Live from Cupertino in 1997: : The Curse of Culture: "Shein defines leadership in the context of culture:
When we examine culture and leadership closely... cultural norms define how a given nation or organizations will define leadership.... On the other hand... the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture... it is an ultimate act of leadership to destroy culture when it is viewed as dysfunctional.
A great example of this sort of destruction was Steve Jobs’ first keynote as interim CEO at the 2007 Boston Macworld, specifically the announcement of Apple’s shocking partnership with Microsoft:
When Jobs said the word Microsoft, the audience audibly groaned. A few minutes later, when Jobs clicked to a slide that said Internet Explorer would be the default browser on Macintosh, the audience booed so loudly that Jobs had to stop speaking. When Jobs finally said the actual words ‘default browser’ the audience booed even louder, with several individuals shouting ‘No!’ It is, given the context of today’s Apple keynotes, shocking to watch....
Jobs launched into what his biographer Walter Isaacson called an ‘impromptu sermon’:
If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win Microsoft has to lose. OK? We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win Apple has to do a really good job, and if others are going to help us, that’s great, cause we need all the help we can get. And if we screw up and we don’t do a good job, it’s not somebody else’s fault. It’s our fault. So, I think that’s a very important perspective. I think, if we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude. We like their software. So, the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I’m concerned. This is about getting healthy, and this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry, to get healthy and prosper again.
Here’s Shein:
But as the group runs into adaptive difficulties... leadership comes into play... is now the ability to step outside the culture that created the leader and to start evolutionary change processes that are more adaptive....
Make no mistake: even though he had been gone for over a decade, Steve Jobs was responsible for that booing. Jobs had set up Apple generally and the Macintosh specifically as completely unique and superior to the alternatives, particularly the hated IBM PC and its Windows [Brad--I think he means DOS] operating system. By 1997, though, Microsoft had won, and Apple was fighting for its life. And yet the audience booed its lifeline! That is how powerful culture can be — and that is why Jobs’ ‘impromptu sermon’ was so necessary and so powerful....
BlackBerry wasn’t struggling in 2006, nor was Microsoft in 2007, or even Apple as late as 1993. There was no obvious reason to think that anything was amiss, and it was culture that ensured that whatever hints there were would be ignored.... Both Apple and Google are still operating from positions of considerable strength going forward.... Still... Apple could partner with a company like Microsoft (again) to build out its services layer, both on the backend (Azure) and, if they want to get really radical, the front-end (combining Siri and Cortana). The most radical solution, though, would be fully opening up iOS.... This would foreclose any medium-term threat to the iPhone from an Android experience that is fully-infused with Google’s AI capabilities.... Google could — should! — build a bot for Facebook Messenger... [and] an entire backend for Facebook Messenger developers. Do people want to live in Facebook? Very well, meet them there....
The biggest problem... is culture. Apple... desires complete control; Google... desires information, and can’t tolerate the idea of Facebook having more. The rigidity of both is the manifestation of the disease that affects every great company: the assurance that what worked before will work eternally into the future, even if circumstances have changed. What makes companies great is inevitably what makes companies fail, whenever that day comes.
