First, kudos for Canadian Business Magazine for running an article - Research in Motion's big image problem - that pin-points what I've been saying for a year now, that RIM's primary issue is marketing/brand. There's nothing worse than when CXO's micro-manage aspects of their business (ie. marketing) which they aren't experts in. It almost always leads to a disaster, as we are seeing with RIM's brand.
Yet pointing out the obvious was a small hit compared to the open letter a RIM executive annonymously sent to Boy Genuis Report - Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him.
In the letter the employee basically says RIM is falling apart and offers up suggestions for turning the ship around. The suggestions included:
1) Focus on the End User experience
2) Recruit Senior SW Leaders & enable decision-making
3) Cut projects to the bone.
4) Developers, not Carriers can now make or break us
5) Need for serious marketing punch to create end user desire
6) No Accountability – Canadians are too nice
7) The press and analysts are pissing you off. Don’t snap. Now is the time for humility with a dash of paranoia.
8) Democratise. Engage and interact with your employees — please!
From a PR perspective this isn't all that unexpected. I've talked a lot about how PR is not detached from HR in many ways. When the two operate as two fully separate functions, then you run the risk at some point of something like this happening.
It's also the reason why in my consulting business I focus on Build Your Brand, Manage Your Brand and Live your Brand, because these are three separate processes that can radically impact your overall brand equity / reputation.
You can do great product promotion, but if you aren't 'living' your brand within your company then eventually the market can find out about that. And as you can see in the letter this employee sent, it can be horribly damaging.
Now, on a side note, I'll give this advice to anyone new in PR (and to folks like the person who wrote this letter). Within corporations people often think that management is 'disconnected' or simply don't know what to do to turn things around. So they spend their days frustrated and thinking 'if only someone would tell them what they need to do'... which is why someone does something like this, figuring if the media listens then the executives will have to listen (and they believe they are actually helping the company in the long run).
Big mistake. Management teams, while they can be 'wrong', are rarely stupid or uninformed. I can guarantee you that every suggestion the employee presented are variables that management is fully aware of.
So if they are aware of these things, why don't they do something about it?
The reality is that companies are merely a collection of individuals. And if you get the wrong individuals in positions of power they hire other employees that are the wrong hires. Eventually you reach critical mass of incompetence and your culture becomes broken.
At this point, everyone starts blaming the CXO's and arguing that the issue is poor management. Yes, that is the issue, but it's not something they can fix without tossing out half their staff. Poor management is like cancer... it spreads throughout the organization and turns into poor employee performance.
So they end up stuck. They start falling behind in the race, but to change up the players only means they will fall even further behind (and if the new hires turn out to be as incompetent as the original players, then you're no further ahead and in fact are even further behind).
So my advice to someone like the employee who wrote this letter (and to PR folks) is that if you see signs such as a culture that lacks accountability, incompetent management, irrational business decisions, etc. - get a new job!
I'm serious, it's foolish to think that the problems will be fixed with the same people present that allowed them to unfold. This is why when things get bad enough you start hearing a call for the CEO's head, which we are now hearing when it comes to RIM.
Replacing the CEO though is only a first step. What always follows is cleaning up the mess that was created under their watch. The problem is never just one person, it's always a wide assortment of people (from CXO / VP levels all the way down through the rank and file).
So you can replace the CEO, but you are looking at a two-to-three year clean up process for a company of RIM's size (something they can't really afford right now as competition heats up).
So often times you have to hit rock bottom before such changes occur. Generally companies don't ever get up once they hit rock bottom, but now and then they do. I think RIM is about half way down its nose dive, the ocean is coming up fast, but there's still some time before they hit the water.
RIM's problem internally isn't mean CEO's looking to make short-term cash grabs. I think their co-CEO's genuinely care about the company (heck, RIM once rented out an arena and had Bruce Springstein, or maybe it was the Rolling Stones, I can't remember, but it was some famous band, play for all the employees).
Their problem is they got fat and lazy (not the CEO's but the company as a whole). A few years ago I went for an interview with RIM. They flew me down to Waterloo. I won't go in to details, but what I saw in the interview process was people who were confused over the skill sets they needed. Which left me with the impression that RIM had become a company that had become overwhelmed by its size and that confusion and lack of direction had permeated throughout the company into the hiring process.
