Lewis HowesYour Personal 24/7 Greatness Coach

What If Steve Jobs Was Still Apple’s CEO

29 Nov 2025 · 0 min

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In this short monologue, the speaker imagines a scenario where Steve Jobs never passed away and remains Apple’s CEO today. He argues that while Jobs was the visionary genius who built Apple’s brand and breakthrough products, the company’s evolution into a $3 trillion enterprise over the past decade required a different kind of leader. The speaker contends that Tim Cook’s strength lies in his operational focus—insisting on doing things his way rather than following regulators or purely data‑driven approaches—and that this operator mindset has been essential for Apple’s massive scale. He suggests that as a company grows, the leadership style that initially drove success may need to be replaced by one better suited to managing large, complex operations.

Let's say Steve Jobs had not died and he was still the CEO of Apple today. I actually think there's an argument to make that rather than the crazy visionary genius that Jobs was, Tim Cook was the leader that Apple needed for the last 10 years. Now, this is what made Apple successful is his ability to say, no, we're doing it my way. Not the regulator's way, not the number geeks way, we're doing it my way. But I think you could argue that as Apple became a $3 trillion company, that what they really needed was an operator like Tim Cook. What made you successful to begin with, at some point, you might have to let go of it.