in retail stores and online stores are also available as well as directly through retailers.
The mission statement of Apple is to bring top-quality products for students and provide good
services to customers, designers, engineers in over 140 countries around world. Corporate
objectives of Apple are:
 It is provide best innovative products and new technologies to customers because
technology of apple keeps changing over again and customers buy brand quality of
products in this innovative world.
 It always ensure to provide great health and safety products for employees and they
expand their sales to those customers who have not brought their apple product.

CHAPTER 2
What is leadership along with management functions
The term leadership defines as motivating those people who act towards achieve goals
and meet their firm needs (Gibson and Parkman, 2018). It is quality of manager that generate
subordinate towards their work with full of confidence and guide to achieve a specific goals of
enterprise. Within an Apple, leadership plays a vital role in this company to identity vision and
mission statement and influence economic development of employees and firm. It is important to
enhance profitability and productivity in enterprise to achieve business objectives.
Management can be defined as coordinating and controlling those activities which are
related to management affairs in organisation. Managers can achieve those goals and objectives
through planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. Several management functions
that can be defined as with context to Apple are as follows:
Planning: It is first and foremost function of management to thinking in advance what is
done, why it is to be done, how it is to be done and where it is to be done. Planning is
predetermined to set goals and objectives to achieve specific task. It also help to take a decision
making procedures in a proper manner. In case of Apple, each and every managers decide and
focus on a specific objective to achieve in enterprise. It involves to assign various resources and
responsibilities are delegated that deals with accomplishment of tasks.
Organising: In this stage of management, organising determine to spread their resources
that reach a better goals and assigning those responsibilities to authority for complete their task
in effective manner. It includes finding of activities, assign duties to subordinates, organise a task
in efficient way and coordinate actions. With relation to Apple, managers need to organise their
activities for subordinates and decide how to allocate their responsibility to subordinate. It work
with various department such as finance, HR, marketing, IT and organise working environment
to enhance profitability and productivity.
Staffing: The term staffing defined as to provide job for right person at right place at a
right time. In this, they recruiting and hiring people to accomplish organisational their goals for
proper selection, to evaluate their performance, assessment and development of employee. For
Apple, each and every mangers are actively participating to recruiting people because it helps to
ensure performance of employee in an efficient way and ensure that right job provide at right
people at right time.

Directing: It is one of most important functions in management to provide directions of
employee about how they work and motivate employee to completed their work at a particular
time. It involves instructions, guiding and supervising to subordinate related to procedures and
acting to achieve a organisational goals. In case of Apple, it is helpful to guiding their
subordinate easily and leading them in a proper direction so that they can control their function
in a desired way.
Controlling: The term controlling defines as compare actual result with standard result in
a efficient manner. It is helpful to check all activities related to work whether it is execute
properly or not and taking corrective actions are required. It is the last step of management
functions to achieve their goals effectively. For Apple, it is helpful for managers to identify
errors easily and measure actual performance. They can evaluate their work properly then take
actions to improve quality of work.
CHAPTER 3
What are Leadership qualities and managerial skills with relation to Apple
between Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.
Leadership Qualities: Qualities can be described of a leader are ability to influence
others towards achievement of goals and objectives (Gölzer and Fritzsche, 2017). Leaders
quality possess are integrity, communication, influence others and many more. Steve jobs are
passionate about work, creative person and know balance between staff and employee. Tim cook
are ready to take risk, trust people around him and humble person. Various leadership qualities
and managerial skills that posses by leaders with context of Apple are as mentioned below:
Leadership qualities and managerial skills of Steve jobs:
 Active listening: Steve jobs have a great quality of listening if leaders listen with great
attention then people always share things with leaders. In case of Apple, it can maintain
and building a relationship with leaders. Good communication with each and every
person create a trust build up and focus on a individual person.
 Strong communicator: Good communication skills is necessary for leaders because
whatever the situation is they allow to express their thought ideas with people. For Apple,
sometimes it will be very hard to communicate employees and if they cant communicate
with people they can never be a good leader.

