Former Apple Executive on Leading Teams in China and Managing Up

Building a successful team culture in a globally-distributed team is never easy, particularly when managing teams in regions where business norms and expectations differ significantly. Bryan Roos is a former Apple executive whose experience also includes a tour of duty with several other globally operating companies. For three decades, he has managed technical teams across the Pacific, navigating differing cultural norms while driving cohesive and performant teams. He has also had to answer directly to some of the toughest executives in the consumer electronics industry – and has developed a playbook of strategies to effectively manage those relationships that any executive can learn from.

Merging Business Cultures by Putting People First 

At Apple, as in many American technology companies, people managers are expected to be actively involved in their team’s day-to-day operations. They understand the technical details, lead from the front, and take responsibility when things go wrong. As an engineer, these norms are authentic to who Bryan is – so when he was asked to build and lead a team in China, he brought them with him.

In China business culture, however, hierarchical leadership and rigid managerial structures are more common. Managers typically keep their distance from teams, delegating most responsibilities and only steeping in for high-level decision making.

Bryan led a cross-Pacific engineering program management team at Apple for nearly two decades – including six years living in Shanghai. Being local helped enable Bryan to effectively bridge this disparate working norms to build an effective, cohesive team. 

Bryan made a point to be present during critical moments—in meetings and on the production line—which stood in stark contrast to the local management practices. His willingness to take responsibility when things went wrong was another crucial differentiator. In a culture where “the nail that sticks out gets knocked down,” Bryan’s proactive stance on handling mistakes and failures wasn’t typical, but it helped him build trust. His China team knew he wouldn’t shy away from difficult situations, and when success was achieved, he made sure they got the credit. Over time, this built credibility for his team with their California counterparts. Given Bryan’s team were often on the ground making million dollar calls on a daily basis,, this trust and credibility enabled them to be more effective in their mission critical roles. When challenges arose, they were willing to go the extra mile because they knew that Bryan had their back.

Technical Credibility Drives Organizational Credibility

Apple’s hardware organization is stacked with engineers – from individual contributors to Vice Presidents, nearly everyone  was a trained engineer.. As someone who started my career as an engineer at Apple, I focused for several years on building an unshakeable technical reputation. I saw engineers get eviscerated for having poorly analyzed data or lazy tolerance analysis – and then get side-lined for future opportunities. For every decision I made, no matter if they were small stakes, I made a one-slide summary of the data supporting that decision and saved them in a folder on my desktop. For years. I attribute this practice to why I was given so much responsibility, so quickly – and how I was able to be successful in the organization.

While I was an individual contributor doing thorough tolerance analysis on iPods at Apple, Bryan was leading a massive China-based engineering program management team. At Apple, EPMs “own the schedule” – so if something was late, he was going to have to explain it. He leveraged his own technical expertise to understand the build- and ramp-blocking issues that program teams were facing to herd engineers and leaders from diverse functions to work to resolve issues quickly. Having gotten his Apple start in Cupertino headquarters prior to moving to Shanghai, he leveraged trusted, long-standing relationships to bridge the gap between what was going on in the factories and the senior leadership in California..

One of the key challenges Bryan faced was managing expectations on both sides of the Pacific. The U.S. leadership team often relied on Bryan’s expertise to make the best decisions for engineering and operations in China. This created a layer of trust that allowed him to bypass some of the common frustrations associated with global team dynamics. While he admitted that not every relationship was perfect, his technical credibility helped smooth over tensions and kept the day-to-day work running as efficiently as possible.

The Apple Executive Way of Managing Up

Keeping senior leadership teams in the United States informed and appropriately consulted was a key part of Bryan’s role. While different executives at Apple have different methods of managing up – the leaders who garnered the most trust and senior positions used similar methods. Bryan is a skilled practitioner in this “Apple Way of Managing Up”.

Bryan’s principles are simple:

• Executives look for brevity and precision
• Start with the punchline
• Allow time for clarification questions
• Know the details, and always have backup prepared

Bryan describes that many young engineers or managers might think that executives want to see them build up to the conclusion, and explain all their work – they don’t. Executives want to make the right decision. To the extent that they want details, they want to ensure they understand the reasoning that went into the team’s recommendations. The executive wants to know that everything was considered at the appropriate level,  that analysis was done, that the decision will be “right”. 

This process builds on itself over time – Bryan’s reputation for delivering effective communications with executives to prepare them for decisions led to great trust for him and his team’s work in the factories.

Bryan acknowledges that the Apple Way of Managing Up might not work for all organizational cultures and leaders. For example, starting with the solution or the answer could throw some leaders off-balance – the room may need time to catch up. Context is often important in decision making, and can sometimes be lost or under-communicated with this method – unless it’s explicitly asked for. If the executives being managed in this interaction are themselves very tied into the details, this method can work well. Bryan continues to refine his own personal practice as he leads in different complex environments.