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Yes, what’s up with Ericsson?

I got the question on the phone from a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago. He was driving through Sweden while talking to me.

- Their five year plan has expired, I replied, using my gut feeling in combination with my knowledge of Ericsson the last 10 years. - They probably haven’t updated it.

- What do you mean?

- Obviously they predicted some problems in 2001, which made them create a 5 year plan remedying the problems based on an analysis of current status. The plan commenced rather immediately. I remember a lot of friends with leading positions at Ericsson that had to go during that period. The problems hit real hard the year after, 2002, and Ericsson stuck to the plan making the cure a little easier. A “qualified” guess is that the cure hasn’t been updated all along. Now we see 2007, and here goes…

- Sounds like hindsight if you ask me.

- Sure, hindsight it is. When dealing with hindsight, I promise that we’ve got 20/20 vision as all other consultants. But you asked me a question regarding current status and not Ericsson’s future. A better question from you would have been: What’s the next move from Ericsson?

- Uhh?

- Let’s go back to 2001 and 2002 and see if we can learn from history where they can go. In 2001 and 2002 the mobile phone industry was experiencing a fierce positioning. They still do. But nevertheless, Ericsson made some strategic choices that were successful when dealing with restructuring. But probably, during the process which included saying good bye to some of their employees, some advisors went the same way hence making it difficult for Ericsson to keep up with an ongoing positioning and re-posititioning. Actually I think they haven’t been doing their homework with their stakeholders the last couple of years. Stakeholders meaning their markets and their customers. Yes…I am not only talking about the stakeholders as the ones bringing them money financing their next move, the ones suing them right now, but the stakeholders buying their…

Our phone call dropped. Still the phone industry hasn’t solved the issue when the person you are talking to is driving into a tunnel in the middle of nowhere.

Yes, what’s up with Carnegie?

The last couple of weeks they have been accused for a lot of issues dealing with how their organization execute the company mission (or to be more specific: how specific roles have executed their own mission which was in conflict with the company mission). Now Carnegie has decided to dig deep in order to clean up their act and get results. The company will probably dig deep in its wallet, but will the company dig deep in itself?

According to an article in Dagens Media, the leading Swedish media on communications issues, the Swedish PR-agency JKL is commissioned to clean up the Carnegie Brand. In the very same article, the agency presents the fact that it will take time. Guess it is billable time, so congrats JKL. Well done. You deserve it.

But the time factor or the billable hours are not the most interesting fact with this news story, it is the use of Carnegie’s organization and extended organization - read: consultants. In fact JKL and Carnegie have according to both parties been working together for a long time. As an innocent bystander it is impossible to know or evaluate what they’ve done together. It must have been good, if not they wouldn’t have been working together. But when comparing the offer JKL puts forth on their website with the mess Carnegie actually experienced, shouldn’t it have been expected that also JKL knew something about the mess before it went public? To put it in plain English, if they were aware of it, what did they do?

Normally, the best company healing process is where the turmoil-maker or the one knowing about the turmoil is participating in the clean-up, but is this a normal case?

There is a lot of turbulence going on in the stockmarket. The most turbulent can be seen with Borse Dubai’s possible take-over of OMX.

OMX is resistant and treats the take-over as hostile, since OMX would prefer to be partnered up with NASDAQ.

Sometimes it can be wise to skip the short-term protect-your-own-sphere perspective, and change to a long-term co operate-with-potential-partners perspective.

The key to a potential solution could easily be found if the three parties accepted the fact that it is better to cooperate than end up in what you could call an expensive massmedia dead-lock, as the situation is per now. The form of cooperation could be a more substantial cross owning of each other’s shares. This would give the parties a chance to become better acquainted in order to explore the joint venture before a potential merger.