Tim Cook:

There is something truly special about Apple. I am most proud of
what an annual report could never capture. This place is proof
that culture triumphs over everything. We share a belief that what
we build matters, and that we have both the opportunity and the
responsibility to leave the world better than we found it. That
purpose is part of what makes this place extraordinary. Apple
helps nurture it, but I believe it lived within each of you long
before you arrived here. It is what brought you to this company
and what continues to drive the work you do every day. Together,
we have created something far greater than any one of us could
have imagined or accomplished alone. And that’s the secret to our
success. We bring out the best in each other. We lift each other
up. We have made it possible to leave our “dent in the universe,”
as Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we
believe, because of what we value and how we see the world. How
fortunate we are. How fortunate I am.

That’s the best paragraph of the memo. I like those last two “fortunate” lines, and I think they’re the most open Cook gets. But on the whole the memo reads to me like the classic Far Side cartoon about the dog listening to its owner: “Blah blah Apple, blah blah blah blah Apple. Blah blah….”

The truth is he was CEO for 15 years and he revealed very little of his true self to the public. That’s fine. In a meta sense, remaining so private was revealing. I think that’s who Tim Cook is — an intensely private man who took on a high-profile public role. The more revealing stories about the real Cook aren’t his public performances or memos. There’s the 2009 “Why are you still here?” one with Sabih Khan. And then there’s a remark I came upon recently, re-reading chapter 35 of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, regarding Jobs’s 2009 medical leave of absence:

Cook had done a good job running the company during Jobs’s
absence. He kept Apple’s temperamental actors performing well,
and he avoided stepping into the limelight. Jobs liked strong
personalities, up to a point, but he had never truly empowered
a deputy or shared the stage. It was hard to be his understudy.
You were damned if you shone, and damned if you didn’t. Cook
had managed to navigate those shoals. He was calm and decisive
when in command, but he didn’t seek any notice or acclaim for
himself. “Some people resent the fact that Steve gets credit
for everything, but I’ve never given a rat’s ass about that,”
said Cook. “Frankly speaking, I’d prefer my name never be in
the paper.”

That’s Tim Cook. He clearly feels the same way now as he did when he told that to Isaacson before he took the CEO job.