Can You Trust the Reviews?

Please Note: This is an edit of a previous posting I did when RIM Playbooks and Google Chromebooks first came out.  With the advent of Windows 8, Windows Surface and now Windows Phone 8, I thought it was timely to revisit this topic.

I drink my coffee black.  I didn't always take it this way. When I started, I was like many who would enjoy a Timmee's DD (This is a Canadian colloquialism, it has nothing to do with cup size), but then I dropped the sugar.  Then the cream.

When I first decided to drop the cream, (to preserve my lean, lithe, pantherlike figure) I hated the stuff in the cup.  This was not coffee, it was more like a mixture of motor oil and camel spit.  (Not that I was speaking from experience, but I do have a vivid imagination.)

It took weeks for me to start appreciating the rich aromatic flavour of a good cup of coffee.  It got to the point where coffee with cream tasted bland, and there is no way I would ever go back to cream in my coffee.

So what does this have to do with hardware and software reviews?

Gramma's House, Hockey and Sh*t Disturbers

When I was a kid, i loved visiting my Grandma, up to a point.

My grandmother fit every stereotypical thing you could say about Grammas. There was lots of love, us kids were the most important thing in the world, there was a ton of food, and she had lived in her house for ever.

Now in those days, the idea of modernizing houses (especially in rural areas) didn't mean a 70" LCD with satellite.  It meant indoor plumbing... as in toilets.  My grandmother's house was of the vintage where things like electricity, running water, and toilets weren't available as options when it was built.

Which meant for a number of visits, when nature called, it called you out to the little house in the backyard, best known for being cold, dark, and odorous... just the kind of place where Shelob, the giant spider from Lord of the Rings would hide out waiting for prey, or at least a million or so of her smaller (but just as deadly) relations.

To my imaginative over active 8 year old mind, this meant that I would do ANYTHING (or in this case refrain from doing anything) that would require me to visit Shelob's house of horrors.


You can imagine my relief when my grandmother's house finally got modernized.

Perhaps your grandmother lived in a town or a city (or you are too young to share this childhood trauma), but you suffered the same trepidation when you went to the cottage or camping.  To those of us in the survivors of childhood outhouse trauma support group I say "God Bless indoor plumbing!"

Which gets me to my next point.

Start At The End

The best advice I ever received when I was looking to start a consulting business was this... "To guarantee success... find a need, and fill it."

There is no value in creating products or services for which there is no need.  On occasion, an organization will come up with a game changing product and redefine a whole industry (think RIM in the early days - replacing pagers with email anywhere, Apple with its iPhone and iPad - bringing smart devices to the masses), but for the most part, the businesses that thrive are those who have found their version of finding a need a filling it.

It seems they excel at anticipating what their customers would need, and when.  It seems they have almost put themselves in the place of the user, and walked through what a successful experience would be.

Interacting with these organizations is eerily intuitive.  The website is informative, expectations are clearly defined, there are no unpleasant surprises, and if it is a product, you could likely hand it to a child and they would be able to figure out how to get started.

Hubris belongs in the news, not your organization.

It is so easy to blog these days. One just has to read the news.

In a performance driven environment, CIOs and IT leaders are continually challenged with delivering exceptional value, to foster and enable change, and to be innovative in finding solutions that will differentiate their organization  in their marketplace.  I've covered some of this in a previous post - The Most Important Post on Strategy You'll Ever Read

Often this means being first to market with a product or service, and then maintaining that position.

Along the way, don't fall victim to the same problems that RIM and News of the World are facing.

Here's my advice drawn from the recent headlines.

How the Mighty Fall

If I was a RIM shareholder, I'd be doing some serious thinking about the health of the organization. But then, as a stakeholder in any company or organization, I should continuously think about the health of my company.

Size doesn't matter if you are heading toward oblivion, it just gets you more press coverage as you slide down the slippery slope.

Is there hope for RIM? (and/or your organization?)

Yes!  (Unless you are at Stage 5 - but I'll explain)

10 Reasons why you should buy a RIM Playbook today.

For those of you who read my earlier post, you know where I stand on the issue. Hamsters give much better value and have a longer expected lifespan than any new technology. (Read the post to find out my real reason).

But that doesn't mean that I'm against the RIM Playbook, or any other technology (either the latest innovation, or the next "Me-Too!!!" tablet). I have enough gadgets to need a Batman utility belt when I go to meetings. We happen to have a lot of technology in my organization, and thanks to some visionary and creative people I get to work with and lead, we are well known in our sector as being leaders in the adoption of technology. So will we see a Playbook at Appleby College? Most likely.

Enough about me... let's talk about why you should buy a RIM playbook.

1. You NEED the latest and greatest technology. (I wish I had your bank account given how fast things change).

2. You are a Blackberry user, and this device will allow you to extend your capabilities (e.g. connecting to the web, videos, etc.) There's a special place in Heaven for people who are forced to browse the Internet on their BB.

3. You (or your team) supports a BES, or a BIS, and you need to keep your corporate email and BBM secure, so knowing how to do it would be a useful thing. If you have no idea what these acronyms are, you don't qualify for this point.

4. You've just dropped your iPad into a puddle, and are now looking for a replacement. Being an adventuresome sort, you are willing to try something new.

5. You Blog about technology, but weren't able to get one of the pre-release models.

6. Disclaimer: I was warned about mixing religion and technology, but here goes... You will buy whatever RIM says is important to buy because... just because. This behaviour is well known amongst other techno-faiths, and the BB following may be smaller, but is just as loyal.

7. You have a corporate BB and really want a tablet, but your IT department won't let anything else near their network.

8. You don't want to start wearing cargo pants to carry an iPad (some call them iPants). You much prefer tucking your tablet into your jacket pocket.

9. You are counter cultural and will buy one despite what all the reviewers have been saying. What do they know anyway?

10. You live in Waterloo.

So have fun today with your new tablet. Let me know how it goes.