Tim Cook & company probably got it wrong when they hired John Browett. Not that Browett isn’t good at what he does, but he just probably wasn’t a great fit at Apple. In hiring Angela Ahrendts away from Burberry, they didn’t back away from Think Different. In fact, it appears they doubled down on it:

The courtship was a slow one. Ahrendts would have to relinquish her CEO title, move her husband and three kids—the youngest of which was still in high school—5,000 miles from London to the Bay Area, and change industries. She was nervous. She says she told Cook, “ ‘Don’t believe everything you read. I’m not a techie.’ And he looks at me, and he goes, ‘I think we have enough techies here.’ And I said, ‘But you don’t understand. I’m not even really a great retailer. I hired great retailers.’ And he said, ‘Well, last time I looked we were one of the highest-productivity-per-square-foot stores of any company on the planet. So I think we have a lot of those too.’”

I love everything about Tim Cook’s strategy: let the teams at Apple do what they do, but give them a leader that knows how to lead and how to equip them with what they need to succeed.

(hat tip: The Loop)