Leadership succession at Apple Inc. and Yahoo! Inc.

Leadership Development and Succession Planning

Leadership changes occurred in the following two companies after:

Steve Jobs leaving Apple Inc. in 2011

Timothy Cook, Jobs' successor, who is now the CEO of the company, during the 14 years he worked for Apple, earned himself some good reputation for both industry and execution experience. As the CEO of the company, Timothy Cook outsourced almost all the manufacturing aspects of Apple in order to improve the margins of the company (Roady, 2011). During his early days as Apple's CEO, Cook took two important steps. Firstly, he ensured the promotion of Eddy Cue, the very famous Apple's internet services vice president. Secondly, he began a charity program, raising and donating at least $10, 000 per annum (Kane, 2014).

Yahoo! Inc. between the Years 2007 and 2012

Carol Bartz spent nearly three years as the CEO of Yahoo!, Inc., and her tenure began with a big splash early in 2009, ushering in a very impressive agenda for a professional turnaround. In the first six months she spent as the CEO of Yahoo! Inc., she turned around the organizational structure of the company, changed the executives, laid off about 5% of the entire workforce to cut costs. Both investors and the industry analysts were quite impressed; according to them, these changes were exactly what the company needed at that time. But, by the end of the honeymoon, Bartz could not deliver the turnaround she had promised. So, in September 2011, barely three years after she took over as Yahoo!'s CEO, Bartz was removed as the company's CEO; after three days, she tendered her resignation to the board of directors (Roady, 2011).

A Brief Summary of the Circumstances:

a) What was the public plan prior to the departure of the CEOs?

Apple -- "We are excited to bring our highest quarter ever," according to Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs. "At the moment, we remain very committed and thrilled to bring iCloud and iOS 5 to our esteemed users during this fall" (Baskaran & Mahtani, Jul 2011). During the 2011 WWDC event, Apple made the announcement concerning its MobileMe being replaced by its most recent cloud services, iCloud. This service housed all other major services offered by MobileMe. Moreover, the company dropped Gallery, iDis, and iWeb (Wikipedia, 2016).

Yahoo -- In 2007, October 16, to be precise, Yahoo made the announcement regarding its plans to stop Yahoo! 360°, which included bug repairs. According to the explanation provided by the company, it planned to launch what it called a Universal Profile in 2008, which would resemble the experimental system of Yahoo Mash (Wikipedia, 2016). On the 7th of April, 2008, Yahoo's APT was announced by the company, originally named Yahoo's AMP, an online-based platform for managing advertising. The platform makes advertising sales much simpler by unifying the seller and buyer markets. In September 2008, the service was launched (Wikipedia, 2016).

b) What business and HR objectives were most important prior to the switch?

Apple - To ensure its employees actively participate in Apple's development, the company engages its employees directly in the following ways:

Apple gathers employees' feedback based on their experiences at the company to enable it maximize the contributions they make towards the company's growth and development.

Apple relies heavily on hiring people who have great penchant for excellence.

The company recognizes how important it is to hire and retain only skilled and well-trained workforce.

Finally, Apple further builds the capacity and skills of its workforce (Blue, 2016).

Yahoo

Leverage on already existing human resources, by ensuring that they stay committed and motivated.

Hire new workers with more mobile experience, with both marketing and technical expertise to identify consumers' common behaviours and needs.

Develop a new Mobile sales team to work with marketing and tech experts, under a new line of business.

Train employee continuously and engage in strategy development and implementation in order to ensure they are committed to strategy realization (Tanasa, 2012).

c) Was the chosen successor an internal or external hire? Why do you think that method was chosen? Was it successful?

Apple - The selected successor, Timothy Cook, was an internal hire, Apple's former CEO. Two years prior to his selection as Jobs' successor, Apple had announced its succession plans; Jobs had earlier made his state of health a public knowledge; and the heir apparent to Jobs-Cook, was popular enough and liked by the major stakeholders. Additionally, due to the fact that Cook has been with Apple, he understands the business and industry Apple was into, and this made the transition following Jobs' surprising and sudden resignation smoother (Roady, 2011).

Yahoo - The selected successor was a new hire, Carol A. Bartz, who held sway as Autodesk CEO for about fourteen years, and replaced Yahoo's co-founder, Jerry Yang in 2009. Under her watch, the major business revenues experienced huge declines. However, the core of the business became a whole lot more profitable when compared to the time she assumed office. She did spend a little on buybacks and M & A though not that much (Jackson, 2015).

Response to the following:

a) How did the transition affect the business objectives of the company?

Apple - Apple under Steve Jobs could be best described as a roller coaster, but the operations Cook employed were quite disciplined and orderly. Every detail in every single step employed during the processes of the operation were documented. Sometimes operations meetings lasted as long as 5-6 hours as he examined every item careful. The importance of silence was never lost to Cook. He did a lot more with a mere pause than Jobs ever did with a sobriquet (Kane, 2014).