Anyway, what can they do now? I expect they'll try to fix their current problems with the activities that made them famous/successful in the first place, research and development. Right now they likely believe that they will have to R&D themselves out of this. But in my opinion it simply won't work without cleaning house and fixing everything else that is wrong also.
And it's unfair to put the salvation of the company on the backs of the engineers, because trust me, those engineers will see all the other functions of the business getting a free pass and they will grow sour that they have to be perfect while others get to do a sloppy job.
To be honest, I don't think RIM is going to survive this. The mobile space moves to fast and they have lost too much ground. I think an acquisition lies in their future.
Having said that though, if they are serious about being King of the Castle again, they need to take drastic actions. Which means a complete overhaul of the people associated with the bad decisions that were made in the past (and really the company isn't all that bad, they simply failed horribly at ensuring that their brand remained relevant). That means doing hard things like firing people who may have close personal relationships with each other and management.
From a PR front, there is no quick solution to this situation anymore. What RIM needs to do is elevate PR such that it has a strategic seat the management table and listen to the advice of their PR folks as to the steps that would lead to positive brand equity in the market. But I don't think that is in the cards either, at least not by how the CEO's have been engaging the media lately.
So to sum up, while the employees letter is a huge blow on the PR front, it's all for not. I'm sure the employee feels that it might help the company face its' demons, but that is very unlikely. Every company that crashes and burns goes through an extended phase of hoping that management will recognize the problems.
What employees fail to realize is that management knows what the problems are, but they are either unable or unwilling to address them. So your options are to enjoy the rest of the ride until you hit an iceburg, or jump ship. If you stay on the ship you have to cross your fingers that someone comes in and does a complete overhaul, otherwise there's simply no reason to believe that you'll change course and avoid the iceburg in the end.
It's a bit of a crazy prediction, but I won't be surprised if in a year or two from now if RIM stock is trading down around 15 bucks. I think there's more pain to come. The only thing that would make me change my view, as I've said in a previous post, is if I saw them totally revamp their marketing and PR strategies (you get the right marketing and PR folks at the table, and take them seriously, and they won't just enhance your brand, but they will help you make better decisions across all areas of your business).
PR folks are great at envisioning the type of events that will make a huge impact with the media (and by association the public and business community). They spend their days thinking about this stuff, so tap in to those ideas, because those are the ideas that will reinvigorate your brand.
Yet pointing out the obvious was a small hit compared to the open letter a RIM executive annonymously sent to Boy Genuis Report - Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him.
In the letter the employee basically says RIM is falling apart and offers up suggestions for turning the ship around. The suggestions included:
1) Focus on the End User experience
2) Recruit Senior SW Leaders & enable decision-making
3) Cut projects to the bone.
4) Developers, not Carriers can now make or break us
5) Need for serious marketing punch to create end user desire
6) No Accountability – Canadians are too nice
7) The press and analysts are pissing you off. Don’t snap. Now is the time for humility with a dash of paranoia.
8) Democratise. Engage and interact with your employees — please!
From a PR perspective this isn't all that unexpected. I've talked a lot about how PR is not detached from HR in many ways. When the two operate as two fully separate functions, then you run the risk at some point of something like this happening.
It's also the reason why in my consulting business I focus on Build Your Brand, Manage Your Brand and Live your Brand, because these are three separate processes that can radically impact your overall brand equity / reputation.
You can do great product promotion, but if you aren't 'living' your brand within your company then eventually the market can find out about that. And as you can see in the letter this employee sent, it can be horribly damaging.
Now, on a side note, I'll give this advice to anyone new in PR (and to folks like the person who wrote this letter). Within corporations people often think that management is 'disconnected' or simply don't know what to do to turn things around. So they spend their days frustrated and thinking 'if only someone would tell them what they need to do'... which is why someone does something like this, figuring if the media listens then the executives will have to listen (and they believe they are actually helping the company in the long run).
Big mistake. Management teams, while they can be 'wrong', are rarely stupid or uninformed. I can guarantee you that every suggestion the employee presented are variables that management is fully aware of.
So if they are aware of these things, why don't they do something about it?
The reality is that companies are merely a collection of individuals. And if you get the wrong individuals in positions of power they hire other employees that are the wrong hires. Eventually you reach critical mass of incompetence and your culture becomes broken.
