Monday Morning CEO

One big item of tech news this week - at least in this part of the world - was that RIM Blackberry is formally looking at its options for the future, including going private.  It's been hard to get news about Blackberry from the mainstream media lately, because they feel the need to begin every Blackberry story with a recap of its fall from grace, as if we didn't already know.  I realize not everyone follows the tech biz, but surely everyone knows the basics of this story by now.  They didn't begin every story on Pamela Wallin's expenses scandal with a recap of how she was once a journalist.

But since we are rehashing the company's history, it's as good a time as any to look at where RIM went wrong (not a mistake, it was called RIM then.)  Wired offered a recap of its mistakes, but I'm not sure it really explains things.  Each error they illustrate is bad, but not exactly Edselesque.  This brings up a couple of possibilities that we should consider when examining RIM/Blackberry's path:

1. Maybe they were just screwed from the start.

I know that seems defeatist, but is it possible that they had no more chance against Apple and Android than a mom-and-pop store against Walmart?  Really, I doubt RIM was completely without hope, but the assumption has always been that they had the advantage as the first mover in the industry.  I would suggest that even if you're the first in a market, you don't have the advantage when companies with deep pockets and strong reputations invade.

2. Management is not all about strategy.

We tend to think about good and bad corporate management in terms of the decisions they make.  Launch this product, sell this division, enter this market.  But the success is also due to the environment they produce within the company.  Have they organized the company to make best use of their employees?  To be clear, I don't know about the inner workings of Blackberry, and have not talked about them with the people I know who have worked there. But certainly the company's delayed products, as well as the infamous 2011 anonymous letter to management do hint that the company isn't working efficiently.