What communicators can learn from Apple’s CEO transition announcement

Steal these change management techniques.

The announcement that long-time Apple CEO Tim Cook would step aside wasn’t a shock, exactly. But the exact timing was a well-kept secret until the company posted a press release Tuesday announcing Cook would step back into the role of executive chairman in September, while John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering and heir apparent, would take over the top spot.

While Ternus might not be a household name yet, those following Apple would have seen him quietly making his way into the spotlight for years. He’s headlined keynotes and even got the glory spot during Apple’s announcement of the new MacBook Neo last month.

“We’ve seen this name come up in major ways over the last several years,” said Jacqueline Keidel Martinez, president and chief communications officer at Digital HQ. “So, there had been this systematic building of familiarity over the last several years that Apple had been conducting. And this moment where this announcement happens, and you look back as a comms person, and you’re like, ‘Oh, this was a very intentional buildup over these last several years.’”

Intention is apparent in every aspect of the launch. There were no leaks ahead of time. The stock saw a minor dip on the day of the announcement, which has already recovered.

“You see a public company CEO step down, there is chaos for a while, and that was not the case here,” Keidel Martinez said.

Stability and continuity rang through every piece of communication the company sent, including through Ternus’ quotes in the press release announcement, emphasizing his long tenure at the company and even namechecking the haloed Steve Jobs.

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” Ternus wrote. “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another.”

The process of transitioning from Cook to Ternus will be a lengthy one, with the two men vowing to work closely together even beyond Ternus’ official September start date. That means we can expect many more change comms, both internal and external, from Apple over the coming months.

Here’s what they’ve done so far and what you can expect moving forward.

Everything starts internal

The precision of Apple’s announcement indicates this was an announcement not just months in the making, but potentially years. There was a strong succession plan in place that paid off in spades this week.

“If you have a succession plan that lives in a locked drawer, right, you’ve got a leader who’s completely invisible to the world and invisible to the people who need to trust them, you’re planning for chaos,” said Keidel Martinez. That’s true for external audiences and doubly true for internal ones.

Erin Abbey, a senior communications consultant who has helped three organizations navigate CEO transitions, says workers must be allowed time to grieve an outgoing CEO.

“Honor the change curve for employees and don’t rush immediately to the future,” Abbey said. “Give them a minute to kind of process and really grieve, especially for a loved leader.”

Apple clearly gave this time and space. Cook has penned at least two letters, one aimed at workers, the other at the general public.

“The public letter is emotional, open, and befitting of a legacy of Cook’s scale,” observed Steph Lund, CEO of MSQ Sports + Entertainment North America. “The employee memo is warmer and more grounded — transparent about the decision, focused on the facts. Most companies send one message and blast it everywhere. Apple understood that employees and consumers needed to hear something different and wrote accordingly.”

While Ternus has been quoted in materials, he hasn’t yet laid out a broad agenda or fully taken the spotlight. Cook is getting time for a victory lap — and employees are getting time to say goodbye.

At the same time, Abbey warns that at some point, Ternus needs to fully take the lead.

“The real test is how quickly Ternus’s own voice shows up,” she said. “This letter is rightly Cook’s moment, but joint visibility should kick in within 30 days, or Ternus risks launching without enough emotional oxygen.”

Shaping the narrative moving forward

Ternus will surely begin to unveil his own agenda moving forward, but at the moment, he’s been vague, promising in the press release that he will “lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”

One notable word that does not appear in the release? AI. Apple is broadly seen as behind in the AI race, though it does profit from the myriad apps available on its App Store.

“I think that’s probably the biggest question and the biggest elephant in the room that they’re going to be asked for,” said Melissa Buch, founder and CEO at BrandBuch and one of Ragan’s Top Women in Communications. “So, I would probably prepare them very well around that question and what it means to make sure it doesn’t look like Apple is staying behind.”

The choice not to mention the elephant in the room was likely intentional. But to what end will become clearer in the months ahead as Ternus and his communications team work to define the company’s next chapter and build trust with both internal and external audiences. If the rollout so far is any indication, that effort will be deliberate, measured and anything but reactive.

“This is the antithesis to that,” Keidel Martinez said. “That doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily showing your hand that someone’s going to be stepping down, that a new successor is going to be named. But what it does mean is that you’re building up this critical infrastructure of trust and credibility long before you know it’s going to be tapped.”

For communicators, that may be the clearest lesson of all. Apple prepared for this transition for years, ensuring that when the moment came, the story was already understood.

Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.

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