Apple is now the most valuable company in the world in terms of market capitalization and U2’s recent tour just became the highest grossing of all time, crushing the previous record held by the Rolling Stones.
Learn about Apple’s remarkable rise in market cap in this New York Times article and learn about U2’s claim as the greatest band of all time in this article from the Atlantic magazine’s website.
Jason Pankau and I are presenting a 60 minute webinar for Communitelligence about the “Connection Edge” that leaders such as Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull and A.G. Lafley employ to boost strategic alignment and employee engagement. The webinar will be held on June 9 at 2:00 PM Eastern. You can sign up at this link.
Jobs, Catmull and Lafley connect with employees of their respective organizations, although they do so in distinctly unique ways. This is the topic of a webinar Jason Pankau and I will be doing for Communitelligence. You can learn more about it at this link. This topic is relevant today because Corporate Executive Board research shows that 90 percent of employees are either not engaged and giving their best efforts or they are not aligned with their organization’s goals. Research by both The Conference Board and the Corporate Executive Board shows that the solution to this problem to develop the emotional and rational connections that employee have with their organization’s mission and values, supervisor, colleagues and day-to-day work tasks. In the webinar, Michael and Jason show how great leaders do this.
An article appearing in The New York Times entitled “Microsoft’s Creative Destruction” makes it clear that the company has big problems stemming from internal rivalries. We teach that organizations that sustainable superior performance = task excellence + relationship experience. So often organizations die because the failure to achieve relationship excellence sabotages task excellence. Keep that in mind when you read the article and it will become clear that Microsoft is heading down that path.
LiveMint/The Wall Street Journal in India asked me to comment on why Steve Jobs and Apple have been so successful. In an interview entitled “‘Think Different’ is What Makes Apple Stand Out,” I shared that it is more than the beauty and functional excellence of Apple’s products that make the firm so successful. Apple’s inspiring identity plays an important role too. (Above is a video of the original “Think Different” television ad.)
