Personally, I was gobsmacked by the announcement.
As we posted last night, Apple formally announced that Angela Ahrendts would be leaving Apple this April, naming Deirdre O’Brien as the new senior vice president of Retail + People.
I’ve long been a fan of Angela’s. Hard to know what aspects of Apple Retail success she should get credit for, how much of those plans were in place when she arrived, but that aside, I’ve always appreciated her intelligence and her well spoken representation as the public face of Apple Retail.
Here’s a little publicized interview from a few years back that CNBC just posted, with Angela talking about retail.
And if you are unfamiliar with Deirdre O’Brien, here’s a short backgrounder to fill in a few of the details.
From Apple’s announcement:
In her expanded role, Deirdre will bring her three decades of Apple experience to lead the company’s global retail reach, focused on the connection between the customer and the people and processes that serve them. She will continue to lead the People team, overseeing all People-related functions, including talent development and Apple University, recruiting, employee relations and experience, business partnership, benefits, compensation, and inclusion and diversity.
It is interesting to look at the updated Leadership page, where Deirdre is the only person with a “+” in their title (Senior Vice President, Retail + People). Plenty of “and”, but no other “+”.
Retail and HR are such different spaces, I can’t help but wonder if that + is a stopgap, a temporary assignment until they find someone else to take over one spot or the other. Or, perhaps, that + is simply a typo, and Deirdre is in both camps for the long haul, with an and in her future.
Dave – I am a 10 year vet of the fruit stand. Retail HR is crucial for the success of the stores – under Ang, they literally stopped hiring people with product knowledge/tech skills, and didn’t do a great job of people skills, either. It’s one of the prime reasons I left.
Methinks the + O’Brien will straddle both rolls until Ahrendts departs completely and until they fill the HR role.
I think the importance of culture-fit is easily overlooked as an absolute necessity, if you go to work for Apple. And if you don’t ‘fit’ in with the culture, you’ll probably never measure up to their very high standards. Apple’s always possessed a maverick spirit and they pride themselves in doing things their way as much as allowed. So, if you’re an outsider coming in, you better be 100% confident Apple’s culture aligns with your own. Otherwise, it won’t last. Maybe Ahrendts, ultimately, just didn’t fit with Apple’s culture.
I’ve read many comments about the Apple retail experience sucking bad these days. I had a less than ideal experience recently where it took 3 transactions, 3 separate trips, to the Apple Store to replace a faulty wireless keyboard. That’s simply should never happen, ever.
Neil Cybart had a great take in today’s newsletter. His take is that she accomplished what she set out to do, misses her children that live in London and felt comfortable handing the reins over to Deidre. Obviously a lot more but that’s part of it.
She did so much for Apple retail. Employee head count almost doubled during her tenure and the long lines around the block became a thing of the past.
Maybe so, I am just talking about my personal experience. I am in the Houston area which gives me access to five Apple Stores, and I have had a poor experience in four of them. I have not visited the fifth one, but I am not very encouraged.
The only time I witnessed a line was when an iPhone got launched and in the two Grand Openings that I attended.
I hate the Apple Store experience. Personally, I almost get a sense the Apple employee act as if they are doing you a favor. I understand that they have lots of folks to tend too, but I always see employees standing around not helping anybody. Some are nice once you get a chance to talk to them, but others, not so much.
The Genius bar is useless for any true obscure Macintosh technical question. They have nobody that can really help you. I will say that at the very least the Genius bar attendant did put me in touch by phone with a real Apple Macintosh Genius that knew about the Unix command that I needed to get my issue fixed.
I once purchased a refurb Cinema Display that was discounted by $100.00. When it arrived, it was DOA. So I took it to the Apple Store to see what they could do, I had to purchase a new one at full price and return the bad one directly with Apple by mail. In other words, having a retail shop was meaningless, since they would not even take the broken monitor back.
So personally Angela’s departure is meaningless to me since I really did not notice any radical changes in my own Apple Store experience.
I expect it’s nothing more than missing her kids and London. I get that, when I was overseas I missed my adult kids a lot.
You hit the nail on the head, Angela didn’t fit the culture at ALL, and neither did her team. When I was working at Apple as an engineer, the first time I thought about leaving was after interacting with a few members of Angela’s team. It was like the bitchy mean girls were walking down the hall and they thought everyone else was below them. I only met Angela a few times briefly during my tenure at Apple, but my opinion of her is definitely colored by my interactions with the team she hired and built.