Question: This is the reply to the above article. While Steve Jobs wanted a highly cohesive and committed team from different functional areas, he might have

This is the reply to the above article. While

This is the reply to the above article.

While Steve Jobs wanted a highly cohesive and committed team from different functional areas, he might have neglected the organisations structure and culture which brought about two warring companies within one organization. It is stated that the Apples mission is (Cuofano, 2022) to bring the best user experience to its customers through innovation hardware, software, and services. To achieve that, a projectised organisation structure is not the only way to be adopted and put into place. Firstly, the advantages of projectised organisation are simple and cross-functional integration. It can also be achieved if he had adopted a balanced organisation matrix structure. In this structure, contribution from various discipline can also be integrated and project timeline can be set to meet the target date. Although the project contributions by the Macintosh development team were innovative but it led to silo mentality and internal strife across different project team in the organisation as seen between the Apple II and Macintosh. On the shorter end, instead of having a committed and cohesive team, Steve Jobs will have to work closely with the respective functional heads. However, this will mitigate the silo mindset which is significantly beneficial for Apples mission in the long term. (Gleeson, 2013) The silo mentality will reduce efficiency in the overall operation, reduce morale, and may contribute to the demise of a productive company culture. In fact, the Apple II division were already incensed with the special treatment that Macintosh were getting, soon other teams morale will also be affected.

In addition, having a projectised organisation structure will have limited technological expertise as the expertise is limited to the team member within the project. So how will that keep up to their mission through innovation if the technological knowledge is limited to the specific team members. The divisiveness had drifted the delicated project team from the main organisation which adversely prevents delicated team member to consult others from their functional group. One essential aspect of innovation is to (Jong, Marston, Roth, 2015) share ideas and knowledge freely, perhaps by locating teams working on different types of innovation. Therefore, the limited technological expertise will hinder a delicated project team from innovation. Compared to a balanced organisation matrix structure where the members of the project stay within their functional groups but work on different project and share ideas and knowledge freely. Project members under balanced organisation matrix structure will also have strong project focus as they will still be managed under Steve Jobs.

In my opinion, Steve Jobs did not do the right thing by choosing a projectised organisation structure as it led to the divisiveness within the organisation which can be mitigated if ground rules were taken into consideration. It emphasized on the organisations structure and culture before changes. In contrast, the advantages of balanced organization matrix structure outweigh projectised organization structure in this case as the shared resources encourage innovation and aligned with Apples mission. At the same time, it will not have hindered Apples performance during the 1980s due to the internal strife.

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THE BIRTH OF THE MAC* One of the advantages of creating dedicated project teams is that project participants from different functional areas can develop into a highly cohesive work team that is strongly committed to completing the project. While such teams often produce Herculean efforts in pursuit of project completion, there is a negative dimension to this commitment that is often referred to in the literature as projectitis. A we-they attitude can emerge between project team members and the rest of the organization. The project team succumbs to hubris and develops a holier-than-thou attitude that antagonizes the parent organization. People not assigned to the project become jealous of the attention and prestige being showered on the project team, especially when they believe that it is their hard work that is financing the endeavor. The tendency to assign project teams exotic titles such as "Silver Bullets" and "Tiger Teams," as well as to give them special perks, tends to intensify the gap between the project team and the rest of the organization. Such appears to have been the case with Apple's highly successful Macintosh development team. Steve Jobs, who at the time was both the chairman of Apple and the project manager for the Mac team, pampered his team with perks, including at-the-desk massages, coolers stocked with freshly squeezed orange juice, a Bosendorfer grand piano, and first-class plane tickets. No other employees at Apple got to travel first class. Jobs considered his team to be the elite of Apple and had a tendency to refer to everyone else as "Bozos" who "didn't get it." Engineers from the Apple II division, which was the bread and butter of Apple's sales, became incensed with the special treatment their colleagues were getting. One evening at Ely McFly's, a local watering hole, the tensions between Apple II engineers seated at one table and those of a Mac team at another boiled over. Aaron Goldberg, a long-time industry consultant, watched from his barstool as the squabbling escalated. "The Mac guys were screaming, 'We're the future!' The Apple II guys were screaming, 'We're the money!' Then there was a geek brawl. Pocket protectors and pens were flying. I was waiting for a notebook to drop, so they would stop and pick up the papers." Although comical from a distance, the discord between the Apple II and Mac groups severely hampered Apple's performance during the 1980 s. John Sculley, who replaced Steve Jobs as chairman of Apple, observed that Apple had evolved into two "warring companies" and referred to the street between the Apple II and Macintosh buildings as "the DMZ" (demilitarized zone). 'J. Carlton, Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders (New York: Random House, 1997), pp. 13-14; J. Sculley, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple... a Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future (New York: Harper \& Row, 1987), pp. 270-79

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