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I worked for BlackBerry, then called RIM, for 3 years starting just before the launch of the Bold 9000. I implemented the automated test harness for our first t

I worked for BlackBerry, then called RIM, for 3 years starting just before the launch of the Bold 9000. I implemented the automated test harness for our first touch devices. It wasn't the iPhone, or a lack of a desire to respond to the iPhone, that brought us down. It was consistently poor execution at scale. RIMs success grew out of the work they did when they were a couple hundred people spread around a neighbourhood in Waterloo. That group had excellent culture and good habits for execution, which failed to scale beyond that region. When I joined there were about 10,000 of us, spread in offices all over the world. I only visited half a dozen, but the vibe in every single one was notable worse then the HQ. People didn't understand the plans, were constantly duplicating work happening at other locations, and had very little ability to communicate with leadership.

kkielhofner 3y ago
I have a personal anecdote that says otherwise. A startup I was working with in 2009 was developing a mobile solution for the healthcare space. Our initial target was iPhone (yes, extremely early and that’s a post for another day). We met with some mid-level executives at RIM (Waterloo is cool, BTW). They obviously had the intention of us leading with RIM devices. That said, when we would talk about the iPhone they had overwhelming confidence and a superiority complex I haven’t encountered since. They were calling the iPhone a toy and going so far as to heap a palatable amount of disrespect on us for even considering it. Like we were complete idiots for not seeing the obvious future where BlackBerry continued to be reigning champ in the market and the iPhone would never grow up. They got comfortable and just didn’t take the iPhone seriously, story as old as time.
- passive 3y ago
  I think we're describing aspects of the same problem. The Waterloo core of the company was generally very successful with what it was focused on, so if you never got your head out of that bubble, you might assume things were going just as well elsewhere. There was definitely a lot of cockiness in the executives at the time, but it takes more than that to sink a company, as modern times have emphasized heavily. I can promise you that internally there was a ton of energy directed at competing with the iPhone. But RIM would have floundered against Android in the same way, because the company culture never scaled out of Waterloo.
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
>spread in offices all over the world. [...] People didn't understand the plans, were constantly duplicating work happening at other locations, and had very little ability to communicate with leadership. Fuck. My heart sank as I read this. I work at a company larger than the one you describe which has recently become much larger, and this absolutely nails what I have witnessed myself. I have been thinking about pulling the plug and finding something else in the same industry. Maybe I should.
- passive 3y ago
  It was a frustrating thing to witness, because it was clear there was still so much potential in the situation. I've spent a long time since studying what makes companies successful at scale, and culture seems to be the key piece. Not even a specific kind of culture, just one that most people at the company feel part of. Many people together can accomplish a great deal more than they could alone, and culture forms the basis of the communication network that allows them to figure out how to work together. Basically, people who trust each other have a lot less communication overhead. Culture alone doesn't make a company scale, there's a lot of process you usually need, but you can't successfully implement those processes without a shared sense of culture. RIM did a lot of this, where they brought in process experts to improve efficiency across locations. But Waterloo itself was successful, so it was left alone until well into our first round of layoffs, and at that point the culture there had fragmented a fair bit. I'm very sorry to hear you are going through a similar situation. It may be too late, but I do have one cultural silver bullet to offer: Storytelling Companies (or really any group of people) that scale successfully almost always do a fair amount of storytelling. Both in the myth making around their origins, like Steve Jobs and Apple, and in day-to-day employee experience. Storytelling is one of the oldest methods of sharing culture with someone, and throughout human history, the primary one we have relied upon. Telling someone a story helps them know what you care about, both in the content of the story, and the way you choose to tell it, which builds empathy, which is key to trust. This why some companies fell apart completely when they went remote, because usually people who like each other will tell stories when they are in a room together, but they won't start a zoom meeting to tell the same story. While I do have some specific processes I've adopted related to storytelling, I've become more and more convinced that ANY way you facilitate storytelling will help you build culture. So if you have the opportunity, make time for storytelling with your co-workers, and encourage your leadership to do more of it.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Waterloo is an anomaly due to young blood and highly selective culture but the real problem is Canadian culture. As soon as it hit that, RIM collapsed. Canadians simply don't have the risk appetite to test new ideas and change directions. Hence you will not find a single company in Canada which is at all innovative or disrupting.
- dharmab 3y ago
  Shopify Fortnine Ecobee Wattpad Behaviour Interactive Blackbird Interactive
  - ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
    I never said there aren't any companies.

