10/18/11

That Vision Thing

P blica ion: The Time Of India Delhi;Da e: Oc 10, 2011;Sec ion: Edi o ial;Page: 18

That Vision Thing Running Apple in the post-Steve Jobs era is a challenge for the new leadership
Rosa Ch n

The much-anticipated release of Apple s new iPhone 5 did not happen last week, though the iPhone facing growing competition from Android smartphones could have used the boost. As it happened, the iPhone 4S was unveiled. This was Apple s new CEO Tim Cook s first major sales event debut, Apple s founder not being around to impose what Silicon Valley insiders refer to as Steve Jobs s reality distortion field. Steve Jobs is no more, and industry and Apple s fanatically loyal customer base are not certain about what to expect from Cook. That is partly because Apple s culture of secrecy and Jobs s visibility had combined to make Cook relatively unknown to the public at large. Uncertainty is compounded by the fact that earlier attempts to replace Jobs proved disastrous. Till his passing, Jobs seemed the only one to have had that special chemistry required for running Apple. What makes leading Apple difficult to maintain is the fact that the company is not selling a product as much as a vision, the founder s vision. Its products are cutting edge, but ultimately they are commodities that now face tough competition. Samsung, for instance, is gnawing into iPhone sales. According to recent media coverage, it would seem Apple is interested in developing a new vision, one which includes corporate social responsibility (CSR). Jobs never showed much interest in public do-gooding . He always maintained that equipping the public with the best technology was worth more than cash grants to charities. But Cook recently announced that Apple would embrace a new corporate charity matching programme, using a model much like those of other major companies a dollar for dollar match for employee donations of up to $10,000 a year. Cook clearly wants to send the message that Apple is evolving in the way it perceives CSR, a major differentiating factor between himself and the charismatic Jobs. However, the decision curiously followed media allegations regarding Apple s lack of CSR activities, including a New York Times article mentioning matching as a solution employed by a considerable portion of Fortune 500 companies. Apple still needs to embrace the core values that make it a cool company: in short, that owning an Apple product secures membership in a select group. While Apple is perhaps overdue for a CSR strategy, the decision to enact donation matching is decidedly not the Apple Way. The sequence of events surrounding the announcement as well as the fundamentally uncreative quality of the programme presented imply that Cook is only responding to media pressure rather than bringing to CSR the same kind of innovative and inspiring vision for which Apple is so highly regarded. Developing a CSR strategy around neither a sense of obligation nor calculation but rather around certain welldefined character virtues is highly effective. In particular, integrity, empathy and zeal, among others, are critical during times of uncertainty; they need to be well coordinated and implemented from the inside out not the other way around. Any major organisational change is accompanied by insecurity. The transition from Jobs s control over hiring and firing is bound to create uncertainty among employees, and in corporate environments uncertainty inevitably creates
epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:LowLeve 1/2

10/18/11

That Vision Thing

pernicious manoeuvring and second-guessing at middle management levels. The new CSR initiatives should present both the company and its new CEO with a unique opportunity to promote an image of integrity and to differentiate the new leadership from that of the Jobs era. However, philanthropy is not a good place to start. It should start from inside, promoting trust and openness, the internal integrity. Empathy creates emotional bonding between the company and stakeholders and makes companies endure a difficult time. Apple is currently embroiled in lawsuits likely to restrict consumer choices in future if it carries on. Publishers are frustrated by Apple s hammerlock over apps and magazine subscriptions on the iPad. While from Apple s point of view, taking legal action against competitors may seem necessary as a means of protecting innovation, public opinion works differently. For multinational companies legal victory can often end with a kind of zero-sum game, leaving it with a reputation for arrogance and insecurity. Apple will have to worry about its reputation all the more so if it wins the battles against competitors. More telling, suicides at China s manufacturing behemoth, Foxconn, have created the uncomfortable impression that cool products are being produced by what amounts to economic slave labour. This is decidedly uncool, and not the image Apple wants to portray. Zeal is perhaps the virtue most embedded at Apple s core and is represented by continuous innovation and excitement in terms of products and customer experience. By emphasising CSR, Cook would need to bring that famous zeal to social issues, offering an innovative approach, as competitor Google did when it famously began encouraging employees to spend 20% of their time on their own projects. It goes without saying that Cook and Apple are standing at a precipice. Product innovations can be short-lived. A serious CSR strategy could quietly shift the sales pitch from personal charisma to the great public good, doing Apple good in the long term. Leaders of innovative organisations that undergo the uncertainty that comes with change would be wise to promote both integrity and empathy internally, thus ensuring that zeal continues to inspire consumers throughout their tenure and for years to come. The writer is a professor of corporate reputation, ethics and marketing at IMD, Lausanne, Swit erland.

Inspiring the world to think different

epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:LowLeve

2/2