Tim Cook was somewhat awkward at his first presentations and public events, but at first, no matter how hard he tried, he would still be dwarfed by comparisons with Jobs, who mastered eloquent rhetoric. Over time, however, he has definitely fallen into the part. At the launch of the Apple Watch, he wore an effortless smile and exchanged a natural hug with model Christy Turlington Burns, a supporter of motherhood rights related to motherhood, who used the watch to prepare for the London marathon.
In a nutshell, we enjoyed it. The next day, he coordinated Apple's annual meeting in Cupertino, a tedious burden that most CEOs simply bear, while he was visibly caught up in the back-and-forth with shareholders, answering questions affably and declining politely. the most uncomfortable ones. Twice he was asked if the company would buy the much vaunted Tesla Motors, a car company similar to Apple, but he avoided the question and jokingly complimented himself saying "being the boss has his advantages".
The benefits don't end there, in fact the CEO enjoys broad visibility which allows him to address a series of issues not directly related to Apple. In October, the State honored him with the Alabama Academy of Honor, along with University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban and Senator Jeff Sessions as the sole host of the ceremony, a choice some came to regret. Cook wasted no time tearing down certain clichés and used the opportunity to reproach the Alabama government for its slowness to act on racial inequality, educational opportunities and equality for homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals: "All this it is not right and does not reflect our values”.
Soon after, a local television station picked up the embarrassing confrontation between Cook and Republican Governor Robert Bentley, who explicitly resented the statements he had just heard. Don Logan, also from Alabama, a former CEO of Time Inc. and an alumnus of Auburn University, was in the audience at the Montgomery House: "Tim is very brave," he said, noting that the state had just approved a project of law against same-sex marriage, "He knew he was talking to the wind and that a lot of people in that room didn't agree with him."
Coming out
A few days later Cook publicly came out as homosexual in Bloomberg Businessweek. Without further comment from her or Apple, the revelation set off a media frenzy, mostly in a good way. He says he acted primarily to defend kids who suffer bullying in schools, some of whom go so far as to commit suicide, but also to challenge the many states that still allow employers to fire people because of their orientation sexual. Furthermore, while US justice was moving very fast on the issue, it seemed to him that "homosexuality had not been cleared at the management level of large companies".
Cook had decided long ago to do coming out, so much so that his announcement was seen as "pedantry" within Apple, where almost everyone knew about it. However, putting himself out there in this way is a big step for someone who considers himself a generally private person, as well as being one of the few CEOs who genuinely feels uncomfortable talking about himself. “Honestly, if I hadn't come to the conclusion that I could help other people I never would have. I don't like to blurt out my life” and quoting the verse “the more each one has received, the more he will be asked for”, he admits “certainly I was given a lot”.
Cook's new international status
From that moment he was no longer simply the guy who runs Steve Jobs' company, but something more. Mike Sullivan is a San Francisco attorney with the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm who has worked with several tech startups, and he too sees his sexual orientation as a source of pride and affiliation, not some kind of professional stigma. “I can assure you that among the Fortune 500 CEOs there are several gays,” he said, “Tim's message is 'It's okay to be yourself. You don't need to flaunt it, but you don't need to hide it either'”.
Tim Cook has become so ubiquitous that it's hard to remember when he wasn't so visible. In March, during a trip to Europe, he had brief private meetings in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and in Brussels with former Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Asnip, now European Commissioner for the Digital Single Market. He is also mentioned in the book by former Fortune journalists Brent Schlender and Rick Tezeli, who tell that Jobs had to undergo a transplant and that Cook offered him a part of his liver (which Jobs refused). In March, he gave a live call to famed CNBC host Jim Cramer, who was absolutely thrilled with the surprise call, on the XNUMXth anniversary of the Mad Money show.
In October Cook gave the inaugural speech at the Bocconi University in Milan where he received an enthusiastic reception like a real rock star. On this occasion you also met Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and it was probably there that the agreement was signed which puts an end to the dispute between the Italian tax authorities and Apple over alleged tax evasion by the latter. Apple agreed to pay just over a third of what the Italian tax authorities demanded, thus putting an end to a dispute in which Apple, also through the voice of Tim Cook, had repeatedly declared its non-involvement, having always operated in the legality both in the USA and in Europe. "It is the law of the economy that is inadequate with respect to market trends," Cook declared before the US Senate committee of inquiry. In any case, Cook's conciliatory attitude is an important sign of the willingness of the largest technology group in the world to deal with European governments and authorities to restore a climate of trust between the latter and the large innovative companies of Silicon Valley. A signal that did not come from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and even less from young unicorns like Uber.
