Two Career/Leadership Lessons from Blackberry

Early in my career I was laid off from Silicon Graphics after four and half years of gainful employment - a period during which I learned a lot and progressed nicely due to my contributions.

My layoff had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with the sub-optimal leadership at the helm of the company at that time. A combination of hubris, lack of foresight, misplaced bets, and, worst of all, being wrongly scared into making decisions about their strategy because of complete vaporware announcements from a large competitor.

There are two important connections to the trouble Blackberry finds itself in today.

1. The combination of hubris, lack of foresight, misplaced bets can be deadly faster than you can imagine.
   
   
2. It is very, very difficult to know exactly when a competitor is serious in its threat to your existence.

On that second one, we have to feel some sense of sadness for the Blackberry management team. When the iPhone was first launched it was easy for them to be a little dismissive. Blackberry was the king of the world. Remember, the iPhone then was not the iPhone even three years on. The Blackberry management team could have reacted too dramatically and pulled "an SGI."

Everyone is a futurist with the benefit of hindsight. But it is important to remember the astonishing difficulty of placing the right bets when faced with an unknown new thing, especially when you are the king. I want to make sure we all understand this.

Because #2 is so hard to get right, it is important to get #1 really right. It is critical to build a management culture that eliminates #1.

I humbly believe that Blackberry is trouble because of #1. It caused them to react too late, then react with the wrong cluster of decisions (both software and hardware) and with a leader who was still a consummate insider and could not bring the necessary change (or radical enough change) at the pace that was required.

There are two personal career lessons you can draw from this.

1. What is your personal strategy to deal with hubris? Do you have a mechanism in place to develop foresight? Do you have a process in place to learn from personal failure from misplaced bets?
   
   I'm a feedback junkie. It helps me with all three questions above. At regular intervals (some weekly, some monthly, and some quarterly) I ask for feedback from my peers, our leadership teams and complete outsiders. Feedback allows you to see yourself as others do (perception often matters more than reality).
   
   I use that feedback to amplify my strengths and ensure that my weaknesses are not deal-breakers.
   
   
2. Are you investing in continuous accumulation of knowledge and strategic expertise in the job two levels higher than yours?
   
   There is no better way to get good at decision making.

Two simple, yet critical, lessons from the Blackberry journey that applies to all of us.

PS: Blackberry is of course not done. I have too many friends there; I’m aggressively rooting for their recovery and success.