Somehow, we lost
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By Chang Se-moon
I am an active member of LinkedIn with a large number of followers. I use LinkedInprimarily to release important business and economic news that is bypassed by main stream media.
Having so many connects that continue to grow, I also have an access to new posts that appear on a daily basis. One post that caught my eye was a March 2, 2016 article written by ZiyadJawabra and uploaded by Reiner Lomb. ZiadJawabra is a freelance management trainer and intercultural and relocation consultant, while Reiner Lomb is president of BoomerangCoach, a partner at Blue Earth Network, and author of "The Boomerang Approach."
The article is about the speech that NOKIA CEO gave when he announced NOKIA being acquired by Microsoft.
Microsoft announced it was buying Nokia for $7.2 billion in September 2013, but the deal took several months to go through all the formal regulatory hurdles and was finalized on April 25, 2014. On this day, Microsoft closed its purchase of NOKIA’s phone and tablet business which Microsoft started to run as a division called the Devices Group. The deal itself remains quite controversial to this date, prompting some to call the deal a total disaster for Microsoft.
We will not get into the deal itself, which is very complicated unless you are deep in the high tech business. We will just focus on the speech that the then CEO of NOKIA, Stephen Elop, gave when the announcement was made.
The famous ending of Mr. Elop’s speech was that “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.” When he said that, all his management team, including Mr. Elop himself, shed tears.Actually, this short article has been spreading like a wildfire in such places as journal.com, GLtrends.com, Youtube.com, and many other places, all since March of this year.
Jawabra writes that “Nokia has been a respectable company. They didn’t do anything wrong in their business, however, the world changed too fast. Their opponents were too powerful.They missed out on learning, they missed out on changing, and thus they lost the opportunity at hand to make it big. Not only did they miss the opportunity to earn big money, they lost their chance of survival.”The message of this story, according to Jawabra, is that “if you don’t change, you shall be removed from the competition.It’s not wrong if you don’t want to learn new things. However, if your thoughts and mindset cannot catch up with time, you will be eliminated.”
Conclusions of this short article are just as sobering: “The advantage you have yesterday will be replaced by the trends of tomorrow. You don’t have to do anything wrong. As long as your competitors catch the wave and do it RIGHT, you can lose out and fail.To change and improve yourself is giving yourself a second chance. To be forced by others to change is like being discarded.Those who refuse to learn and improve will definitely one day become redundant and not relevant to the industry. They will learn the lesson in a hard and expensive way.”
I really feel that the lesson that Jawabra so well described applies to everyone.
Millennials and their younger counterpart Generation Z are experts in electronic gadgets but need to be aware that as technology advances, the role of attitude and communication becomes even more important. Further, when so many people are good at electronic gadgets, you may want to spend some time to figure out a small area where you be better than most.
Baby boomers and their older counterparts may want to do their best to familiarize themselves with gadgets of new technology which include cell phones, I-Pads, debit cards, smart chip cards,and computers in general without which it is almost impossible to function as a living person these days. It will take more time to learn for these old timers than their younger generations. The minimum you may want to do is to learn how to create, send and receive emails. If you have no one to communicate through emails, you can “connect” to me in LinkedIn and you will then receive a message or two every week.
For political and business leaders in Korea, it may be important, more likely critically important, to recognize that continuing the past policies of peaceful overtures to North Korea hoping that they change are likely to jeopardize the very existence of Korea. No matter how good the intentions may be, continuing such policy while North Korea is getting so close to having their tactical nuclear weapons ready is an invitation of NOKIA’s loss in a grander scale.
Remember that you do not have to do anything wrong for you to lose, if everything around you changes and you fail to adjust, let alone anticipate, these changes.
Semoon Chang is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies. He can be reached at changsemoon@yahoo.com.