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.
