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More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

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Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#41

Post by rahoulb »

mbesto wrote: post #33
ltamake wrote: post #13

This internal drama is blowing my mind. Here's what's wrong, RIM: you're not presenting your products right. Your business audience doesn't care that the PlayBook has true multitasking, nor do they care that there's Flash on-board. They want a device to manage their emails and make running their business easier. And the BlackBerry is really sad to see in my eyes. You buy this nice software company and their HTML5 bro…

These are the only things I've ever heard from people who swear by their BB's: 1. Keyboard 2. BBM 3. E-mail I'm surprised RIM hasn't figured this out by now and put on their advertisements "BlackBerry XXXX whatever - types easier, instantly communicate better, and e-mail faster" (btw - whether or not these are really true is up to debate, but IMO they are the only selling points) I see ads all of the time for BB's th…

In the UK they've been running an ad about BBM - getting your friends together, meeting people in a nightclub etc.

When I first saw it I thought "about time, that's what they need to do - capitalise on the fact that BBM is selling phones to teenagers/young people".

And then it ends with a guy in a suit checking his bank details with a message about online security.

Totally destroys the message that the advert was, until then, successfully portraying.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#42

Post by m104 »

fleitz wrote: post #39
m104 wrote: post #36

RIM is now a textbook case of Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy ( http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html ) in action. Group one, the goal seekers, have been or are being forced out or converted to members of group two, the organization supporters. Those anonymous letters coming from the current and former employees? Just desperate attempts from group one employees to be heard over the crushing…

Ribbon Farm makes me think there are actually 3 types of individuals. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...

Right, the Gervais Principle is based on what employees know, think and expect, whereas the Iron Law of Bureaucracy is based on how employees act. Just two different ways of looking at the same fundamental principle: entitlement, while desirable, ultimately destroys groups.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#43

Post by Steko »

killerswan wrote: post #38
canistr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that Google was hovering around from the start with the G1. So the improvements they made were incremental on that brand new platform but Microsoft and RIM would need a revolution to be able to catch up to the iPhone and G1 at that point in the game. The problem is that all the old players were left in the dust because they had too much momentum on their old platforms. It's like hitting the breaks w…

IIRC Android was in development at a company Google bought even before the iPhone launched. Early prototypes looked like a Blackberry, not like an Android: they adjusted dramatically.

You could say Google was just smarter and they probably were but I think their main advantage here was having no established product bringing in billions. This freed executives to look at the market objectively and pick the future winners.

There's a Steve Jobs quote about what happens when the sales guy starts running the show at tech companies that's relevant here. Even if it's not the CEO, too much of a company's top brass can get wedded to yesterday's products.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#44

Post by ww520 »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #14

Side thought: I've watched a lot of companies become horrible places to work because of process strangulation. The problem is a small, vocal group saying how much better life would be with one more piece of information... The way I combat that is by documenting what is working right and determining what I don't want to change. Your process requirements then become "Learn/Enable/Etc this" and "Leave that unaffected".…

What I have observed is that process is created in response to break-down or mistakes that people made. The typical management response after a crisis is that "we will put process in place to prevent this from ever happens again." While processes reduce the effect of human errors and make human replaceable, it also stifles creativity and risk-taking behavior. Unchecked, the processed accumulated overtime will sap the energy of the organization and kill it.

What is needed to energize an organization is the willingness to make mistake and accept failure as part of life. There should be a "mistake-fund." Allocate 10% or 20% of downside in revenue for mistake/failure people make. It's ok to make mistake in trying and growing. This lessens the need to overreact in every crisis to create new rules and processes, and encourage risk taking.

The "mistake-fund" shouldn't be just lip-service and part of the company culture. "Have you tried something this week to use up the mistake-fund?" should be a regular theme.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#45

Post by DanLivesHere »

Uchikoma wrote: post #15

RIM makes excellent business phones. My BB is tougher than most and the keyboard is excellent. Exchange integration works. As a private iPhone user I want apps. As a corporate BB user I just want something that is tough and works. They should not try to be a better Apple than Apple. Focus on their market.

