“There’s no question Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transitional period,” Jonathan S. Geller reports for BGR.
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, from walking around in fresh Canadian air to swimming madly while circling the bowl.
“The thing is, RIM has always been a company controlled by two people — Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis,” Geller reports. “For all the things that have worked, they have missed the boat countless times and we’re now seeing the results.”
Geller reports, “We have received an open letter to Mike and Jim from a high-level RIM employee (whose identity we have verified), and in an amazingly honest and passionate plea, this letter gives fascinating insights into what RIM must fix, and fast.”
Read the letter here.
MacDailyNews Take: Letters like this often closely precede a company’s implosion. As if DCW RIM needed any more kisses of death.
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. – Steve Jobs, June 14, 2005
Related articles:
RUMOR: Beleaguered RIM axes 10-inch PlayBook tablet – June 28, 2011
RIM BlackBerry developers defecting to Apple’s revolutionary Phone – June 27, 2011
Beleaguered RIM slashes PlayBook production plans – June 22, 2011
Beleaguered RIM begins axing jobs in Waterloo – June 21, 2011
RIM half-CEOs: What did you know and when did you know it? – June 20, 2011
Former RIM employee: Company ‘brims with hubris’; ‘culturally blind’ to consumers – June 17, 2011
Beleaguered RIM misses on revenue, announces layoffs – June 16, 2011
“Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. – Steve Jobs”
Geeze, I’m hoping that one doesn’t come back to bite Steve in the ass for a *really* long time! =8^O
Evolution itself is the meaning of life. Mutation is the engine and death is the winnower that makes it work.
How true it is …” INDEED, DEATH IS THE
AGENT OF CHANGE ! “
RIM’s malaise summarised:
– We need to clone Steve Jobs, and fast.
– Stop mucking about with 10 flavours of the same handset and focus on one or two the public really wants.
– Stop genuflecting to the carriers, the legal department, the marketing department, and listen to your mother. She knows what she wants and it’s not a PlayBook.
– You’ve got to shed your Ballmer persona. Don’t keep mocking the iPhone – this isn’t 2007 any more.
– Fire that asshat designer on the executive floor who’s been with the company for 20 years but goofs around making incremental changes to BBOS 6 which remains as shiteous as ever.
This guy should be running the company, but Balsillie and Lazaridis are to busy playing hide the sausage and giving each other the wrap-around to do what’s best for the company they built based on technology they ripped off from somebody else.
I think you meant the reach-around
Thank you
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. – Steve Jobs, June 14, 2005
My 95 year old Mother thinks that way. She came around to that way of thinking last year, when she turned 94.
Bless her, I hope she lives to be 100. 🙂
That’s an amazingly powerful letter, written by a person who can cut through the BS.
Let’s not gloat too much if RIM collapses…real people with kids and mortgages will be unemployed as a result. The big dogs will always make out OK, but they will be taking a lot of good people down with them.
I agree. You can really feel the frustration with the short-sighted, insulated, uninspiring leadership at RIM.
The wacko stuff they’ve been saying to the press for the last 4 years is a symptom of their delusions.
Is it OK to hope that certain politicians lose their jobs, irrespective of the kids and mortgages?
Businesses fail and others arise to take their place. It’s called creative destruction. I have a copy of Issue No. 1 of “UNIX Today” from 1983 or so when I started working in the field. Every single minicomputer vendor from that time is gone except for IBM and HP. Most of the PC vendors from that era are too – Dec, Wang, TI, Eagle, Columbia, Compaq, etc.
Is it OK to hope that certain politicians lose their jobs, irrespective of the kids and mortgages?
Yes.
They will almost instantly get jobs as lobbyists or as similar plagues upon the citizens.
Canadian Toast. Burnt. And Cold.
All this bowl-circling makes me dizzy. Moving on…
I’ve written just such a letter. Two months later, hundreds were laid off. The department I was in still has not resurfaced, and it probably never will. Ossification is the status quo in the upstairs offices.
RIM employee, get out there now, quickly. People will never change, your CEOs are no exception. Get out while there are someone else still wanting you. Go and talk to headhunters before they will eventually turn cold on you.
That fiddle duet must be hellish noise amongst the crackling flames of another burning platform.
I understand MDN’s take, and its investment in the whole DCW thing, but…
The RIM employee’s letter deserves a more thoughtful assessment than it got from MDN. In addition to be a painfully well argued case to change RIM, it pays the kind of respect to Apple that is probably widespread in the industry, but can never be publicly uttered. This guy (the letter’s author) gets it; Beavis and Butthead at the top of RIM are clueless.
I’ve loved my Apple products for almost 30 years, and will continue to do so as long as they embody the qualities that make them special. But I don’t hate RIM (well, I have to say that the “amateur hour is over” campaign had me seething) and there is a place in the world for a well designed and supported version of what they do. I hope somebody steps up to do the kind of things that Steve Jobs did to Apple in 1997, gets them focused and allows them to be a respected (albeit smaller than before) competitor in the smartphone space. In such a world, the consumer is the real beneficiary.