At this point, everyone starts blaming the CXO's and arguing that the issue is poor management. Yes, that is the issue, but it's not something they can fix without tossing out half their staff. Poor management is like cancer... it spreads throughout the organization and turns into poor employee performance.
So they end up stuck. They start falling behind in the race, but to change up the players only means they will fall even further behind (and if the new hires turn out to be as incompetent as the original players, then you're no further ahead and in fact are even further behind).
So my advice to someone like the employee who wrote this letter (and to PR folks) is that if you see signs such as a culture that lacks accountability, incompetent management, irrational business decisions, etc. - get a new job!
I'm serious, it's foolish to think that the problems will be fixed with the same people present that allowed them to unfold. This is why when things get bad enough you start hearing a call for the CEO's head, which we are now hearing when it comes to RIM.
Replacing the CEO though is only a first step. What always follows is cleaning up the mess that was created under their watch. The problem is never just one person, it's always a wide assortment of people (from CXO / VP levels all the way down through the rank and file).
So you can replace the CEO, but you are looking at a two-to-three year clean up process for a company of RIM's size (something they can't really afford right now as competition heats up).
So often times you have to hit rock bottom before such changes occur. Generally companies don't ever get up once they hit rock bottom, but now and then they do. I think RIM is about half way down its nose dive, the ocean is coming up fast, but there's still some time before they hit the water.
RIM's problem internally isn't mean CEO's looking to make short-term cash grabs. I think their co-CEO's genuinely care about the company (heck, RIM once rented out an arena and had Bruce Springstein, or maybe it was the Rolling Stones, I can't remember, but it was some famous band, play for all the employees).
Their problem is they got fat and lazy (not the CEO's but the company as a whole). A few years ago I went for an interview with RIM. They flew me down to Waterloo. I won't go in to details, but what I saw in the interview process was people who were confused over the skill sets they needed. Which left me with the impression that RIM had become a company that had become overwhelmed by its size and that confusion and lack of direction had permeated throughout the company into the hiring process.
Anyway, what can they do now? I expect they'll try to fix their current problems with the activities that made them famous/successful in the first place, research and development. Right now they likely believe that they will have to R&D themselves out of this. But in my opinion it simply won't work without cleaning house and fixing everything else that is wrong also.
And it's unfair to put the salvation of the company on the backs of the engineers, because trust me, those engineers will see all the other functions of the business getting a free pass and they will grow sour that they have to be perfect while others get to do a sloppy job.
To be honest, I don't think RIM is going to survive this. The mobile space moves to fast and they have lost too much ground. I think an acquisition lies in their future.
Having said that though, if they are serious about being King of the Castle again, they need to take drastic actions. Which means a complete overhaul of the people associated with the bad decisions that were made in the past (and really the company isn't all that bad, they simply failed horribly at ensuring that their brand remained relevant). That means doing hard things like firing people who may have close personal relationships with each other and management.
From a PR front, there is no quick solution to this situation anymore. What RIM needs to do is elevate PR such that it has a strategic seat the management table and listen to the advice of their PR folks as to the steps that would lead to positive brand equity in the market. But I don't think that is in the cards either, at least not by how the CEO's have been engaging the media lately.
So to sum up, while the employees letter is a huge blow on the PR front, it's all for not. I'm sure the employee feels that it might help the company face its' demons, but that is very unlikely. Every company that crashes and burns goes through an extended phase of hoping that management will recognize the problems.
What employees fail to realize is that management knows what the problems are, but they are either unable or unwilling to address them. So your options are to enjoy the rest of the ride until you hit an iceburg, or jump ship. If you stay on the ship you have to cross your fingers that someone comes in and does a complete overhaul, otherwise there's simply no reason to believe that you'll change course and avoid the iceburg in the end.
It's a bit of a crazy prediction, but I won't be surprised if in a year or two from now if RIM stock is trading down around 15 bucks. I think there's more pain to come. The only thing that would make me change my view, as I've said in a previous post, is if I saw them totally revamp their marketing and PR strategies (you get the right marketing and PR folks at the table, and take them seriously, and they won't just enhance your brand, but they will help you make better decisions across all areas of your business).
PR folks are great at envisioning the type of events that will make a huge impact with the media (and by association the public and business community). They spend their days thinking about this stuff, so tap in to those ideas, because those are the ideas that will reinvigorate your brand.
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