Steve Jobs' eccentric management techniques keep Apple successful
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been described as a charismatic executive because he has grown Apple from a bankruptcy state to a 100 trillion yen company. Writer William Gallagher points out that Jobs's achievement is 'reviewing the structure of the company and fundamentally changing it', and that the eccentric management method continues to make Apple today successful. Stated.
How Steve Jobs's unorthodox management continues to make Apple a success | AppleInsider
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/26/how-steve-jobss-unorthodox-management-continues-to-make-apple-a-success
There is ' Peter 's Law' in the law of sociology regarding the labor of members of an organization. Peter's law states that 'people will advance to the limit of their abilities, but because they will be incompetent at that limit, managers will be incompetent,' and many companies have this Peter's law. The law often has big problems.
According to the Harvard Business Review, when Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, Apple was by no means a small company with 8,000 employees and annual revenues of 7 billion yen. However, Jobs solved the problem of Peter's law and gained greater success by reviewing the corporate structure immediately after returning to Apple. As a result, Apple has grown into a large company with 137,000 employees and $ 260 billion in annual revenue as of 2019.
The management that Jobs started immediately after returning to Apple is as follows.
1: Break through the traditional corporate structure
When Jobs returned to Apple, Apple, like many companies, was divided into products. For example, Mac existed as one business unit, had its own general manager, and had independent financial management such as income statement. With this structure, the general manager is only responsible for the expenses and profits of the business he controls, so he tends to focus on short-term profits without having a long-term perspective.
So Jobs abolished having independent business units, each with an income statement. Since 1997, Apple has only one income statement for the entire company.
2: Dismiss the manager
Jobs built a functional organization when organizing the business as described above. As a result, instead of 'professional managers', 'experts' of products made by companies will be introduced as managers. This is based on the experience that Jobs before leaving Apple thought that 'Apple is becoming a big company' and hired a management professional, but 'it did not work at all'.
'They knew how to manage, but they didn't know anything else. Will a great person learn from'a person who can't get anything'? What is a good manager? When I thought about it, I came up with the idea that 'a person who has never wanted to be a manager, but no one can decide what to do or have to do'. Such a person does a good job. 'Jobs said in an interview in 1984.
So Jobs took the approach of 'training professionals to become managers' rather than 'hiring managers'.
While dismissing managers who can only manage and training professionals in management, Apple clarified 'characteristics that managers must have.' From 1997 to 2020, Apple executives need to have deep expertise in their respective fields, be able to engage in their field, and be able to collaborate with colleagues in decision making. ..
Apple in 2020 isn't the same as Apple in 1997, but CEO Tim Cook continues to maintain one income statement as of 2020.
by Brecht Bug
However, there are some changes made by CEO Cook to the organizational structure. For example, the 'Human Interface Team', once part of the software division, has been integrated with the hardware industry design team. By combining different expertise, we have become more complementary to each other. In addition, the need for 'printer departments for Mac' that required human resources in the 1990s has already disappeared, and the need for machine learning and AI departments is increasing instead. In this way, the fields to focus on change according to the times, and the organization is being adjusted according to the changes.
The work that managers have to do is increasing year by year, but Apple's way of 'making decisions by people who actually understand their area of expertise' hasn't changed. This has allowed Apple to continue to innovate, Gallagher said.
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