RACING WITH BLINDERS

I'm sure many pundits will be writing today about the shakeup at the top of RIM. Certainly one must always consider the fact that often those that are best suited to start-ups are not the best individuals to keep the company running in the future. With of course the exception of Steve Jobs.

Why is this? I don't believe it is necessarily a truism. As Steve Jobs demonstrated at Apple, as long as you keep innovation alive then you can run not only a successful company, but one that constantly redefines the marketplace. In fact, I believe the opposite can be true...if you remove innovators then you can lose your way.

But what causes these leading edge companies to truly lose their way? Arrogance and blinders. When you think about it, whether Nortel, Kodak or RIM, the parallels are there. Leading edge, innovation and then a "well, we're the best, so we don't really have to try anymore! We'll just make what we have a little better and because we are the first one's out of the gate, of course we will always be the leading horse in the race."

As Dr. Phil would say "How's that working for you?"

Not so much. It is actually sad to see these firms, which truly redefined our expectations to sink into the mire of misery caused by this arrogance. And if anyone thinks that by chopping off the head and replacing it with a new one means success, you are delusional. George Fisher tried to get Kodak to consider itself a "picture"company as opposed to a "film" company and he was met with resistance every step of the way. He wanted Kodak to go full speed ahead into digital, but the mid-level employees of the company stymied every step, because of course they didn't see any reason to change -- they were getting their bonuses and commission, so who is this interloper who has this "vision."

I hope that this will not be the case with RIM...as opposed to Kodak in the '90s, RIM is in serious trouble. However, innovation cannot be dictated -- "today your job is Innovation with a capital I" --

nope...that just doesn't work.

Rebuild needs to occur -- bottom-up and top-down -- but only if they are truly serious about change!