Apple is opening up
In general, every CEO is required to publicly represent his company, only that Tim Cook also takes clear positions on issues such as AIDS, human rights and immigration reform, which he sees as an opportunity to exercise his leadership: " I would like to be the pebble thrown into the water, creating the circles of change,” he says, adding that these issues are always of interest to Apple, even if they have never been talked about so openly before. For him, changing the world has always been at the top of the company's list of goals, even before profit. He's planning to give away all of his possessions to fund philanthropic projects, but only after he's provided to support his 10-year-old nephew's college education. Cook's holdings in Apple total $120 million, plus 665 million restricted shares. He says he's already donated quite a bit of money, but he plans to develop a systematic approach to philanthropy instead of just writing checks.
It's ironic that the company is opening up under such a cautious CEO far more than under the former advertising demigod, who incidentally was quite strict about limiting interactions between his employees and the press, while in this respect Cook has inaugurated a policy of transparency. For example, it is highly unlikely that Jobs would have tolerated the twenty-page New Republic profile of Jonathan Ive, Apple's chief designer. Cook says this exposure is part of his plan: “I intend to raise the public profile of many executives and others. I think ultimately this is good for Apple.
The new opening therefore has a twofold objective. The first is to keep talking about Apple and the second is to loosen the leash on executives with particularly overflowing egos in order to keep them even tighter. “A true coach is happy if his champions enjoy a little celebrity” says Gassée, a former Apple executive, “Tim Cook is a true impresario who takes care of his first ladies. As long as the box office makes money, the impresario rides the wave”.
Starting from the foundations
Tim Cook stands on top of a huge mound of earth. He came to visit the Cupertino construction site where the new Apple campus should be built by the end of 2016. Earth has been excavated from the large quarry below, and the pile is as tall as the four-story building soon to be built right here, a donut-shaped structure whose shape has been likened to that of a spaceship. Observing the swarm of trucks and workers below, Cook begins to talk about one of the subjects that is closest to his heart, namely the working environment.
He's never liked the drab look of metropolitan offices, so Apple's new home will be different, “It shouldn't be a place that shuts down the creative flair,” he explains, thinking of the impact future graduates will have coming here. In the distance you can see the old campus of Cupertino, the city of San Jose and Levi's Stadium, where the San Francisco 49ers play, which would comfortably fit into the 120 thousand m park2 in the center of the donut building. Steve Jobs himself spent much of his last two years designing the campus and hired British architect Norman Foster. Here everything is on a grand scale and Cook recites the numbers by heart: the main building will extend over 260 thousand m2 and will house 13 employees, while another 2.000 workers will occupy the adjacent buildings, which include a 9.300m health center2 and a bar that will serve 15 meals a day, plus more than 8.000 trees, all born in the Santa Clara Valley.
The CEO periodically visits the construction site, where he has already been twice with the entire board, and looks at the 22 cranes dotting the landscape with engineering satisfaction. It has not yet been decided exactly what the name of what is currently called "Apple Campus 2" will be, but certainly the names of some buildings or of the entire structure will include a tribute to Jobs, with the permission of his family .
During the 90-minute tour of the site, Cook dispenses details about the campus, which he calls "the mother of all products". To begin with, Apple is investing in cutting-edge technologies to meet everyday needs such as parking: a system of sensors and applications will act as a traffic warden for employees who enter the facility, eliminating the hunt for parking and wasting parking in one fell swoop. fuel. As with its stores, Apple built several models and then tore them apart. The new building will not exceed four floors, just like the old one, and in this regard Cook's explanation was "we didn't like the five-story model". He is particularly proud of the 1.000-seat, mostly underground auditorium located in the southeast corner of campus, the new site for public presentations and the annual developer conference, “Finally, we no longer have to organize months in advance to meet schedules of the others!”.
When it comes to campus, Cook particularly resents the label 'headquarters', “I hate that word. Here we work seriously, we're not bureaucrats". It is no coincidence that employees speculate widely about which groups will be assigned to the new building and which will remain in the other, "We've changed our minds three times and it's likely we'll change our minds three more times," confesses the CEO.
Fitness freak
To do all this, the CEO doesn't even need to take out his i Phone, one of the attributes that Apple believes will determine the success of the watch, and takes the opportunity to showcase some of the device's features, such as the Mickey dial Mouse, updated to have a Disney icon gleefully tapping one foot per second. Cook defines himself as a fitness fanatic and proudly reads the daily activity calculated by the watch: so far he has timed 50 minutes of exercise and counted 8.139 steps, almost four miles. As an early riser, he's been up for 12 hours and it's not even half past three, his workday and his time at the helm of Apple are just beginning.
