Leadership Role in Management
Case of
Apple Inc. and Dell
Apple Inc. & Steve Jobs:
Steve Jobs is a co-founder of Apple Company in 1976 (with a childhood friend Steve Wozniak).
He was forced to leave the company in 1985, after internal power struggles with Sculley,
which was caused by the industry wise sales slump towards the end of 1984, and
returned twelve years later. Meanwhile, he had very successfully led the Pixar animation
studios.
Steve Jobs is considered as a genius, creative and stylish CEO of a tech company. There are
people who are fan of Jobs creation and also people who hate him extremely. Jobs leadership
quality is attributed by different leadership style and personal traits.
He is a visionary and his charisma is to express his idea to his employees in a very simple
words. Jobs understanding of the technologically possible, combined with a visionary gift help
him to develop his visions and then efficiently communicate them, for execution, to his
employees. He is a visionary type who communicates his visions well in the story telling fashion.
This vision, and the way that he can communicate it is the main attribute that makes Jobs being
perceived as Charismatic.
Because of his “manipulative” behavior he is considered by some of his employees as
autocratic. His behavior in meetings for instance is described as being rude, authoritative and
horrible. His continued entrepreneurial spirit is also shown by the fact, that he repeatedly
introduced products to the world that revolutionize the entertainment industry, and the way
entertainment media is distributed (e.g.: the iPhone and iPod as media devices, and iTunes as
distribution channel). In March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability,
Jobs terminated a number of projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. Steve Jobs
has a different meaning of focus. According to him focus means saying no the hundred other
alternatives that they can do. In that way he emphasizes on choosing projects very carefully. He
is very serious in recruiting people for his company. It is more important to him whether the new
person will be in love with Apple Inc. and make things that are not good for himself or Jobs
rather good for the company.
He is self confident, a little autocratic, extravert, assertive and enthusiastic. Interestingly, in
general Jobs personality traits would not be characterized as the traits of an effective leader. In
a way, he is far from a classical “text-book” example. Nevertheless his charisma, selfconfidence and passion for work overshadow all his negative characteristics thus making him
one of most successful CEO’s of the decade.
Dell & Michael Dell:
Michael Dell was the founder CEO of Dell Computer Corporation. Mr. Dell is the genuine genius in the
computer world and business fields with a longest- serving CEO in the computer industry. He started his
company with $ 1000 initial capital in 1984 and turned up as the youngest CEO on his 27 in 1992 having
his company in fortune magazine’s list of top 500 corporations.
As a leader he was clear about his goal and worked hard to achieve it. His target was to beat IBM. Today
Dell’s annual revenue is $ 7.8 billion that surpassed IBM and close to industry leader Compaq. Mr. Dell
has a strong sense of innovation. He prefers to do something different and think new and different
things. He was the pioneer to use “world wide web” for selling computers.
Michael Dell has a powerful vision of future and develops unique business philosophy. He is committed
to produce high quality, low prices and custom made computers. He communicates his vision to his
employees in such a way that everyone gets the feeling of joining the wining team.
In the transitional phase of 21st century, while market expects a downturn in computer sales, Mr. Dell
confronts with the situation very wisely. He changed the Name of the company from Dell computers to
Dell Inc meaning the products they are producing are more than computers. He diversified his product
line and pulled the company in IT services. He turns Dell in to IT Company rather than a computer
company.
Michael Dell developed the new model of leadership when he realized that he alone could not make the
company multiproduct and multi geographic poerhouse. He introduced One company Two CEO
management concept in Dell and recruited Mr. Rollins. There was a risk of conflicting leadership but he
managed with great prudency although they have differences in many ways.