Tim Cook Has Advice for Next CEO. It May Sound Familiar

In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning earlier this year, Tim Cook recounted the advice Steve Jobs gave him when he took over as Apple CEO: Don't fall into the trap of trying to make decisions based on how you think I would have made them, Jobs told him. "Never ask what I would do, just do the right thing,'" Cook quotes Jobs as saying. Now that Cook himself is stepping down, Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal asked him what advice he would give successor John Ternus. "I would probably say the same thing," says Cook.

Trying to think like your predecessor can cause "paralysis," he adds, a fate that Jobs believed befell Disney after Walt Disney's death. "I would say: Be yourself," Cook tells Cohen. "Keep a firm North Star on the values of the company. Because if you get the values right, if you keep the North Star in clear view, you may be blown off course a little bit, but eventually you will come back to the right path. I have always found that to be true."