Many companies are inextricably tied to their iconic founders—from Mark Zuckerberg being the face of Meta, to Warren Buffett leading Berkshire Hathaway for decades. But when it came time for Tim Cook to take the reins of Apple, the brand’s late cofounder Steve Jobs instructed him to forge his own path at the $3.83 trillion technology giant.
“[Jobs’] advice to me was ‘Never ask what I would do, just do the right thing,’” Cook told CBS Sunday Morning in a recent interview.
It was a lesson that Jobs had learned while working with Disney—the Apple cofounder was also one of the three founding fathers of Pixar Animation Studios, purchasing the group from LucasFilm in 1986. Entertainment behemoth Disney later acquired Pixar in 2006, and during his work at the company, Jobs picked up on a trend.
“He had watched Disney go through this paralysis of sitting around and talking about what Walt [Disney] would do,” Cook explained. “And he did not want that for Apple.”
The Apple CEO explained that at the time, the business had never had a “professional transition” at the chief executive level; the previous successions were always done in a time of “panic.” However, Jobs wanted to do things differently this time. So he called Cook over to his house and offered him the CEO job—with no pressure to emulate his leadership style.
“I’ll never forget that and it was such a gift for me, because he took off of my shoulder this question of, ‘What would Steve do?’” Cook continued. “I just put my head down and thought, ‘I’m going to be the best version of myself.’”
Cook is bringing his own flair, but sticking to these core principles
Cook first joined Apple in 1998 after stints at PC-maker Compaq and IBM, less than one year after Jobs had returned as interim CEO. From 2000 onwards, Jobs would lead as the permanent CEO, while Cook worked his way up to high-level positions, becoming the COO in 2005.
Over Cook’s nearly three decades at the company, working under Jobs until his passing in October 2011, he learned what principles are essential to the “DNA” of the company. While Jobs advised the current CEO to do his own thing, the cofounder imparted some everlasting fundamentals that will always be core to Apple.
“[Jobs] had the vision that the collaboration was something that would produce great results. That one plus one is equal to three, not two. That if you share an idea and debate it, it gets bigger and better,” Cook explained in the CBS interview. “If you care enough that you call somebody at 10 at night because you just had an idea, that incredible things can come out of that.”
And it’s still true to this day; Cook said the strategy to “argue and debate everything” at Apple meetings, breeding bigger and better ideas, dates back to the origin of the business. Cook spoke on different strengths he’s harnessed within the business, particularly around accessibility, privacy, and education. But he’s sticking with the collaboration culture that Jobs popularized through his decades of leadership.
“[Jobs] had an idea of focus that you say ‘no’ to a thousand things to say ‘yes’ to the one that’s truly important,” Cook continued. “And that when you do something, you should do it at an excellence level where good isn’t good enough: it has to be insanely great.”
The advice other business leaders have received from Jobs
Throughout his career, Jobs has advised many on how to step into their own success—from college graduates to leaders of billion-dollar companies.
Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, said on Lenny’s Podcast in 2024 that Jobs helped him overcome “entrepreneurs block.” The Apple cofounder instructed him to do three things: grow your business 10 times larger in two years, get a big customer for the Salesforce automation product, and build an application economy.
Benioff believed Jobs wanted him to build an app store, so he created AppExchange, later gifting Apple the App Store trademark and the appstore.com domain for Jobs’ help. That advice “dramatically influenced me in my career and my whole life,” Benioff said.
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz also received some tough love from Jobs that ultimately led him on the path for success. It was 2008, and the coffee chain was in a crisis. After confiding to Jobs about the company’s issues, Schultz was advised to fire his entire leadership team—reasoning they’ll all be gone within nine months anyways. The then-Starbucks CEO found the idea to be preposterous, but said Jobs was ultimately right in the end: all of the team left, except for one.
Jobs also imparted some critical advice for young job-seekers aspiring for greatness: do the work you love. It’s a learning lesson that kept the tech pioneer going after being ousted from the company he had built, and weathering crises like Apple’s near-bankruptcy.
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do,” Jobs said during his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech.
“If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking—and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
