Tim Cook on Shaping the Future of Apple | GQ

In full disclosure if there were a Tim Cook fan club, I'd be a card carrying member. I've also been a long-time customer of Apple and enjoy their products which certainly has a halo effect for Cook himself. What I really admire about Cook though is how he leads with values. I also think his calm and reasoned persona is a great model, and oddly iconoclast, to so many leaders in technology. Including his predecessor Steve Jobs!

Being out in nature is a “palate cleanser for the mind.” Actually, it’s even more than that, Cook says, casting aside his measured nature for a moment. “It’s better than any other thing you can possibly do!”

Apple has made privacy one of those core values, and I truly believe in part because it is a personal value of Cook and many of the leaders. It is also a market differentiating strategy for the company.

In his tenure as CEO, Cook has rarely missed an opportunity to decry, usually with a fair amount of heat in his voice, what he describes as the “data-industrial complex”—a complex built of companies (and Apple competitors) who profit from the use and sale of their consumer’s personal information and data. This practice, Cook said in another public moment, “degrades our fundamental right to privacy first, and our social fabric by consequence,” and helps build an ecosystem full of “rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms.”

The interview highlights the incongruity of the CEO of Apple focusing on privacy and device addiction. It is isn't incongruous if you start by leading with your values.