To RIM management: How the Mighty Fall
To RIM senior management, particularly Mr. Lazaridis:
Did you just cut the wrong IT guy? Can't you just plan the "core switch" better, given that any failure to the network is so fatal to your business reputation?
Please pick up the book "How the Mighty Fall" by Jim Collins. In that book it listed out 5 stages of decline:
Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death
Let's try to match these stages with RIM's recent events -
Stage 1: Listen to conference calls during 2008 and Mike's opinions on the iphone. Hubris at his best.
Stage 2: Playbook, while losing sight of their bread and butter phones.
Stage 3: Again, listen to RIM conference calls in 2010. You are in denial of your own failure.
Stage 4: QNX, android apps support, BB7, price cuts, layoffs
Stage 5: RIM is not completely here yet, but declining market share took half the stage.
My suggestion? Put down your ego and forget the hubris. Start learning again. Challenge your own ideas. Calling Steve Jobs "an innovator and a respected competitor" might be your first step of self-realization. Who knows, maybe you guys can pull off a turnaround just like what Steve Jobs did.