Will RIM lose their two man CEO structure and replace it with a single woman?
When a company is sliding down the pan, it is sometimes not that useful to have two people at the top making decision.
RIM have been under fire from many sides for having an unconventional leadership style of two CEO’s, and in a report in Canada’s Financial Post it would appear that Barbara Stymiest, who joined RIM’s board as an independent director in 2007, is thought to be the person who may be the duos replacement.
The new “Iron Lady” of RIM:
Could the current state of RIM be reminiscent of the position Britain was in back in the late 70’s when it “arguably” took a strong woman to steer a faltering country back from despair?
A committee including Ms Stymiest has been looking at the state of play of having an unconventional two man CEO lead the good ship RIM, and it would be pretty clear that if they find (which I Suspect they will in a round about way) that this was not effective, then it would seem like a pretty obvious step to make to discuss a replacement by Ms Stymiest who appears to understand the company fully.
Up until the end of 2011 the seven independent directors were staunchly supportive of the Balsillie and Lazaridis combo, but after a disastrous end to the year which saw share prices drop by as much as 75% there are obvious ruptions at board level and questions now need to be answered.
This is in spite of the gesture that both Lazaridis and Balsillie would reduce their take home salary to that of a token $1 a year as a result of the poor management of the company and the disastrous quarterly results and PR gaffs that has plagued RIM.
Would an ex-banker be the right person for the job at Research in Motion?
Many though would argue that Stymiest has no huge real world experience in the tech sector coming from a financial banking background and that this move could be disastrous if she was appointed, as RIM need to innovate much more than audit the company, and fears are that she could be the wrong person for the job.
According to the report, RIM will take 2012 by storm marketing wise now that Blackberry 10 will arrive:
During a conference call in December, RIM’s leaders said the company plans to go on an aggressive marketing blitz in the first half of 2012 to reinvigorate the BlackBerry brand.
What do you think the problem with RIM is let us know all in your comments below.
Anthony Munns