“You can make money without doing evil” is number 6 in Google’s 10 point corporate philosophy, but ‘evil’ is a fluid term.

Obviously, invading your privacy and stalking you on and off-line in the name of targeted marketing, AKA, making money, doesn’t count.

Mark Zukerberg of Facebook exhorts you to share everything in your life at the same time he bought all three residences surrounding his home (last paragraph) to assure his own privacy.

Many social sites now track your location and make it public.

93% want control of their personal information, but are resigned that it isn’t going to happen.

Once again, Apple is flying in the face of its tech brethren.

“I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”  (…)

“We don’t think you should ever have to trade it for a service you think is free but actually comes at a very high cost. This is especially true now that we’re storing data about our health, our finances and our homes on our devices.”

“We believe the customer should be in control of their own information. You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose. And we think some day, customers will see this for what it is.” –Apple CEO Tim Cook, honored for ‘corporate leadership’ during EPIC’s Champions of Freedom event in Washington.

So the next time you sign in to Facebook, Google, Square, Twitter, etc., keep in mind that they aren’t selling their souls to make a buck, they are selling yours, your family’s and your friends’.

Flickr image credit: westonhighschool library

What separates success and failure for new CEOs?

Some crash and burn, like Robert Nardelli and Apple retail chief Ron Johnson when he moved to Penney.

Others flourish.

Since becoming CEO at Microsoft, Satya Nadella has made revolutionary changes in both products and culture that would/could never have happened under the old regime and the stock is up 53%.

The world said that Apple under Tim Cook would be mediocre or even fail; it was assumed that no one could follow Steve Jobs. But in the three years April since Cook took the reins Apple split 7:1 and more than doubled its stock price.

What do these pairs have in common?

Culture.

Nardelli and Johnson were both outsiders who lacked interest or understanding of the existing culture. Both tried to use brute force to radically overhaul the existing culture and both failed miserably.

Nadella and Cook were both insiders; Cook was with Apple 13 years, while Nadella had 24 at Microsoft, and so far both are succeeding brilliantly.

Does this mean CEO jobs should always go to insiders?

Absolutely not.

Does it mean that changing the culture is a bad idea?

Absolutely not.

Lou Gerstner was an outsider who radically changed the culture at IBM.

And he sums the lesson up best.

“I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”

Flickr image credit: Jeffrey