The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty

CHAPTER 3

Cultivate Fearless Employees

If you don’t feel comfortable disagreeing, then you will never survive.

—Tim Cook, Apple CEO

Apple is willing to hire people based 10 percent on their knowledge and 90 percent on their personality, but employees must be 100 percent fearless. When evaluating potential employees, Apple hiring managers will ask themselves, “Would this person have been able to go toe-to-toe with Steve Jobs?” The Apple cofounder was known for being a demanding boss, especially as it related to the customer experience, and he felt as though it was his duty to be hard on people. “I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face,”¹ Jobs told Walter Isaacson for the biography Steve Jobs ...