 Decision making: Each and every managers should have to take a tough decision
sometimes for arising a situations of enterprise. Good managers ensure their teams with
full of confidence and do not affect the quality of making decisions. With context of
Apple, firms value for decision making are already clearly defined like how can
strengthen their decisions and support for people to taking some hard decisions.
 Responsibility: Managers ensure their team responsibility towards accomplishment of
goals and objectives and set their standards. With reference to Apple, it is responsible for
team decisions in respect of both staff and provide employees to give guidance of
people.
Leadership qualities and managerial skills of Tim Cook:
 Emotional intelligence: Leaders is a influencers they can influence others for how to
gain other power it is all about emotional intelligence (Grabner, 2019). In case of Apple,
leaders understanding emotions and feelings of others and indicate quality of leadership
should handle conflict a better way.
 Delegation: The term delegation is said to be movement of responsibility and authority
in a specific functions or tasks. Leaders knows how to delegate their task wisely and
maximizing their profitability and productivity. For Apple, it is helpful to understand
those skills to accomplished their task and saves time.
 Communication: Managers can communicate with employees to motivate and guiding
for a better collaboration. It provide clarity in employees and clear all difficulties that a
employee faced. With reference of Apple, it is facilitate to reaching a position to achieve
goals and objectives of enterprise. Building a trust among employees and supports every
teamwork part.
CHAPTER 4
Evaluation of specific strengths and weaknesses of leaders
Strength and Weakness of Steve jobs:
Strength Weakness
 Team builder: Steve jobs is a very
passionate about work and able to
create a better team, inspire those
 Lack of Impatience: Steve jobs is very
impatience person (Guha and Kumar,
2018). They cant persistent seeking for

employees who is loyal towards their
work.
 Innovative Person: In this, they bring
a new and innovative ideas,
communicate people more and more.
They are getting more passionate about
their work and create new invention of
smartphones. Unique talent related to
marketing and a particular advertising.
 Creativity: Steve jobs is a creative
businessperson who is passionate about
work and what type of technology can
create that could in person lives.
perfection, fear to control apple culture.
 Bad behaviour: Sometimes it was not
a good team player because they have a
devastating behaviours.
 Impractical: Steve jobs has a great
intellectual person. It has an
extraordinary capacity about what weak
point is and what is the thing that will
feel small.
Strength and weakness of Tim cook:
Strength Weakness
 Good organisational skills: Tim cook
have great skills about how can handle
their business so well, what it is good
for software and design or what is not.
 Take risks: It is very difficult to take
risk for leader but Steve job take highly
challenging decisions in respect to
succeed.
 Trust others: They trust those people
who is successfully developed with
innovative ideas and allow these
executives to take a advantage (Ivanov,
Tsipoulanidis and Schönberger, 2017).
 Leadership qualities: It can follow his
 Lack of innovative ideas: They cant
easily come up with great and brilliant
ideas sometimes lost control of content
on Apple.
 Lack of communication skills: Tim
cook can't interact people so easily this
has impact are unable to carry their
work in an efficiently manner.
 Time management: if there is time
management that they will not
completed their work on time and
negatively impact on business output or
revenue.
 Inability to take decisions: Tim cook

own leadership quality like how can
they motivate their followers, inspire
and encourage to do their work for
betterment of firm.
has weak about taking business
decisions that has directly impact on
followers and business also.
CONCLUSION
As per mentioned above the report, it can be concluded that operations management
involve operations and procedures that transfer into goods and services in an enterprise
(Russell and Taylor, 2019). In an organisation, leadership sets vision, mission and objectives
of organisation and help to influence others related to work of employees. Various
management functions are involved to achieve organisation goals and objectives such as
planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. In this, several leadership qualities
and managerial skills of Steve jobs which are named active listening, strong communicator,
decision making, responsibility. In Tim cook, leadership qualities and managerial skills are
emotional intelligence, delegation and communication. Strength of Steve jobs are team builder,
innovative person and creativity. Weakness of Steve jobs are lack of impatience, bad behaviour,
Impractical. Strength of Tm cook are good organisational skills, take risks, trust others,
leadership qualities and weakness are lack of innovative ideas, lack of communication skills,
time management, Inability to take decisions.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Barnes, D., 2018. Operations Management. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Chen, J., Dong, J. and Shi, P., 2020. A survey on skill-based routing with applications to service
operations management. Queueing Systems. 96(1). pp.53-82.
Gibson, P. and Parkman, R., 2018. Cruise operations management: Hospitality perspectives.
Routledge.
Gölzer, P. and Fritzsche, A., 2017. Data-driven operations management: organisational
implications of the digital transformation in industrial practice. Production Planning &
Control. 28(16). pp.1332-1343.
Grabner, T., 2019. Operations Management. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
Guha, S. and Kumar, S., 2018. Emergence of big data research in operations management,
information systems, and healthcare: Past contributions and future roadmap. Production
and Operations Management. 27(9). pp.1724-1735.
Ivanov, D., Tsipoulanidis, A. and Schönberger, J., 2017. Global supply chain and operations
management. A decision-oriented introduction to the creation of value. 2.
Metters, R., 2017. Gender and operations management. Cross Cultural & Strategic
Management.
Russell, R. S. and Taylor, B. W., 2019. Operations and supply chain management. John Wiley
& Sons.
Slack, N. and Brandon-Jones, A., 2018. Operations and process management: principles and
practice for strategic impact. Pearson UK.