> They're different types of leaders for different phases of the megacorp organism, and it's OK that Cook isn't Jobs 2.0 - that level of wildness and unpredictability that makes those types of leaders their fortunes can also result in the downfall of their companies.
This is absolutely true. But that doesn’t imply that Tim Cook is so unexceptional that anyone with a 120 IQ could do the same job he does. The fact that Steve Jobs himself trusted Cook as his right hand man and successor when Apple probably has literally thousands of employees with at least a 120 IQ should be a sign of that.
Partly because little of this is really a question of intelligence. If you want to talk about it in psychometric terms, based on what I’ve read about the man he also seems to have extraordinarily high trait conscientiousness and extraordinarily low trait neuroticism. The latter of the two actually seems extremely common among corporate executive types—one gets the sense from their weirdly flat and level affect that they are preternaturally unflappable. (Mitt Romney also comes across this way.) I don’t recall where I read this, but I remember reading Jobs being quoted once that Cook was a better negotiator that he was because unlike Jobs, Cook never lost his cool. This isn’t the sign of an unexceptional person, just a person who is exceptional in a much different way than someone like Steve Jobs. And, contrary to what you claim at the top of your comment, someone like Tim Cook is pretty distinguishable from someone like Steve Ballmer in the sense that Ballmer didn’t actually do a good job running Microsoft. I don’t know if that was related to his more exuberant personality—being a weirdly unflappable corporate terminator isn’t the only path to success—but it is a point against these guys being fungible.
This is absolutely true. But that doesn’t imply that Tim Cook is so unexceptional that anyone with a 120 IQ could do the same job he does. The fact that Steve Jobs himself trusted Cook as his right hand man and successor when Apple probably has literally thousands of employees with at least a 120 IQ should be a sign of that.
Partly because little of this is really a question of intelligence. If you want to talk about it in psychometric terms, based on what I’ve read about the man he also seems to have extraordinarily high trait conscientiousness and extraordinarily low trait neuroticism. The latter of the two actually seems extremely common among corporate executive types—one gets the sense from their weirdly flat and level affect that they are preternaturally unflappable. (Mitt Romney also comes across this way.) I don’t recall where I read this, but I remember reading Jobs being quoted once that Cook was a better negotiator that he was because unlike Jobs, Cook never lost his cool. This isn’t the sign of an unexceptional person, just a person who is exceptional in a much different way than someone like Steve Jobs. And, contrary to what you claim at the top of your comment, someone like Tim Cook is pretty distinguishable from someone like Steve Ballmer in the sense that Ballmer didn’t actually do a good job running Microsoft. I don’t know if that was related to his more exuberant personality—being a weirdly unflappable corporate terminator isn’t the only path to success—but it is a point against these guys being fungible.