As everyone knows Blackberry service around the world has been disrupted for the past few days. I'm sure it's the last thing RIM needed right now, but I've got to say they did the right thing apologizing to their customers. And they didn't apologize through a news release, or letter, or tweet, rather they used video.
While their customers are probably still furious, this act of humility will minimize the damage they suffer long term from the outage. Moreover, it actually puts a human face on RIM, something that has been missing for a long long time.
I'm really impressed with Lazaridis in this apology. He comes across as sincere and humble. When you consider that he's a multi-billionaire and his company has been getting attacked endlessly for the past few years, he could have simpy issued a press release or had executive management comment to the media. Most CEO's would not do what Lazaridis did.
He stepped up and put his face on this mess. He came to the forefront, stood in front of everyone and apologized. This video of him apologizing will be around now for the next 10 or 20 years, yet he didn't care, he took the heat for the entire company.
It shows that regardless of RIM's bad decisions in the past, Lazaridis still really cares about his company. When most CEO's would be hiding from the public's outrage, he steps up and responds to it.
That's leadership.
It almost makes me wonder now if RIM might ultimately find its legs one day. If Lazaridis can be humble enough to apologize as he did, perhaps management is humble enough to realize that they have to make drastic changes to the business to be competitive down the road.
On a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if this whole mess was somehow tied to the fact that RIM laid off 10 per cent of its workforce a few months ago. The effects of losing one out of every ten employees is significant. Suddenly people have responsibilities they aren't use too, some responsibilities even fall through the crasks to no one, everyone's work load increases, morale sinks, etc. - ultimately you end up with something like a worldwide blackberry outage.
Then all the effort everyone has to put in to that crisis - reassuring customers, fixing the technical problems, managing the PR fall out - is a HUGE waste of everyone's time, pulling them away from duties they would otherwise be engaged in.
This is how companies get in to a death spiral as they try to appease shareholders by running leaner and meaner to the point where their business starts to fall apart.
While I praise Lazaridis for his response to this crisis, and I do think it will do a lot to contain the damage, it's likely not enough to save RIM from its current trend of rapidly falling behind its competitors.
I suppose we can only hope that whoever acted to create this video apology (whether it was the PR staff or Lazaridis himself) is put in charge of more brand decisions at RIM. If so, maybe there's hope that RIM will finally realize that marketing is its biggest challenge (and that's saying something given they have big challenges on the technology front as well).
There's no reason RIM has to die (or be acquired) over the coming years, but it does have to accept that it needs to be reborn.
"It's only after you've lost everything that you are free to do anything."
- Fight Club
I'd like to think that RIM has now reached its Nietzschean moment of hitting rock bottom. Because it's only after RIM has lost everything that once made it special that it will find the freedom to imagine what it could someday become and then begin the journey towards that vision.
(Oh, that just gave me an idea. Their next phone, assuming it's a good one, should be called 'The Pheonix")
While their customers are probably still furious, this act of humility will minimize the damage they suffer long term from the outage. Moreover, it actually puts a human face on RIM, something that has been missing for a long long time.
I'm really impressed with Lazaridis in this apology. He comes across as sincere and humble. When you consider that he's a multi-billionaire and his company has been getting attacked endlessly for the past few years, he could have simpy issued a press release or had executive management comment to the media. Most CEO's would not do what Lazaridis did.
He stepped up and put his face on this mess. He came to the forefront, stood in front of everyone and apologized. This video of him apologizing will be around now for the next 10 or 20 years, yet he didn't care, he took the heat for the entire company.
It shows that regardless of RIM's bad decisions in the past, Lazaridis still really cares about his company. When most CEO's would be hiding from the public's outrage, he steps up and responds to it.
That's leadership.
It almost makes me wonder now if RIM might ultimately find its legs one day. If Lazaridis can be humble enough to apologize as he did, perhaps management is humble enough to realize that they have to make drastic changes to the business to be competitive down the road.
On a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if this whole mess was somehow tied to the fact that RIM laid off 10 per cent of its workforce a few months ago. The effects of losing one out of every ten employees is significant. Suddenly people have responsibilities they aren't use too, some responsibilities even fall through the crasks to no one, everyone's work load increases, morale sinks, etc. - ultimately you end up with something like a worldwide blackberry outage.
Then all the effort everyone has to put in to that crisis - reassuring customers, fixing the technical problems, managing the PR fall out - is a HUGE waste of everyone's time, pulling them away from duties they would otherwise be engaged in.
This is how companies get in to a death spiral as they try to appease shareholders by running leaner and meaner to the point where their business starts to fall apart.
While I praise Lazaridis for his response to this crisis, and I do think it will do a lot to contain the damage, it's likely not enough to save RIM from its current trend of rapidly falling behind its competitors.
I suppose we can only hope that whoever acted to create this video apology (whether it was the PR staff or Lazaridis himself) is put in charge of more brand decisions at RIM. If so, maybe there's hope that RIM will finally realize that marketing is its biggest challenge (and that's saying something given they have big challenges on the technology front as well).
There's no reason RIM has to die (or be acquired) over the coming years, but it does have to accept that it needs to be reborn.
"It's only after you've lost everything that you are free to do anything."
- Fight Club
I'd like to think that RIM has now reached its Nietzschean moment of hitting rock bottom. Because it's only after RIM has lost everything that once made it special that it will find the freedom to imagine what it could someday become and then begin the journey towards that vision.
(Oh, that just gave me an idea. Their next phone, assuming it's a good one, should be called 'The Pheonix")
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