Among the many blessings — and curses — of this World-wide-web is that it creates a forum for open discussion, where we will be able to communicate anything that our heart desires and feel like someone is hearing us. BGR published an open letter reportedly written by a senior executive at Research in Motion , chastising upper management for its inability to make bold business decisions because it continues to consistently lose market share. The anonymous author listed out several suggestions on how their company could improve its status and work its long ago as much as the highest of the smartphone totem pole. Because it seems, the disgruntled employee was successful in that RIM published a response to the anonymous communication. What exactly were this employee’s suggestions, and the way did the parents in Waterloo respond? We’ll break down the letters after the break.
The open letter, that are present in its entirety on the source link below, discusses eight recommendations thon the anonymous employee feels would help get RIM regain its position at the top of the category. We want to damage every one down and highlight many of the major points found within.
Cope with the top User experience
We regularly make product decisions in accordance with strategic alignment, partner requests or perhaps legal advice – the top user doesn’t care. We simply should admit that Apple is nailing this and it’s one of many reasons they have got people lining up overnight at stores all over the world, and products sold out for months. These people aren’t hypnotized zombies, they only love beautifully designed products which are user centric and work how they’re alleged to work.
The writer did the unthinkable thing for a RIM employee to do: admit that Apple is doing something better. Apparently, the writer says, there is a approach to Cupertino’s madness, and it’s directly correlated to why RIM is falling behind — the user experience is solely better. The worker even goes directly to recommend that key decision makers use competitors’ products as their primary device for per week to know why one-time “CrackBerry” users are beginning to jump ship.
Recruit Senior Software Leaders and enable decision-making
We’d like some heavy hitters at RIM in relation to software management. Teams still aren’t talking together properly, nobody is making or could make critical decisions, all of the while individuals are working crazy hours and still far behind. We’re demotivated.
It sort of feels like a number of RIM’s troubles are being because of an absence of communication among senior-level leadership. Essentially, the writer is saying: if people are the main decision maker, nobody is. As well, you need to recruit leaders which have extensive experience within the industry, insinuating that many within the company’s management just shouldn’t have the background to chop it.
Cut projects to the bone
We simply must stop shipping incomplete products that are not ready for the top user. It’s hurting our brand tremendously. It takes guts not to allow a product to launch which might be 90% ready with 1 / 4 lead to sight, nevertheless it pays off within the long run.
It really is intriguing; a RIM employee is acknowledging its products are incomplete on the time of shipment, and the brand’s hurting consequently. It is not too often we hear something so bold from someone inside this company.
Developers, not Carriers, can now make or break us
There’s no polite option to say this, but it’s true – BlackBerry smartphone apps suck. Even PlayBook, with all its glorious power, seems like a Fisher Price toy with its Adobe AIR/Flash apps.
In truth, nobody in RIM dares to inform management how bad our tools still are.
Within the US, especially, carriers rule over the OEM with an iron fist, however the author insists that RIM spends way an excessive amount of time worrying about the way it looks to the networks and never targeting creating the best tools that make the product look good to consumers.
Need for serious marketing punch to create end user desire
A product’s technical superiority doesn’t equal desire, and therefore sales… What percentage Linux laptops have become sold? How did Betamax go? My mother wants an iPad and iPhone as it is straightforward and appeals to her. Powerful multitasking doesn’t.
People buy right into a brand / product not only due to features, but owing to what it stands for and what it delivers to them. People do not buy “what you do,” people buy “why you do it.”
This basically sums everything up. RIM talks up its technical superiority, but consumers don’t care about that. They care about what’s in it for them, and why they need to buy into something. The writer mentions strange marketing campaigns “from a barber shop to a horse wrangler” that did not hook up with its intended audience. Create a creative and fascinating campaign, the letter says, that makes a speciality of what BlackBerry products are about.
No accountability – Canadians are too nice
Simply because someone can have been a devoted RIM employee for 7 years, it does not imply they’re the right Manager / Director / VP for that role. It is time to change the culture to deliver or move on and get out.
If something’s not broke, don’t fix it.
Hence, it is time for something to get fixed. Rather than rewarding loyalty, it is time to give incentives to these employees actually performing well. Separate the wheat from the chaff.