My two cents.
“Two heads are better than one” is not true with these CEOs.
one of the youtube video’s he linked to was really inspiring and worth the watch
“How great leaders inspire action”
Yeah, that was a superb TED presentation.
I don’t see a problem. The letter is just someone complaining. Keep the two CEO’s as is. Let them go out and publicly put down Apple on a regular basis. Continue with several models that looks exactly the same and has one new feature (blue button instead of red on one of the keys) or maybe less and call it a new model. Release a new one every month. That sounds much better to me.
Egomaniac Balsillie, pretending to be a grownup, fiddled while RIM burned; he was more interested in acquiring a Hamilton NHL team. Lazaridis is a moron for having a “co-CEO” like Balsillie, never mind being satisfied with such a stupid title.
RIM is in such dire straits that it’s likely both would gain more in its slow death than pretending it can ever catch up.
Everyone knows it, from both those clowns to the bottom of the collapsing house of cards.
They should appoint this guy CEO and kick the dual banjo boys to the curb.
He gets it and lays it out in a clear fashion.
Better truths were never spoken
“Strategy is often in the things you decide not to do.”
I agree, make him/her CEO.
This guy/girl has studied Apple, their products and their philosophy.
What better plan than to try to have RIM make customer satisfaction Job #1.
Assuming RIM is like most companies, the letter probably started an internal investigation to find the author so the author can be fired for lack of loyalty.
Companies run by shitty managers are incapable of changing.
LOL. man ain’t that the sad truth.
“Keep drinking the koolaid and smile as this motherf*cker burns to the ground”
You got it. This guy is toast. But it will be the best thing that ever happened to him. With any luck, someone with the vision of Steve Jobs will read the heartfelt, lucid and diplomatic words and recognize that this employee truly has the company’s best interests at heart. CEOs who strip their companies of employees like this deserve to watch their futures and fortunes evaporate.
they are doomed.
This letter reveals things are worse than anyone thought.
Shortly after they terminate with extreme prejudice the letter writer, they will close up shop.
wow, what a letter.
but even if RIM had good management, i don’t see any hope. RIM was/is a one-trick pony – its unique email service. that was a great trick, but no single trick keeps you in front for more than several years. and now it’s over, the competition has leapfrogged it into a new generation of communication tricks. cloud, social, video and all the rest.
and these guys just don’t have another good trick up their sleeves.
they should “merge” (disguised take over) with Facebook while they still have more than liquidation value. Facebook would love to have its own communication-centered OS and not have to depend on Google or Apple at all. they think they will be the next Google.
Everybody should click on the link and read his letter.
He has a very sophisticated understanding of the company, carefully observes and analyses what he sees and makes some good points and great suggestions.
It looks to me as though he might be the only person in RIM with the vision to keep the company going. However, my expectation is that the points he raises will fall onto deaf ears.
I agree.
Both the letter and the formal response from RIM should be read. Along with this MDN article (which I am surprised wasn’t listed in related links above):
MacDailyNews
Hubris and denial on the part of their executive cost them their product leadership resulting in an eroding customer base. Now panicked responses and half-baked offering are going to cost them their investor base.
RIM may have $3BN in cash on the balance sheet. But does it have the time required to turn that into a life boat fast enough to avoid oblivion?
If that URL does not work, try:
Or search MDN for the article headed:
RIM and Microsoft were in denial, shock; thought Apple was lying about original iPhone
published Monday, December 27, 2010 · 2:55 pm
“Our carriers, distributors, alliance partners, enterprise customers, and our loyal end users all want the same thing… for BlackBerry to once again be leading the pack.”
Oh, boy… that ship has sailed.
By writing such a letter so publicly, this “higher up” manager has sealed the fate for RIM a little bit more. NOW we know all the things we were kind of guessing at about RIM are in fact 100% true. The best bits I liked were where he tells us about how they add features for features sake, such as FLASH and multitasking, and how they are completely beholden to carriers just to push the volumes a little bit more. Very telling. This puts RIM in a very bad place in terms of bargaining with any future acquirer. If he really has RIMs interests in heart then he should have written this to the management in private. On the other hand, this puts the writer in great light once RIM goes bankrupt and he comes out as the author of such a letter. Hell, if I was Sj i’d pick him up…after a further interview of course.
Dear RIM employee (letter author),
Go apply for a job at Apple. Now. 🙂
Amateur hour. Ending soon.
The problem for RIM (and also Microsoft) is that the current leadership cannot execute the type of changes outlined in this letter. Doing so admits to being wrong and a failure, and if the current leadership admits to being wrong and a failure, they might as well resign at the same time.
A very short paragraph in the letter says RIM needs a new “singular” CEO. THAT is the most important change of all, because a new leader (unconnected to the previous leadership) can come in and make the necessary changes (and say that the previous leadership was wrong and a failure – this is how things will be going forward).
Apple was able to change and become successful (again), because Steve Jobs (the old leader in exile) came back to be the NEW leader.
For RIM (and also Microsoft), if the current leadership stays in place, NOTHING of significance will change.