Blackberries should:

(a) Be awesome at email (and therefore have keyboards.)

(b) Take phone calls.

(c) Integrate with your calendar.

(d) Have awesome instant messaging (BBM?).

(e) Be able to survive a 20 foot drop.

(f) Have excellent battery life.

(g) Be much cheaper than the iPhone/Android.

If you're a business, you want to be able to give everyone this type of device on their first day of work, all set up with everything. There should be no expectation of personal use and there should be every expectation that everyone in the company has and uses one.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#46

Post by Steko »

m104 wrote: post #36

RIM is now a textbook case of Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy ( http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html ) in action. Group one, the goal seekers, have been or are being forced out or converted to members of group two, the organization supporters. Those anonymous letters coming from the current and former employees? Just desperate attempts from group one employees to be heard over the crushing…

"Most likely RIM will be absorbed by a larger competitor (and the current RIM top brass removed) before anything like real business failure can occur."

I think the most likely outcome is RIM stockholders will force some big changes after a few more quarters of getting drilled by Android and Apple's holiday lineup. Then 6-8 months later we'll see RIM starting to ship consumer Android devices with a Blackberry security/messaging ui layer alongside their other products. It will stabilize their fortunes and they could go on to be the leading Android vendor with their strong brand and messaging focus.

edit: you could even argue that they can't really do that now and couldn't do it last year. Everyone would say they're crazy to kill the golden egg and go make lower margin phones. They needed to have disaster quarters, failed products and tanking market share in order to make these decisions.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#47

Post by m104 »

Steko wrote: post #46
m104 wrote: post #36

RIM is now a textbook case of Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy ( http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html ) in action. Group one, the goal seekers, have been or are being forced out or converted to members of group two, the organization supporters. Those anonymous letters coming from the current and former employees? Just desperate attempts from group one employees to be heard over the crushing…

"Most likely RIM will be absorbed by a larger competitor (and the current RIM top brass removed) before anything like real business failure can occur." I think the most likely outcome is RIM stockholders will force some big changes after a few more quarters of getting drilled by Android and Apple's holiday lineup. Then 6-8 months later we'll see RIM starting to ship consumer Android devices with a Blackberry security…

Let's hope that what you're describing will, in fact, unfold! A shareholder-induced leadership/direction change would be preferable to an embarrassing acquisition, especially given RIM's prestigious history.

For my money, I'll take the opposite side and say that RIM's too far gone down the entrenchment hole to recover with much dignity.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#48

Post by fleitz »

peterwwillis wrote: post #22
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #14

Side thought: I've watched a lot of companies become horrible places to work because of process strangulation. The problem is a small, vocal group saying how much better life would be with one more piece of information... The way I combat that is by documenting what is working right and determining what I don't want to change. Your process requirements then become "Learn/Enable/Etc this" and "Leave that unaffected".…

The thing I love to see is how badly 'process' is implemented. In theory you should be able to get everyone who's approval you need in one room at one time, take 10 minutes to explain your requirements and answer questions, then have them all rubber stamp whatever it is you need and get going with doing your work. In practice people do exactly the opposite, trying to add distance to slow down the process. I'm wonderi…

Almost all process is poorly implemented. Just bypass it. If you're a good coder you should be able to contort your programs around the process.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#49

Post by shaggyfrog »

chrisb wrote: post #16
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't watch YouTube much, but that feature of inline YouTube is surprisingly valuable. I switched to a different browser on my iPad (iCab Mobile) that supports it and the experience is markedly better. However, listening to a singer repeat "Flash" over and over does absolutely nothing to make me want a Playbook. I run into flash problems one a week at most; I'll glady trade it for battery life, performance, and sta…

"A singer"? That's not just "a singer". It's Freddie Mercury himself.

That's the subtly bad part about the music. The commercial is so ineffective and off-target that RIM is managing to drag down one of the legends of rock with another kind of rock: the Playbook.
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