Apple And Pixar19 Cultural Leadership Paper
Manlangit.Rose:MandynR19_Cultural Leadership.Aug112013
What did you learn about the type of culture that existed in the organization of Steve Jobs as presented in the video? How does he make explicit those aspects of organization that are typically implicit? How did he exhibit cultural leadership?
“You got to love the work that you do….as in all matters of the heart, you gotta keep looking. Do not settle. Live each day, as if it were your last.”These are few of the striking words of famous CEO of Apple and Pixar, Steve Jobs as he addressed a group of Stanford graduates in 2005.
As what the culture in the organization for which Steve Jobs brought forth into the world of technology showed, it has emanated from the high performance culture
which draws power within each and every employee. It obviously had a very strong leadership culture that propelled the organization; otherwise it wouldn’t be as successful as it is today. The Performance Orientation as its Value Dimension is evident in the way the company looked at the individual employees in the organization. It is very apparent in the speech of Steve Jobs as he called on to the graduates to pursue one’s dreams and never settles until he finds the right job or person or aspiration for himself. Apple culture, as evidenced by the successes that brought it to being one of the best companies in the world has a high propensity to succeed with the culture of discipline, efficiency and creativity.
Unlike other organizations with open systems such Android and Microsoft which uses standard technologies to adapt into the world, Apple has a very Close system in which they do not assimilate to the outside world, rather because of its creativity and the new things that it introduces, the world assimilates itself to Apple. Even China, which has a very traditional way of taking new things, came to be one of the biggest Apple markets covering about 20% of Apple’s profit.
This is one of the most mysterious and yet tantalizing cultures of Apple that I think gave it that amazing trajectory in the corporate world - Apple’s culture of secrecy. It shuts its employees about the big picture. The only people who know what is going on with Apple are the topmost in the organization. The employees knows about what he is doing particularly but not what is going to happen to Apple as an organization. There could be a culture of fear, and yet it could be the culture of discipline that eventually drove it. As one commentator puts it, outside work, ordinary employees of any organization love talking about their jobs and their companies, but not Apple employees. Once Apple is brought out in the topic of any conversation, Apple employees just shut up, change the subject or leave the conversations altogether. For employees who are fond of talking about their work, they don’t last with Apple.
This culture of discipline to employees and the intense desire to better and high performance coupled with passion to do what they truly love, kept them rooted into the same high status that they had been since the conception of the company. As Steve Jobs put it, “if you don’t have passion, you will not survive. You will eventually quit because you will not be able to persevere and do what you need to do.” Truly, staying in the job is a lot of hard-work. One has to persevere in order to stay gravitated in what he is doing. This is one of the high-performance cultures that I think has become an icon that is Apple - its passion on creativity, on teamwork, on making things differently.
These are the culture that Steve Jobs humanized which are once implicit and were mere figment of our imagination. Steve Jobs and Apple’s success made these values alive and created a leadership culture around it – a truly high-performance culture.
What did you learn about the type of culture that existed in the organization of Steve Jobs as presented in the video? How does he make explicit those aspects of organization that are typically implicit? How did he exhibit cultural leadership?
“You got to love the work that you do….as in all matters of the heart, you gotta keep looking. Do not settle. Live each day, as if it were your last.”These are few of the striking words of famous CEO of Apple and Pixar, Steve Jobs as he addressed a group of Stanford graduates in 2005.
As what the culture in the organization for which Steve Jobs brought forth into the world of technology showed, it has emanated from the high performance culture
which draws power within each and every employee. It obviously had a very strong leadership culture that propelled the organization; otherwise it wouldn’t be as successful as it is today. The Performance Orientation as its Value Dimension is evident in the way the company looked at the individual employees in the organization. It is very apparent in the speech of Steve Jobs as he called on to the graduates to pursue one’s dreams and never settles until he finds the right job or person or aspiration for himself. Apple culture, as evidenced by the successes that brought it to being one of the best companies in the world has a high propensity to succeed with the culture of discipline, efficiency and creativity.
Unlike other organizations with open systems such Android and Microsoft which uses standard technologies to adapt into the world, Apple has a very Close system in which they do not assimilate to the outside world, rather because of its creativity and the new things that it introduces, the world assimilates itself to Apple. Even China, which has a very traditional way of taking new things, came to be one of the biggest Apple markets covering about 20% of Apple’s profit.
This is one of the most mysterious and yet tantalizing cultures of Apple that I think gave it that amazing trajectory in the corporate world - Apple’s culture of secrecy. It shuts its employees about the big picture. The only people who know what is going on with Apple are the topmost in the organization. The employees knows about what he is doing particularly but not what is going to happen to Apple as an organization. There could be a culture of fear, and yet it could be the culture of discipline that eventually drove it. As one commentator puts it, outside work, ordinary employees of any organization love talking about their jobs and their companies, but not Apple employees. Once Apple is brought out in the topic of any conversation, Apple employees just shut up, change the subject or leave the conversations altogether. For employees who are fond of talking about their work, they don’t last with Apple.
This culture of discipline to employees and the intense desire to better and high performance coupled with passion to do what they truly love, kept them rooted into the same high status that they had been since the conception of the company. As Steve Jobs put it, “if you don’t have passion, you will not survive. You will eventually quit because you will not be able to persevere and do what you need to do.” Truly, staying in the job is a lot of hard-work. One has to persevere in order to stay gravitated in what he is doing. This is one of the high-performance cultures that I think has become an icon that is Apple - its passion on creativity, on teamwork, on making things differently.
These are the culture that Steve Jobs humanized which are once implicit and were mere figment of our imagination. Steve Jobs and Apple’s success made these values alive and created a leadership culture around it – a truly high-performance culture.