BlackBerry CEO John Chen believes that he has already implemented a turnaround strategy that economics students will be reading about for decades.
In an article posted on LinkedIn, Chen offers some “keys to executing a turnaround the right way” that draw on his year of experience as BlackBerry’s chief executive.
“When I took on the role of BlackBerry CEO one year ago, we were facing tremendous challenges as a company,” Chen writes.
“The markets for devices and services had been changing dramatically for the past few years, and our positions in them had deteriorated. Addressing these realities required us to focus on one thing: innovation. Innovation is what the world demands of technology companies like BlackBerry. Building a stable platform for us to be able to focus on innovation again has been the foundation of our turnaround.”
At this rate, Chen is still projecting the company will return to profitability next year, so it looks like the next few quarters will be crucial in determining whether the company’s turnaround has real legs.
There is no doubt that what John Chen has done at BlackBerry so far is first class. Whether it’s reality, spin or a combination of both, BlackBerry’s image is definitely taking a turn for the better.
The interesting thing is that Chen looks at everything, no matter how small.
Here’s an example:
At BlackBerry, we took a look at all of the phone accounts we were paying for. We found one manager who had eight telephone accounts for employees that had already left but which we were still paying for. Their accounts were never turned off.
This may seem small in the scheme of things but the small things add up.
