The Clarity Principle: How Great Leaders Make the Most Important Decision in Business (and What Happens When They Don't)

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Proxy Wars

In 1985, Apple Computer was riding the early wave of the microcomputer revolution. Cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs was among the leading rebels. But the main character in the story I want to tell is Donna Dubinsky, a talented operations manager who came to serve as a kind of canary in the coal mine of Apple’s first leadership crisis. (Though I draw from a variety of Apple and industry sources, I rely extensively on the very well documented 1995 Harvard Business School case, “Donna Dubinsky and Apple Computer, Inc.,” written by research associate Mary Gentile under the supervision of Prof. Todd D. Jick.¹ My depiction of Donna Dubinsky’s crisis largely retells the story as it was vividly related by Prof. Jick and Ms. Gentile. Unless ...