Apple was pushed by a small team of HR managers to adopt a more transparent and less secretive work atmosphere for employees, a departure from the ultra-secretive and siloed work culture that leads to most of the company.
Chris Deaver, a former Apple HR manager who worked at the company from 2015 to 2019, wrote a guest article on Fast Company. Apple has a strict culture of product secrecy and confidentiality according to Deaver. Employees working on products such as the Mac or iPad have no idea what their teams are doing, which makes them feel excluded.
The culture of Apple secrecy and confinement of information left employees working on different products and disciplines in uncomfortable dilemmas of not knowing who they can speak to and who they must keep secrets away from out of fear of legal or work related punishments. How do I know when and who I share information with? Deaver quotes one employee who said he didn't want to be fired or in jail.
The culture of secrecy at the company caused problems beyond the personal and social issues for employees. Deaver describes his role as part of the HR department as having to deal with internal disputes, which he said often came from complaints of that team not sharing.
A small team of HR experts and partners were conceived by Deaver and Ian Clawson to think of a new, more transparent way for Apple's teams to work that would result in less friction during the development of products. According to Deaver, he was inspired to do this because of his experience with the original AirPods, which left staff feeling burned out and frustrated.
Teams were innovating for months in silos only to finally converge in the eleventh hour before launch, ending up in five- or six-hour-long daily meetings, causing tremendous friction and burnout. People were frustrated. They wanted to leave or to “never work with that one person again.”
How could Apple have avoided the internal turmoil we faced with the development of AirPods? How do cultures take the shape they do? These questions and the inspired sessions with Ian, led me to form a mini braintrust at Apple. As a small group of HR partners, we started to explore this by getting curious about the Apple culture.
Apple adopted a more transparent and collaborative work culture as a result of the team's ideas. Apple decided to use an open, free-flowing process for the Air Pods Pro, instead of having separate groups work on the same products and not be able to communicate or work together.
As teams converged with leaders becoming more open, connected, and driving higher quality collaboration than ever before. We spent time coaching, collaborating, and influencing key leaders and engineers driving the next frontier of AirPods. What emerged was a braintrust with regular sessions, openness, and connection that brought to life the insanely great, noise-canceling AirPods Pro. It was a testament to innovation, but also to the power of sharing. Yes, sharing could be done in the context of secrecy.
The new culture was called "Different Together", a play on Apple's "Think Different" campaign. Apple wants to keep its secrets high, so it tries to prevent leaks and rumors about what it is working on. As Deaver tries to prove, Apple can be both secretive and collorbaritve at the same time.
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