Three People And Their Feedback Loops That Can Transform RIM

A random thought that occurred to me. When they may have have occurred to other technology knowledge workers in Canada.

RIM used to be a real point of pride for Canadians. Not as much anymore. Too many stories of a bureaucratic and dysfunctional organization, a lack of market insight, pulling people off of work mid-project, and just plain not keeping up with the competition.

Sounds like a dramatic overhaul in direction is required to get these guys back on track. I would love to see these three people talk to the executives over at RIM and see if they could stimulate some fresh thinking.

Eric Ries on LeanStartup

You would pretty much have to be living under a rock to not have heard of Eric Ries and the LeanStartup movement. A common misconception out there is that this movement is for kids in garages over at Silicon Valley. It’s really about dealing with uncertainty, and learning how to build sustainable customer value faster than your competitors. Start turning your erroneous assumptions into validated learning. Start leapfrogging ahead of your competitors.

David J. Anderson on Kanban

Moving your organization into leanstartup mode in one go would be a cultural big bang. One that could potentially disrupt your company to the point of bankruptcy. You may want to try a more incremental, evolutionary approach to changing the way you organize the way you work. This is where "capital K" Kanban comes into play. Visualize your work, and limit what you can do to your capacity, start getting agreements between your different knowledge workers down on paper, and get into flow. Bottlenecks to value will become obvious, and you can steer the organization where you need it to go.

Steve Denning on Radical Management

Let’s take a look at how we can get some healthy feedback into our management culture. Radical management is a way of managing organizations so that they generate high productivity, continuous innovation, deep job satisfaction, and customer delight. Radical management is all about helping leaders adapt their organizations to a world of rapid change and intense global competition.

I could imagine a series of webinars, once a week, which featured these folks presenting. What happens next of course is open to speculation.