Don’t be like Blackberry, Kodak, Blockbuster, etc.

In last Friday’s Vlog Post, we talked about reframing our thinking from 2020 too, to 2020 2.0.

This gives us the benefit of leveraging our past experiences (and even those crisis management lessons learned) to reset, repurpose, and become more resilient and repowered for the future.

The alternative is to remain stagnant, hoping and praying for things to return to “normalcy”, just as they were pre-pandemic. However, my challenge is for us to rethink that mentality.

If we don’t, then we run the risk of being another Blackberry, Kodak, Blockbuster, etc. story.

In his book, Think Again, organizational psychologist, Adam Grant shares that:

“Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.

In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.

We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process.

The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones.

Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: there’s evidence that being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become.”

I don’t have all the answers, but I am curious enough to ask many pointed questions such as:

• Are you getting stuck in comparing your organization’s current financial position to what you did in the past, and then getting impatient for growth as you rebuild?
• Are you forgetting some of those great employee culture and client relations activities that once set you apart?
• Are you rethinking your “mouse trap” to become a better 2.0 company than you were before? For instance, what are you doing to expand your service offering to your clients’ current needs?

Last week marked the end of an era. I am not saying that for dramatic effect. It is true.

January 4, 2022 was the last day that the Blackberry phone product stopped receiving any tech support. Here is one of the many articles which covered the story: Your Blackberry Dies Today

As a former Blackberry user from more than a decade ago, I could never have predicted how that story would go down. Obviously, neither could their leadership.

What aren’t you seeing about your own company that could lead to its demise? It’s not too late to do something about it today…

If you’d like to brainstorm this topic and its impact on your organization, please contact me at dlandry@authentizity.com.

— Dawn F. Landry