Question

Nokia is a communications and information technology company included in the Fortune Global 500 ranking and has a rich heritage that can be traced back to the 19th century. During the 1990’s Nokia became the world's leading mobile phone manufacturer, but the company did not anticipate the significant change that smartphones would bring to the market at the turn of the century. When smartphones rose to popularity Nokia's market share was significantly reduced and the company entered into a crisis. Stephen Elop was appointed CEO of Nokia in 2010 and after a diagnosis of the company he addressed all the employees with an internal memo know as "Burning Platform.”

Read the article:

All Microsoft Employees Should Read Stephen Elop's 'Burning Platform' Memo Right Now. Paying particular attention to the memo portion of the article. Then respond to the following:

Which elements related with James’ Operations Management definition do you identify within the “Burning Platform” memorandum?

Which of the five steps within Hill’s framework for Operations Strategy formulation do you recognize?

What internal and external factors do you observe?

Comment on the CEO’s use of violent imagery and language (burning platform, death, war) as a motivational tool. What are the pros and cons? Do you feel motivated? Can this approach backfire?

Here's the full text of Elop's "Burning Platform" memo: There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters. As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice. He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour. We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour. Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe. I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform. And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us. For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem. In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range. And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core. Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets. While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind. The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable. We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market. At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead. At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us. And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis. The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem. This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time. On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness. Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on. How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved? This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. 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. Nokia, our platform is burning. We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future. The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same. Stephen

Answer 1

Question 1-

Which elements related with James’ Operations Management definition do you identify within the “Burning Platform” memorandum?

Answer 1-

James’ operations management is about Business Administration practices and processes that facilitates transformation of factors of production like skills of employees a new technological developments to high end and superior quality goods and services.

“Burning Platform” memorandum by motivating its employees spells out the need to be efficient and vigilant about the changes in the market and Technology to develop the best of services and products in order to stand out in the market. It upholds the fundamental elements that are spelt out in James operations management definition.

Question 2-

Which of the five steps within Hill’s framework for Operations Strategy formulation do you recognize?

Answer 2-

5 steps within Hill's framework for operations strategy formulation that can be recognised are as follows-

1. Defining objectives for the organization

2. Chalking out marketing strategies

3. Understanding alternative or non-conventional other ways by which more businesses can be attracted and greater opportunities for investments can be created than competitors

4. Finding the best ways to deliver products and services produced to the customers

5. Building efficient infrastructure required for supporting operational strategies.

Question 3-

What internal and external factors do you observe?

Answer 3-

Internal factors that can be observed are-

1. brilliant sources of innovation

2. not able to bring innovation to market fast enough as required

External factors that can be observed as-

1. Development of Android Operating Systems (AOS) that are redefining the Technology of smartphones

2. Declining consumer preference all over the world

Question 4-

Comment on the CEO’s use of violent imagery and language (burning platform, death, war) as a motivational tool. What are the pros and cons? Do you feel motivated? Can this approach backfire?

Answer 4-

The use of violent imagery by using words like burning platform, death, war and Icy water to relate to the situations that Nokia is facing is evoking and clearly bring about the situation and the status of the company in the market at the present scenario. The description of the burning platform just above the cold Icy water from which man has to choose from in the troubled condition where both sides there is threat to life exactly analogous to the condition of Nokia.

This vivid description motivates to reflect and think about the possible strategies that can be leveraged to get the efficient results and remain relevant in highly competitive market. If taken in optimistic way this can help to fuel up workers to work hard with endurance and patients even in the worst of times.

But at the same time it can also demoralize and discourage workers by painting a fearful picture of their company they are working day and night. This may result in discontentment among employees And they may feel hopeless about reviving or regaining the strength back. In this way this approach can backfire.

In my personal view it motivated me because the vivid imagery created the reality of the company and not something of imagination. The condition portrait was not even exaggerated a bit as the company is in the same myriad of problems of innovation, investment, throat cutting competition and decreasing consumer preferability. If I would have been an employee this would have really spurred me to give my best and work even more hard.