Perils of the Rock Star CEO
The news of Steve Jobs taking a medical leave of absence has rocked the blogosphere and the stock market. First, this shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about cancer, especially the kind he has. Second, it highlights the risk of hiring or developing a rock star CEO. While any executive of Steve Jobs' stature temporarily or permanently leaving a company is traumatic, I think it could have been different in this case and less "newsworthy".
Steve Jobs did a masterful job of rescuing Apple from near-certain demise and is clearly a driving force behind the company. There is no doubt he is the "Rock Star" CEO. Others that come to mind are Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, etc.. These three bear mentioning as they set their transition in place early and effectively. Both GE and Microsoft have not been unduly affected by the loss of their Rock Star CEOs. I would suspect Warren Buffett will plan and manage his eventual transition just as well.
In contrast, Steve Jobs has not impressed on his succession planning. He relishes the media and consumer attention, and this may have come back to bite him and Apple. Granted he has health issues and they tend to circumvent the best laid plans. However, what he should have started doing years ago is putting other management team members out there and sharing more of the credit and media focus. He may have been trying, but he didn't do enough. You can see Apple and its board desperately trying to convince us that Tim Cook is great, and I'm sure he is and will do fine. The problem is they should have been educating us about Tim years ago.
I predict Apple will do fine without Steve Jobs, whether he comes back in June, later, or not at all. They have great product lines, teams and business processes to continue executing. No doubt losing someone of Jobs' vision is difficult, but nobody is irreplaceable. In fact, having Jobs step away may be the best thing for the company in the long term. No company can succeed with such reliance on one person. It will be a very interesting process to watch unfold.
As an aside, I wish him well and hope he has a speedy recovery.
Let us know your thoughts on rock star CEOs in the comments.
Sponsored by
-
French Government Chooses Mozilla To Replace IBM and Microsoft For 130,000 Desktop PC's
October 30, 2009 / 11 Comments -
Email + CRM + LinkedIn + Twitter = Hustler's Power Drill
October 28, 2009 / 21 Comments -
Is the Relational Database Doomed?
February 12, 2009 / 111 Comments -
Proton Media: The Most Advanced Collaboration Technology in the Market?
October 30, 2009 / 11 Comments -
Netvibes Goes From Web 2.0 To Enterprise 2.0 In Partnership With Sage Software
November 3, 2009 / 5 Comments
-
Can $890,000 Make MediaWiki Useful?
June 12, 2009 / 10 Comments -
Proton Media: The Most Advanced Collaboration Technology in the Market?
October 30, 2009 / 11 Comments -
Yammer Goes Deep: 50,000 Networks Up and Running
November 3, 2009 / 3 Comments -
Enterprise 2.0: Declaring War Does Not Work
November 3, 2009 / 4 Comments -
CubeTree: Drilling Comments Down to the Cell in a Spreadsheet
November 4, 2009 / 2 Comments
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteEnterprise posts
AMEN!
That's pretty much what I've been saying on my blog for weeks but I keep getting stupid comments like "Steve is da man. Apple can't do anything without him".
I think the Gates/Ballmer CEO transition at Microsoft is a great example of a smooth change.
Jobs narcissism might get back at Apple in a bad way. The stock has already been suffering. It is time to prepare stockholders (and the rest of the world) to a new CEO.
Creating rock star CEOs could be injurious to company's succession plans as rightly pointed out by Jason.
Most notable case - many people know who Warren Buffet is but have no clue about Berkshire Hathaway! extending this list to Branson-Virgin, Gates-Microsoft etc.
I would say companies such as Google, Bose and Adobe are very smart in this regard.
@2
"extending this list to Branson-Virgin, Gates-Microsoft etc", I meant bad example of rock star CEOs. Of course Gates is synonymous with MS:-p
Thoughts on Zuckerberg and Facebook? Not that any succession issues would arise in the next, oh, zillion years... but I see him evolving into a Jobs-like figure, so what'll happen then?
Ever since reading Jim Collin's Good to Great, it's clear that Jobs was anything but a Level 5 leader. I'm not so sure they're going to do fine without him... at least not in the long run. In the short run, yes, but has he created a company that can last through good times and bad?
Jobs is more important to Apple than Gates was to MS. Anyone who doesn't see the difference doesn't understand what Steve really brings.
It's not his design sense etc... it's his absolute refusal to put out something that's not as good as he thinks it can be.
