Negative communication culture leads to public blowup
I have lost confidence.
While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone — the sentiment is widespread and it includes people within your own teams.
Mike and Jim, please take the time to really absorb and digest the content of this letter because it reflects the feeling across a huge percentage of your employee base. You have many smart employees, many that have great ideas for the future, but unfortunately the culture at RIM does not allow us to speak openly without having to worry about the career-limiting effects.
Before I get into the meat of the matter, I will say I am not part of a large group of bitter employees wishing to embarrass us. Rather, I believe these points need to be heard and I desperately want RIM to regain its position as a successful industry leader. Our carriers, distributors, alliance partners, enterprise customers, and our loyal end users all want the same thing…for BlackBerry to once again be leading the pack.
This is an excerpt from an open letter to RIM leadership, published on the tech news site Boy Genius Report and picked up across the Web. A perfect example of a crisis that can get exposed by poor internal communication, the letter goes on to reveal the RIMs shortcomings as a company, which may well play a role in its recent market decline.
When employees do not feel free to speak openly and honestly, you risk them venting some other way, and more and more these “other ways” are becoming national news stories thanks to the power of the Web.
As part of your crisis prevention planning, ask this question, “Are we creating a culture of ‘Yes Men'”? You want…no, need, the questioner, the one asking, “why is someone else doing it better?,” not a group of people patting each other on the back as the company goes down in flames.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/