GoKawiilKey Takeaways When Tim Cook stepped into the CEO job at Apple in 2011, Steve Jobs gave him a brief but defining directive that would guide his tenure.
Jobs told him to focus on doing the right thing, instead of trying to make decisions exactly like Jobs would have done.
As Cook prepares to step away from his CEO role, he is offering similar counsel to his successor, John Ternus.
When Tim Cook took over as Apple CEO in 2011, Steve Jobs offered him a simple but powerful piece of advice — one that would shape every decision he made as CEO.
“Don’t ask what I would do,” Jobs told Cook. “Just do the right thing.”
Jobs warned his successor against falling into the same trap that followed another legendary American brand. After Walt Disney’s death, he noted, the company’s leadership became fixated on guessing what Disney would have done, instead of focusing on the decisions in front of them. Jobs didn’t want Apple to make that mistake.
Now, another leadership transition is bringing the same principle to light. Apple announced earlier this week that Cook will step down, and longtime hardware engineering chief John Ternus will take over as CEO, effective September 1. Cook is moving into the role of executive chairman.
In an interview earlier this this year with The Wall Street Journal, Cook parroted Jobs’ wisdom. When asked for the one piece of advice he would give his own successor, Cook said that he “would probably say the same thing” as Jobs: “do the right thing” without worrying about what someone else would have done.
“You can get in paralysis if you start trying to port yourself into somebody else’s thinking,” Cook said.
Cook urged his successor to “be yourself.”
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