As you probably know, Steve Jobs of Apple announced yesterday that he’s taking a six-month leave of absence. His health has gotten worse and hopefully he’s able to recover fully during this period.
As a Mac user, I’ve been paying a bit of extra attention today (and over the past few weeks) to what shakeups might be in store at Apple during Jobs’ absence. I read this today and want to share it as a great example of a ScrumMaster removing an impediment. It’s about Tim Cook, Apple’s current COO, who is likely to replace Jobs:
Tim Cook arrived at Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) in 1998 from Compaq Computer. He was a 16-year computer-industry veteran – he’d worked for IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) for 12 of those years – with a mandate to clean up the atrocious state of Apple’s manufacturing, distribution, and supply apparatus. One day back then, he convened a meeting with his team, and the discussion turned to a particular problem in Asia.
“This is really bad,” Cook told the group. “Someone should be in China driving this.” Thirty minutes into that meeting Cook looked at Sabih Khan, a key operations executive, and abruptly asked, without a trace of emotion, “Why are you still here?”
Khan, who remains one of Cook’s top lieutenants to this day, immediately stood up, drove to San Francisco International Airport, and, without a change of clothes, booked a flight to China with no return date.
Khan sounds like a perfect ScrumMaster to me. He heard about the impediment and within thirty minutes was on a plane to resolve the problem.
Let’s hope, Steve Jobs’ doctors are able to remove all impediments in the way of his return to good health.
For the full article reference above, see http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/15/technology/cook_apple.fortune/index.htm
Tags: impediments, ScrumMaster
I wonder how good of a father Khan is…
Like Michael hinted:
Let’s hope Khan didn’t have a family in the US that needed him
Sounds to me Tim Cook is not a boss I would like to work for. I prefer to work for people I actually work _with_ and not just for, and I expect my boss to put his foot down when absolutely needed and I will raise my voice when he needs it as well. Respect both ways.
Did not like this at all. After I reading this article I realized that Tim Cook was the type of manager that got things done, but was typical “command and control” to the hilt. Kahn probably mimics that style because of his boss, so I my mind not a “perfect ScrumMaster,” not even an okay one! Berating people, yelling, etc.–yuk. No doubt, he’s successful in terms of money and power (because he MAKES things happen), but what about other things like friends and genuine respect from others? I’m sure people do what they want mostly because they fear getting fired.
Notice that I described Kahn as the good ScrumMaster, not Cook. Kahn did what his team needed. Of course he needs to do that with an appropriate work/life balance but that is for him to manage, not us to evaluate without knowing his circumstances.
Khan did what he was told. That’s all. If he really was the good ScrumMaster you claim, he’s have been out of the door thirty minutes earlier, on his own steam, not his boss’s. I am not interested in his work/life balance, but in the boss/worker relationship.
“Why are you still here?” — that sentence is both a threat and a put down. Like the other commenters here, I don’t think I’d like to work for Mr Cook.