Stephen Elop of Nokia surely wins the Lucy Kellaway prize for blunt speaking in a corporate memo when he warns that the Finnish company has a “burning platform”.
There are lots of things to admire in the memo in terms of clarity and the willingness of the new chief executive to spell out publicly exactly how dire Nokia’s crisis has become:
“We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.”
The only objection I have is that Mr Elop is not actually blaming himself for any of this, despite the cosy “we’s” scattered throughout the memo. He is a former Microsoft executive who was appointed last September to replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.
The “kitchen sink” approach to financial results by new chief executives – in which they take all possible charges and write-offs when the first arrive to flatter the results over the following two of three years – is well-known.
This strikes me as a bit of rhetorical kitchen-sinking, in which Mr Elop shocks everyone at Nokia by being brutally frank about what happened before he came, with the aim of being able to do what he wants.
Still, at least he had the nerve to say it plainly. It makes his presentation to investors in London on Friday even more of an attraction.