kkielhofner 3y ago

I have a personal anecdote that says otherwise. A startup I was working with in 2009 was developing a mobile solution for the healthcare space. Our initial target was iPhone (yes, extremely early and that’s a post for another day). We met with some mid-level executives at RIM (Waterloo is cool, BTW). They obviously had the intention of us leading with RIM devices. That said, when we would talk about the iPhone they had overwhelming confidence and a superiority complex I haven’t encountered since. They were calling the iPhone a toy and going so far as to heap a palatable amount of disrespect on us for even considering it. Like we were complete idiots for not seeing the obvious future where BlackBerry continued to be reigning champ in the market and the iPhone would never grow up. They got comfortable and just didn’t take the iPhone seriously, story as old as time.

passive 3y ago
I think we're describing aspects of the same problem. The Waterloo core of the company was generally very successful with what it was focused on, so if you never got your head out of that bubble, you might assume things were going just as well elsewhere. There was definitely a lot of cockiness in the executives at the time, but it takes more than that to sink a company, as modern times have emphasized heavily. I can promise you that internally there was a ton of energy directed at competing with the iPhone. But RIM would have floundered against Android in the same way, because the company culture never scaled out of Waterloo.

ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago

>spread in offices all over the world. [...] People didn't understand the plans, were constantly duplicating work happening at other locations, and had very little ability to communicate with leadership. Fuck. My heart sank as I read this. I work at a company larger than the one you describe which has recently become much larger, and this absolutely nails what I have witnessed myself. I have been thinking about pulling the plug and finding something else in the same industry. Maybe I should.

passive 3y ago
It was a frustrating thing to witness, because it was clear there was still so much potential in the situation. I've spent a long time since studying what makes companies successful at scale, and culture seems to be the key piece. Not even a specific kind of culture, just one that most people at the company feel part of. Many people together can accomplish a great deal more than they could alone, and culture forms the basis of the communication network that allows them to figure out how to work together. Basically, people who trust each other have a lot less communication overhead. Culture alone doesn't make a company scale, there's a lot of process you usually need, but you can't successfully implement those processes without a shared sense of culture. RIM did a lot of this, where they brought in process experts to improve efficiency across locations. But Waterloo itself was successful, so it was left alone until well into our first round of layoffs, and at that point the culture there had fragmented a fair bit. I'm very sorry to hear you are going through a similar situation. It may be too late, but I do have one cultural silver bullet to offer: Storytelling Companies (or really any group of people) that scale successfully almost always do a fair amount of storytelling. Both in the myth making around their origins, like Steve Jobs and Apple, and in day-to-day employee experience. Storytelling is one of the oldest methods of sharing culture with someone, and throughout human history, the primary one we have relied upon. Telling someone a story helps them know what you care about, both in the content of the story, and the way you choose to tell it, which builds empathy, which is key to trust. This why some companies fell apart completely when they went remote, because usually people who like each other will tell stories when they are in a room together, but they won't start a zoom meeting to tell the same story. While I do have some specific processes I've adopted related to storytelling, I've become more and more convinced that ANY way you facilitate storytelling will help you build culture. So if you have the opportunity, make time for storytelling with your co-workers, and encourage your leadership to do more of it.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

Waterloo is an anomaly due to young blood and highly selective culture but the real problem is Canadian culture. As soon as it hit that, RIM collapsed. Canadians simply don't have the risk appetite to test new ideas and change directions. Hence you will not find a single company in Canada which is at all innovative or disrupting.

dharmab 3y ago
Shopify Fortnine Ecobee Wattpad Behaviour Interactive Blackbird Interactive
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  I never said there aren't any companies.