Inside Apple
Inside Apple
Myers, K. K., & Sadaghiani, K. (2010). Millennials in the workplace: A communication perspective on millennials’ organizational relationships and performance. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(2), 225-238.
This resource identifies the characteristics of team members who were born in 1979-1994 as people who are unmotivated, self –centered, disloyal and disrespectful in an organization. In addition, this journal article reviews positive characterizations of this generation as people who are motivated to work in a business environment where they will impact in a huge way, prefer open and frequent communication with their organizational and team leaders and possess good skills with communication technology. This resource has its strengths in identifying best practices and frameworks that older generations in the company leadership and teams can use to view the behaviors and characteristics of this group as opportunities in the organization rather than obstacles. Rather than criticizing this group, the resource suggests that they should be given more ample space to express their ideas when a crisis occurs in the organization or project team. This resource is important in this study as it supports project managers in having a clear understanding of how they will deal with this group in their project team when a crisis occurs since they now make a big percentage of company employees at this point in time. This resource is however limited because it only discusses the conduct of the group born between 1974 to 1994 identifying much of the characteristics that they possess as ones that they have acquired through socialization process and, thus, to some extent, is biased on the role of parenting in bringing up this group. Nevertheless, this resource is sufficient for project team managers to have a broader understanding of this group.
Schroeder, J., & Fishbach, A. (2015). How to motivate yourself and others? Intended and unintended consequences. Research in Organizational Behavior, 35, 123-141.
This journal article resource notes that in order for individuals and organizations to achieve their goals and objectives they must motivate themselves as well as others. This resource reviews three strategies that individuals employ in increasing their motivation and that of the team they work around, including setting goal targets, applying incentives and giving feedback.. This resource identifies the incidents and contexts where each of the motivational strategies works and where it is likely to fail during goal pursuit in organizations and team environments. It prescribes specific sets of guidelines that will help managers in understanding how they can motivate themselves and the project team members when a crisis abounds in the course of the project lifecycle. This resource is important in this study in that it provides a framework that project managers can use in making decisions on the best motivational strategy they will employ in the course of a project lifecycle so that the project can be accomplished on time and under the projected budget constraints. The weaknesses of this resource lie in that it only focuses on motivation as the only determinant of success during the project life cycle and especially on the unintended effects of the motivation. Overall, this resource is important for project managers in designing the best motivational strategy that they need to employ in their organization during the project lifecycle and especially when a crisis occurs where a combination of rewards and feedback are important components.
Yang, L. R., Wu, K. S., Wang, F. K., & Chin, P. C. (2012). Relationships among project manager’s leadership style, team interaction and project performance in the Taiwanese server industry. Quality & Quantity, 46(1), 207-219.
This journal article investigates the relationship that exists between project manager’s management style with the team relations and how this relationship impacts the performance of the project. The resource also has an objective of determining whether effects of styles of leadership on project performance can be influenced, and, therefore, reduced to some extent by team interaction. The strengths of this resource are that it acknowledges that organizations use project teams to work on company products, policies and services. The resource positively identifies transformational leadership as directly related to team collaboration and communication. Additionally, this resource also associates high levels of project performance with high levels of team collaboration and communication. Therefore, this resource indicates that team communication and collaboration are an important factor in bridging the gap between project performance and transformational leadership. The strengths of this resource lie in that it uses empirical data through quantitative and qualitative collection methods in analysis and conclusion. The resource is, however, limited in its approach as it has a bias in analyzing businesses in Taiwan which may not be representatives of all business in other countries and regions. This is because business contexts tend to vary from one region to another. The resource, however, can be qualified as sufficient in understanding the relationship that exists between project performance and collaboration and communication and the limited impact that transformational leadership has on the project.
Apple is an American company that doesn’t seem to fail in its projects. However, at in the summer of 2008, immediately after the release of first iPhone, it also released MobileMe that was supposed to be an email system. This new product by Apple was supposed to compete with BlackBerry’s products and was purposed to give real-time synchronization for corporate users’ email and their devices. However, the product did not do well with users complaining that they often lost their emails when using this product and that the syncing process was not as good as that of the rival product. The matters were made worse by many reviewers who gave negative reviews about the product and Apple. This threatened the reputation of the company. Its leader at the time, Steve Jobs, called a crisis meeting after that with the team that had been working on the product with the intent of finding a way to redeem the company from this failure. This paper is an assessment of the best practices that Apple, led by Steve Jobs, used in recovering from the initial crisis when MobileMe product failed.
Immediately after its leader realized that the MobileMe product wasn’t performing well on the market, he called a crisis meeting to get an overview of what the project team thought the product should work His first reaction to the crisis was to use feedback from the project team as a strategy of motivating them. In particular, Steve Jobs understood the fact that getting feedback from the project team would be an important factor in positively influencing the team towards developing a more customer-based product (Schroeder & Fishbach, 2015). At Apple, each project team is given a goal that they must be motivated to accomplish, and this is what Steve Jobs reminded the team. These goals are the motivating factors that push project teams to achieve organizational goals and objectives. Through Apple’s goals and objectives, each project team working on a particular product sets their own goals that are in line with the company goals which they are motivated to achieve. At Apple, teams gain their motivation from the feedback of the transformative leaders, the CEO’s feedback and from goals that have been set.
At Apple, a culture of responsibility and accountability is indoctrinated on young minds and young employees through a series of meetings that are conducted in the company. Every week, the management meets with project teams to review the results and progress of the projects. These meetings are important in ensuring that there is clarity over a product that is being developed. This ensures that all employees in the organization are able to be on the same page (Yang et al, 2012). The collaboration meetings between the marketing, communication and development teams ensure that every single product in Apple has processes and features that have been agreed upon by project teams. The Company leader, as the person that the project teams report to, strategically holds multiple meetings with the company project team leader to know the perspectives of the teams over a given design. This makes it easier for the decisions that are inclusive to be made on a certain product. In all the company meetings, accountability extends down the company ranks with everyone in the project team having an individual responsibility which is explicitly stated and documented. All project teams focus on one product at a given time always and no multiple projects can be initiated before others have been completed.
Apple has a simple organizational structure which makes it possible for the new generation of workers to reach its leader with ease. At Apple, the general concept of leadership is a command and control structure where ideas can be shared from either below or at the top. This gives synergy to the project team members with free access and communication with the seniors to input their ideas on a product that is being developed. At Apple, there are no divisions, but there are functions. This means that bureaucracy is highly reduced and any employee can grab an opportunity to approach a manager with an idea about a product that is being developed at Apple. Apple has a lean management structure that allows project team members to interact freely with others and hence can collaborate easily (Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010).
In conclusion, it can be seen that the strengths of Apple in turning crises into successes in projects largely lie in the transformative nature of the leadership, frequent communication meetings, collaboration among project teams, good motivational strategy and lean open management structure.
References
Myers, K. K., & Sadaghiani, K. (2010). Millennials in the workplace: A communication perspective on millennials’ organizational relationships and performance. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(2), 225-238.
Schroeder, J., & Fishbach, A. (2015). How to motivate yourself and others? Intended and unintended consequences. Research in Organizational Behavior, 35, 123-141.
Yang, L. R., Wu, K. S., Wang, F. K., & Chin, P. C. (2012). Relationships among project manager’s leadership style, team interaction and project performance in the Taiwanese server industry. Quality & Quantity, 46(1), 207-219.
