Heins

"A final draft of the handout circulated by e-mail to directors and advisers on January 19, 2012, began with the statement that RIM’s board, “acting on the recommendation” of Lazaridis and Balsillie, had unanimously approved Heins as the new CEO. Much of the remaining announcement praised the leadership and devotion of the departing chiefs and their courage in sacrificing short-term gains for long-term growth by acquiring QNX and its operating system. This was hardly a reassuring message to rebellious shareholders. A board faulted for deferring to CEOs would be seen to have bowed again, this time to their proposed successor, Heins, an insider who shared responsibility for PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 delays. Instead of reassuring shell-shocked shareholders that a new beginning was under way, the company chose to honor the status quo, hailing years of strategic confusion and product failures as courageous long-term vision. The approach did not sit well with at least one director. “Jesus Christ. What are we doing?” director Roger Martin fumed in a blistering e-mail reply to the company’s directors, CEOs, and advisers. The press release was doomed, he believed, by leading with Balsillie’s and Lazaridis’s recommendation for Heins, as their successor. To his mind, the proposed press release failed to send a clear message that meaningful change was occurring at the embattled company. “We have to remember shareholders are pissed,” Martin continued. “If Thorsten was so fantastic time and time again, why the huge problems at RIM, people will ask?… Let’s stop. Let’s think. Yes, there are persistent storm clouds and threats. Yes, this company is learning to be a $20 billion company. I get all that. But it doesn’t give us license to stop thinking.”"