Don’t snap on the press, now could be the time for humility with a touch of paranoia
However, overconfidence clouds good decision-making. We missed not boldly reacting to the specter of iPhone once we saw it in January over four years ago. We laughed and said they try to position a working laptop or computer on a phone, that it won’t work. We must always have made the QNX-like transition then. We’re now 3-4 years too late. That’s the painful truth… it was a chief strategic oversight and we all know who’s responsible.
Perhaps it’s time to seriously consider a brand new, fresh thinking, experienced CEO. There isn’t any shame in not being a CEO. Mike, you are able to think about innovation. Jim, you should concentrate on our carriers/customers.
Discuss calling upper management out at the carpet — admitting RIM made a major mistake by getting overconfident and never preparing itself for the onslaught of innovative competition is a monster statement. Without a doubt , it is simple for this author to assert in 2011; hindsight, as they are saying, is usually 20 / 20. What’s finest to us about this section, however, is this is allegedly a senior executive stating she or he is not satisfied with the present dual-CEO management structure. Apparently, not everyone agrees with Mike and Jim concerning the way things may be run at their company.
Democratise. Engage and engage along with your employees — please!
Encourage input from ground-level teams-without repercussions-to search out honest feedback and actually absorb it.
The headhunters have already started circling and we’re liable to losing our greatest people.
A number of our offices feel like Soviet-era government workplaces.
Ouch. The eighth and final bullet point paints a really dire picture of the typical RIM employee. Basically, the writer is saying here that the morale in Waterloo’s headquarters has become intolerable and people who haven’t been laid off are considering a departure from the corporate. The best method to reverse that trend, the letter suggests, is to arrive out to employees and do everything possible to re-energize the workplace.
The long and wanting it can be that not everything in BlackBerry World is peachy, and a few desperate measures must be taken for the corporate to come again on track. The anonymous senior executive doesn’t feel like they are able to speak their mind and be heard without some variety of consequence. This time, however, the scribe was heard. Here’s RIM’s response:
An “Open Letter” to RIM’s senior management was published anonymously on the net today and it was attributed to an unnamed person described as a ‘high level employee”. It’s obviously difficult to handle anonymous commentary and it’s particularly difficult to believe that a “high level employee” in good standing with the corporate would select to anonymously publish a letter on the internet rather then engage their fellow executives in a constructive manner, but whether the letter is real, fake, exaggerated or written with ulterior motivations, that is fair to assert that the senior management team at RIM is nonetheless fully familiar with and aggressively addressing both the company’s challenges and its opportunities.
RIM recently confirmed that it’s nearing the top of a significant business and technology transition. Although this transition has taken longer than anticipated, there’s much excitement and optimism in the company concerning the new products which are lined up for the approaching months. There’s a fundamental business reality however that following a protracted period of hyper growth (by which RIM nearly quadrupled in size over the last 5 years alone), it has become necessary for the corporate to streamline its operations as a way to allow it to grow its business profitably while pursuing newer strategic opportunities. Again, RIM’s management team takes these challenges seriously and is actively addressing the placement. The corporate is thankfully in a pretty good business and fiscal position to tackle the opportunities ahead with a superior balance sheet (nearly $3 billion in cash and no debt), strong profitability (RIM’s net income last quarter was $695 million) and substantial international growth (international revenue in Q1 grew 67% over an identical quarter last year). In actual fact, while growth has slowed within the US, RIM still shipped 13.2 million BlackBerry smartphones last quarter (that’s about 100 smartphones per minute, 24 hours per day) and RIM is more committed than ever to serving its loyal customers and partners around the globe.
It’s ironic, and maybe tragic, that during responding to a letter wherein it’s called out for not being attentive to its employees, RIM completely dismisses the problem altogether and tries to color itself in a elaborate manner. Nothing was learned or resolved, and positively conditions there can’t expect to get any better. RIM seems not to believe the letter is actually from one in all its own fold — we won’t be completely certain either, to be honest — and in place of directly addressing the criticism, insists it already is operating to unravel lots of these issues discussed at length. The corporate is optimistic about how everything will end up on the end of this “major business and technology transition,” but unless the fine folks in Canada ditch the rose-colored glasses, the outlook may have an incredibly different hue.
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