That attitude is incredibly rare in business where there's a lot of 'get it out the door and get some $$ in the bank, we can fix it later' going around. Steve pushes people to do better than they know they can and the risk if he doesn't return is that no other executive will be so insane about this. And even if they are... Jobs FOUNDED Apple. That gives him a power that no one else can really duplicate, one that's rooted in something that no other exec can have no matter how bright or good that exec is.
Will Apple survive if Jobs leaves permanently. Yes. Will the continue to be special and put out things that change how people use technology? Maybe.
I think Apple will do fine in the long term. Any problems that crop up with Jobs retiring will be in the short term. Jobs has given Apple enough fire power to last very long.
This is one of the best articles I've read on the Steve Jobs is-dead/dieing/almost-dead/almost-alive/fine/taking-a-five-month-break/never-coming-back story.
Regardless of what has/is going to happen with Jobs, Apple can only survive if he has passed on the unique vision that he has for product design.
I don't buy Apple products because I wear orange sunglasses or because of how they look. I buy them because of how they work. And they work so well because someone at Apple wouldn't let them on the shelves until they were perfect.
If this vision and power has been passed on, then Apple will continue without a hitch.
The world always remember Steve Jobs, the legendary Apple CEO. Hope he will get well soon.
The first time I heard about Steve was about his graduation speech. First impression is the best impression, I like him.
Sorry, didn't read the article. I'm just here to say the rockstar picture of Steve Jobs is awesome. Please post a highres link for me to blog, it rules.
@Techlang; Steve Who? I forgot him already.
Steve Jobs is the ultimate modern day snake oil salesman. Apple's products are inferior for the cost compared to like products (case in point is the Mac Airbook - WHat do you mean I can't swap my battery? Where the heck is the DVD drive?) Crapple.
Dear Jason,
When you are a start-up, it is really convenient and efficient to make the CEO a rock-star. It saves others associates or managers from the media turmoil.
An alternative, could be to promote a team rather than a single woman or man but that means more people not working the day when the ompany must be reprensented somewhere. It could be bad for the company.
The drawback is the case of Apple today. But as you wrote it is because Steve Jobs did not prepared his succession. However, Steve has not build Apple alone... Behind him there is a team that is used to work together, a culture, that gives little time for finding another visionary man.
Is there anyone who can do Steve Jobs without being Steve Jobs? I do think so
great article! - yep Steve Jobs is a rockstar! - what I think is really interesting is how a company can facilitate having all the employees feeling like rockstars - and not just the CEO. I have done a couple of speeches about this and also published a small ebook called "why every company should be a rockband" around the subject.
thanks..
Apple had a cult following when Steve was wandering in the wilderness during his exile from Apple. Explain that. It's not Steve, it's the products Apple brings to market. They work. They are easy to use. The third point on the list is that they look good.
During Steve's absence Apple produced the first Apple laptops. Almost all laptops made today follow the original Apple laptop format. The first PDA, the Newton, a device way ahead of it's time, was also produced when Steve was building Next and Pixar.
The cult already existed when Steve returned. The innovation remained while Steve was gone. Steve personally hired all of Apple's top executives. Steve did not hire idiots or ass kissers.
That there is no public succession plan does not mean that a succession plan does not exist. Apple will be just fine after Steve retires.
The cult of the personality seems to have wreaked havoc on Apple's stock price too, it's surely undervalued at the moment as Jobs' overall effect on the company's success isn't as great as Apple's stock price drops might suggest.
Great comments. Keep them coming.
Just to clarify, this post is in no way meant to criticize Steve Jobs performance as a CEO. He is has built a great company that produces awesome products. (I'm not on the Apple bandwagon myself but many friends and colleagues are.) I do think Steve and Apple could have better prepared for this day given his status and how intensely people identify Steve Jobs with Apple.
The comment about Zuckerberg at Facebook is an interesting one. While he is out there very publicly, he also seems to be building a very strong team. Also, I don't think the millions of non-tech oriented Facebook users really identify with him personally like they do with Steve Jobs. Most of them just happily use Facebook and have no idea who he is.
Also, thanks for the call-out on "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. The concepts in the book definitely influenced my thinking here, and anyone who is interested in this stuff should read it right away; it is a great piece of work.
Check out this article at Silicon Valley Insider on Apple (http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/apple-cut-to-sell-on-weak-management-team-aapl). The title is "Apple Cut To SELL On Weak Management Team". This is exactly what I'm talking about. Apple's management team may or may not be weak; I have no idea. What is clear is the perception is out there that the Apple universe revolves around Steve Jobs, and without him, everything falls apart. Apple has a serious PR challenge ahead of itself to educate us and the market about the strength of their management team.