In the article, Research in Motion (RIM) chief executive officers (CEO); Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis have been reported to be inefficient leaders. The company has a problem with its’ leadership, employee culture, and product development. The accusation of the two leaders involves of mismanaging the organization activities, and management of employees’ relations is gauged to be very poor. The author of the article is one of the top management RIM employees who is expressing his disappointment with the two CEO poor management of the company activities. The author states that employees cannot express their opinions and views to the top leaders, towards any development of the company products since open communication is not allowed and hence they live in fear of personal expressions. It has resulted in unhealthy working conditions, and the employees consider their workplace as pathetic. There is also the presence of career limits among different calibers of staffs. The employee culture in RIM is hence unfavorable. There is no presence of good communication among all level of employees especially from the top leaders to the juniors (Geller, 2011).
Also, product development has been reported to be the mishandled sector. The company has expressed a drastic failure in new products they release in the markets leading to poor growth. There has been the presence of stiff competition from core competitor, Apple, and others in use of ‘google android operating system’ products, such as Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola and LG. It led to RIM drop in market monopoly with high competition from Apple products. For example IPad. The RIM newly released products did not meet the expectations of the consumers as well as industry professionals. Their products lacked a complete user interface, and with competitors, similar features hence considered not fully baked (Geller, 2011).
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The two problems to be discussed about the article contents are the recruitment of leaders and developers content. The software management team of the RIM needs to be improved and modified. The company should recruit new senior software leaders who are competent and qualified software professionals. The personnel is considered to bring in and implement timely critical decisions regarding up to date software installations in the future RIM products that will make them outstand their competitors’ products. For RIM to produce marketable and user-friendly products, they have to consider user-friendly in combination with user interface software driven apps that allow users to navigate their electronic gadgets hence promoting ease of utilization easily (Geller, 2011).
The RIM top management leaders; the CEO’s should be aware of a software issue to implement effective changes and modification to the future products through recruiting qualified software professional leaders to manage the existing software development team. With the existing innovative employees, a boost with senior software competent staffs leads to success. The target audience, in this case, will be RIM management teams handling software development activities in the company. The new leaders should evaluate the performance of the existing software personnel in the past, and bring in new strategies and likely variations to produce outstanding devices with operational software availing user preference features such as email, calendar applications, contacts and privilege of downloadable Apps (Geller, 2011). The key goals of this communication will be, effective leadership that formulates operative decisions that appropriately guide the employees, and creation of motivational impact to the staffs that boost their working morale. Every employee enjoys working in a productive and well-performing organization.
Moreover, there is a high demand to address the issue of investing in quality developers. RIM developers need high-quality tools before the ones used there before. The CEO, Jim Balsillie, and Mike Lazaridis should finance more in developer-related resources to improve the content of the electronic products developed by their company in the future. For instance, they should aim at developing electronic gadgets that outweigh the iPhone from Apple Company. There is a high probability of high returns from developers’ expenses. For instance, they should compare the tools used to develop the existing blackberry smartphones apps and hence determine what current development tools are used to develop the most competitive and user preference smartphones in the market, hence advance on their tools of development. (Hill & Jones, 2013) With quality tools, there is assurance of great products.
Even though those in the RIM management fear expressing how pathetic the developer's tools are, the top management needs to be aware of how urgent they need to upgrade their developer's tools and in due course upgrade the skills of their key personnel handling Apps development. The key target audience is RIM management. The communication on how to improve the developer's tools lies in the top management hands. They should plan on how to generate the capital and other resources required in the advancement of developers gears such as involving well perming specialists companies in developers sector. Quality input results in the quality output. In due course, with the use of quality developers’ tools, the results would be, sales increases due to the production of quality products. Always consumers in business go for user-friendly products, cost-effective and quality ones. The more appealing the features of products the more they attract customers and other professional interests in the market.
Finally, for any company to run smoothly, there should be the presence of effective leadership. Furthermore, good employee culture creates a peaceful working environment that makes accomplishments of task enjoyable and as per the employers’ expectations. Open communication should be a key pillar between all levels of employees. There should be no restriction of expression of one opinion, while all employees should have a chance to contribute to decision making directly or indirectly. Equality leads to success. Consideration of the end users’ needs should be the guiding principle in product development.
References
Geller, J. (2011). Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him. Retrieved from https://bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-senior-rim-exec-tells-all-as-company-crumbles-around-him/
Hill, C., & Jones, G. (2013). Strategic Management Cases: An Integrated Approach (10th ed.). USA: Cengage Learning.
