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Tim Cook and Steve Jobs
"Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader" paints a lesser-known picture of Jobs that shows how he became the leader that made Apple what it is today.
The book, written by former Wall Street Journal and Fortune reporter Brent Shlender and Fast Company editor Rick Tetzeli, is filled with fascinating anecdotes about Jobs, including the conversation he had with Cook that led to him becoming the CEO of Apple.
Here's an excerpt from the book that describes the conversation Jobs had with Cook when he told him he would take over as CEO, via Fast Company which got an exclusive look at the book before it launches:
On August 11, a Sunday, Steve called Tim Cook and asked him to come over to the house. "He said, 'I want to talk to you about something,'?" remembers Cook. "This was when he was home all the time, and I asked when, and he said, 'Now.' So I came right over. He told me he had decided that I should be CEO. I thought then that he thought he was going to live a lot longer when he said this, because we got into a whole level of discussion about what would it mean for me to be CEO with him as a chairman. I asked him, 'What do you really not want to do that you're doing?'
"It was an interesting conversation," Cook says, with a wistful laugh. "He says, 'You make all the decisions.' I go, 'Wait. Let me ask you a question.' I tried to pick something that would incite him. So I said, 'You mean that if I review an ad and I like it, it should just run without your okay?' And he laughed and said, 'Well, I hope you'd at least ask me!' I asked him two or three times, 'Are you sure you want to do this?' because I saw him getting better at that point in time. I went over there often during the week, and sometimes on the weekends. Every time I saw him he seemed to be getting better. He felt that way as well. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way."