Meetings as Scripted Corporate Theater

“To Balsillie, meetings were corporate theater. You had to memorize your part before the curtain rose. Usually, Balsillie was the leading man, but he was willing to take on any role his team required for customer meetings. He could play the flinty, ice-veined negotiator or maintain a quiet presence, depending on what was needed. Tyler Nelson, who led several key business development initiatives after being hired by Balsillie in mid-1998, says: “Jim would say, ‘If you bring me into a meeting, use me for effect. What do you want me to do?’—but you had to make sure he was 100 percent [onside]. If not, a meeting could go sideways fast.” Once Balsillie approved a meeting agenda, everyone on his team was instructed to stick to the script. “I hate being thrown off by others in a meeting,” Balsillie says. “I get edgy when people are not prepared.” Even though Intel was a RIM partner, Balsillie was wary. You could never be certain of any customer, supplier, or competitor. Meetings were a potential minefield. “You learn quickly that this is serious business,” Balsillie says, “and you don’t make an independent move unless you know all aspects of the plan and exactly what you’re doing, because the penalty for a misstep is severe.” Overprepared and inexperienced, Klimstra knew his role: to answer technical questions. Otherwise, Balsillie had told him, say nothing. While Klimstra viewed Intel as a friendly ally, RIM’s chief saw the semiconductor giant as a dangerous, tricky heavyweight whose every employee lived by former CEO Andy Grove’s mantra, “Only the paranoid survive.””

“The two CEOs were so aligned that they often sketched out each other’s roles before meetings. They had secret signals, including an under-the-table nudge when a private chat was needed and crinkling of paper to indicate it was time to stop talking. Nudges were seldom necessary, however, because each anticipated where the other was headed. “They were in such amazing synch,” says Patrick Spence, RIM’s U.S. salesman. “It was absolutely incredible to watch them work in that kind of an environment, sitting right beside each other, where you think they’re almost connected in their brains.””