Tim Cook comes across as a level-headed, bright, and rock-solid guy. And that's great. Companies need people like that.
But he doesn't seem very visionary to me. Now, the CEO doesn't have to be a visionary if he listens to and heeds the visionaries. But we don't know who is going to fill that role at Apple. And that's the worrisome part.
When a founder/leader as charismatic and key as Jobs leaves, a company always faces moving in one of two basic directions with the follow-on leader:
One is the
"What would Steve Jobs Do?" approach.
That is, opting for a CEO who tries to carry the founder's vision forward smoothly (altho' he has no internalized passionate vision of his own). Apple's opted for this approach with Tim Cook. The inevitable problem is that this will carry the company about as far as the road has been mapped out in some detail by the founder, and begins to break down as the tech advances, the competition evolves and other new variables emerge.
(Apple, however, will have the great advantage of Steve in the Boardroom, hopefully for years as he slowly disengages - which could make the Cook tenure go well indeed. As long as he and Apple recognize when the time has come to cut to the cord altogether based on the state of his health, energy and being on top of his visionary game. Otherwise, half a Steve could ultimately hold the company back.)
The second way Apple can cope (at the CEO level) is
"The Steve is Dead - Long Live the New Steve" approach.
(And yes, of course "dead" is used metaphorically here to refer only to Steve the CEO, who most certainly has retired.)
That is, opting for someone with a strong, iconoclastic vision of their own. The problems being, a) it will be - if a real visionary - someone with a very different vision, b) it will be being spear-headed by someone who did not build (or own) the operation and does not automatically command the loyalty of the legion of troops built up by the founder, and c) since the new visionary will never have been in such a position, the validity of the vision is necessarily unknown, and thus suspect and much in danger of being second-guessed both within the company, in the media and by consumers.
(This certainly will never happen until Steve relinquishes his Chairmanship, but it will likely HAVE to happen someday.)
Nearly all companies of the Ford, Edison, Disney and IBM stripe have periods of eventual drift or worse after their iconic CEO's move on to the Great Executive Bathroom in the Sky.
(Tho' I again hope Steve still has years of a successful Chairmanship and a rewarding personal life left to him.)
Some companies weather it better than others. Some go through tumult, chaos and a number of wrenching transitions/reorgs, whether shortly after the change, or in some cases years down the road.
Whatever, hopefully it's gonna be at least half as interesting as the Apple we've followed for the last decades.
