The author lost me with his unabashed bias in speaking of other executives:
In the case of someone like Mayer or Steve Jobs—who was accused of many of the same flaws—those strengths and weaknesses make for far better results than the executive alternative, whether it’s a corporate hatchet woman like HP’s Carly Fiorina, an overpaid functionary like Citi’s Vikram Pandit, or an unrepentant economy wrecker like Lehman’s Dick Fuld, not to mention undistinguished wheel tillers like Apple’s John Sculley and his current reincarnation, Tim Cook. Whatever Mayer does with Yahoo, she at least has a fighting chance to revive the company, something that could never have been said of her predecessors.
He could easily make the same point without adding the unnecessary negative adjectives: "Overpaid", "Unrepentant", "Undistinguished". For the record, I think Tim Cook is a very distinguished wheel tiller (if by wheel tiller you mean operationals/supply chain expert) and Vikram Pandit earned $1 in total compensation in 2009-2010, only getting paid starting in 2011 when Citi had already been profitable for a year. Before anyone argues the merits of Tim or Vikram, let me emphasize that my point is not on their merits as CEOs but on the way they were described to make a point for Marissa Mayer.
I came to say the same thing about Cook. If you look at Jobs, Mayer, etc as "product managers" that focus on creating value vs the others named that slash expenses, you have to recognize Cook's brilliance in creating the world's greatest supply, operations, and logistics machines. It's the offensive line to the iPad and iPhone's star quarterback, and a superior product in it's own right.
That said, maybe Cook's dream of a well oiled machine is more limited than Jobs' vision. Or maybe it needs to be expanded to not just be about Apple.
Agree. Some good points in the article but he ends up losing credibility with sweeping statements and a distortion of facts. Tim cooks is a highly capable CEO but just has a different skill set. Peter Drucker said it well, people with great strengths also have great weaknesses. A sure path to mediocrity is to glorify all round generalists. Single purpose tools will win over them any day! (which I believe is the main point the article is trying to make, whether it be PM'ing, operations, people management or even sales!).
Jobs would not have been as succesful in phase 2 of his career without Tim Cook. Cook is an operations expert and a great people manager. He cleaned up Job's messes--being abusive and a royal jerk, taking credit for other people's ideas and being a terrible listener.
And where would jobs be without Woz's technical wizardy?
What is the problem in calling public people for what they really are? Vikram Pandit is overpaid [1], John Sculley was clearly unfit for the position, and although Tim Cook is talented as a supply chain expert, he is not the visionary that Steve Jobs was.
Also, while Tim Cook is not quite the visionary that Steve Jobs is, Apple's supply chain and ability to exert quality and pricing pressure over suppliers is a huge competitive advantage, and arguably one that keeps their profits so far above other hardware manufacturers.
There are plenty of companies with awesome vision that fail because they can't execute the way Apple can.
When Steve Jobs accepted the job as a interim-CEO to clean-up Sculley's mistakes, back when Apple was almost bankrupt, he accepted the $1 salary on the expectation that he would be paid only if Apple would perform well. That's how much faith and commitment he had in Apple succeeding, and that was before the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad...
Compare Steve Jobs attitude with Pandit's, who announced he would "reduce" his salary to $1 in 2009, only after the $25b in govt bail-out. On that same year, he was compensated "just a few million dollars" (as opposed to $38m in 2008), plus $165m for his hedge fund. [1]
First, including the $165M from the sale of a hedge fund in his CEO compensation is misleading. He received this for a completely different reason than his tenure as CEO.
Second, if you are going to include Pandit's full compensation, you need to include the millions of Apple shares that Steve Jobs received for his tenure as Chairman of the Board at Apple:
My statement "on the expectation that he would be paid only if Apple would perform well" meant "paid in bonuses", which includes the shares and perks. Also, I never stated that Jobs made less than Pandit -- You said first: We are not arguing about compensation here.
Point being: Jobs accepted a new position and would earn money only if he would deliver. Pandit in the other hand would make money regardless what was the outcome, staying on the position he was before. He screwed it up, got bail-out by the government, reduced his salary to $1 as a mea-culpa, then made a bunch of money and left. Is this what a good CEO would do?
To say that Pandit, who became CEO in December 2007, somehow screwed up Citibank, reflects a misunderstanding of the history of the crisis.
The CDO and MBS markets had been in place for a decade, and were already cratering when Pandit was brought on, and in fact he was brought in to replace the previous CEO following "unexpectedly poor Q3 performance."
Pandit took a reduced salary in 2009 following the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers in fall 2008, which eventually led to the creation of TARP funding. His compensation was only brought back after 2 years and 5 consecutive quarters of profitability.
>>and although Tim Cook is talented as a supply chain expert, he is not the visionary that Steve Jobs was.
There are very few people in the entire world who can be compared to Steve Jobs in this regard. In America, there is only one such person and he is busy running an electric car company and a space rocket company simultaneously.
So yeah, the fact that Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs v2.0 should not be surprising. He was never meant to be. What matters is that he is exceptional in other ways and Apple has benefited from his talents tremendously.
>>and Vikram Pandit earned $1 in total compensation in 2009-2010
I don't disagree with the rest of what you said, but this is bullshit. Most CEOs are compensated via stock options. So the fact that his salary was $1 doesn't mean anything.
In the case of someone like Mayer or Steve Jobs—who was accused of many of the same flaws—those strengths and weaknesses make for far better results than the executive alternative, whether it’s a corporate hatchet woman like HP’s Carly Fiorina, an overpaid functionary like Citi’s Vikram Pandit, or an unrepentant economy wrecker like Lehman’s Dick Fuld, not to mention undistinguished wheel tillers like Apple’s John Sculley and his current reincarnation, Tim Cook. Whatever Mayer does with Yahoo, she at least has a fighting chance to revive the company, something that could never have been said of her predecessors.
He could easily make the same point without adding the unnecessary negative adjectives: "Overpaid", "Unrepentant", "Undistinguished". For the record, I think Tim Cook is a very distinguished wheel tiller (if by wheel tiller you mean operationals/supply chain expert) and Vikram Pandit earned $1 in total compensation in 2009-2010, only getting paid starting in 2011 when Citi had already been profitable for a year. Before anyone argues the merits of Tim or Vikram, let me emphasize that my point is not on their merits as CEOs but on the way they were described to make a point for Marissa Mayer.