The Real Meaning of Steve Job's Departure as CEO

Nearly ever publication, on-line or in print, I have seen today has featured at least one story on the meaning Steve Job's departure from the Apple CEO role will have for the company.  Rather than hypothesize on whether Apple can sustain its stellar record of innovation and marketing sans Jobs, I am thinking instead about our continuing fascination with the singular leader.  No matter how much we may think the days of what Pearl Rock Kane calls the "lone warrior" are over, we are reminded again and again about how extraordinarily leadership sensitive some organizations are.  Independent and international schools are among these, and Apple is one of the few technology companies that is personified by a single individual.  Not even Microsoft, at the height of Bill Gates leadership, was as dependent on the CEO for its psychological edge as Apple has been dependent on Jobs.

What Jobs did for Apple was less about innovation--after all, he alone could not design, build and deliver every Apple product--than it was about confidence; that is, the ability to inspire confidence in employees, customers and investors that, with his leadership, the company would do well.  It is this elusive and ephemeral quality of inspiring confidence that will be most difficult for Tim Cook to replicate at Apple.  Barak Obama, too, appears challenged in the confidence inspiring area.

Apple today is one of the coolest places to work.  The best and the brightest want to be there, just like they want to be at Google in apps or at Bad Robot in film or television.  In the short term, will Apple still make great stuff?  Sure.  But, over the long haul, will it continue to attract the talent necessary to envision and design great stuff?  That's the real challenge Cook & Co. face.  And it is the challenge that every leadership-sensitive organization faces in finessing succession.