Dear Apple Directors,

You are one of the most successful boards in corporate America. Apple stock is continually climbing. The company is admired on Wall Street and in countless boardrooms for its product portfolio and high margins. The business model and dominant marketshare of the iPod ecosystem transformed the entertainment industry, first with music and now with television and the movie business. The iPhone launch was a watershed, where a gadget achieved celebrity with the masses, and outsold all other smartphones combined during its launch window. Apple is regarded by many as the global standard for innovation, racking up more valuable intellectual property in a year than many companies have generated in their entire existence.

Congratulations on this success, success which revolves around one man – Steve Jobs. Iconoclastic, dynamic, phenomenal Steve Jobs: the man with a golden talent for picking winners. He’s the guy that makes being on Apple’s Board of Directors cool. And one day, he’s going to leave. Whether he moves to Disney, or retires, or stays on like Warren Buffett, one day he’ll be gone. When a company is so singularly identified with one individual, it’s difficult to consider life after Steve. But as the Board, it’s part of your fiduciary duty to develop a succession plan – not only to manage the risk of the Gulfstream going down, but to manage the certainty that one day Apple will need a new CEO.

Now, you know this already, far more than I do. You’ve already got succession planning happening. So enough of the small talk: Jonathan Ive should be Apple’s next CEO.

It’s not that there’s no talent in the C-suites at Apple. But those people are well-oiled parts of the Steve-machine. They do their work to enable Jobs to do his. They’re amazing catalysts for Steve’s chemistry, and because of this they will never have the independent vision to provide continued market leadership.

You might argue that Jonathan Ive is no different. But that’s not true: he’s a designer who taps into the wells of unmet consumer need that fuel Apple’s ongoing growth. With the exception of Steve himself, he’s tuned to the zeitgeist that determines winners more than anyone else at Apple. Moreover, he’s able to articulate that vision with consistent grace and precise execution. He’s got a track record of hitting home runs. If you want to keep the innovation leadership that makes Apple, well, Apple, then you’ve got to have the driver’s seat firmly bolted to the flow of trend, meaning, and consequence. That’s the domain of Design, and Jonathan Ive is your Designer.

Not that he’s perfect – he’ll need coaching to round out his business fluency. He’ll need a strong team of C-level support – with more peers than minions. But I think that’s even better. Trading one iconoclast for another doesn’t help the company mature, and building a team dedicated to vision, innovation, and execution does the company more good than trying to create Steve 2.0. Putting together a team that can successfully carry the Apple banner in a post-Steve world is no trivial thing. In Apple’s case, the cultural DNA demands that this leadership team needs to be led by design more than any other strategic competency (remember Scully?). Everyone in the executive team needs to get design, and design thinking. Jonathan Ive can make this gel. Using Design leadership to distribute the Apple magic among the team is a better strategy than trying to put it all on the new CEO’s shoulders. Otherwise, the stock price should dip every time that Gulfstream leaves the runway.

Now, of course, Jonathan Ive shuns the limelight. He may not turn out to be the consummate sales guy that you need to sell dreams to the switchers of tomorrow, or keep the Apple legions loyal. If he can’t step up to that, you may need to look elsewhere. But whoever you choose, please make sure they are a designer at heart, if not in training. Your investors and the Apple faithful will thank you.

Sincerely,

Jess McMullin

p.s. Design is not just style.