Burning platform.

In February 2011, the ex-CEO of Nokia sent out the following memo to the whole company. Illustrating the dire need for change, and the struggles often faced in convincing others that change is required.

NOKIA MEMO

A man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. 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 into the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and 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 behavior.

We too are standing on a "burning platform," and must decide how we are going to change ourbehavior.

Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders,operators, developers, suppliers, and you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and whatI 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 arefuelling a blazing fire around us.

I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline onour burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and directthe company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We have not beendelivering innovation fast enough. We are not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we sharethe new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believethat together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define ourfuture.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behavior,and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, wehave a great opportunity to do the same.

END OF MEMO

This is a recurring theme in the corporate environment. The larger and more complex asystem is, the more it prioritizes homeostasis. This looks like, searching for any way to keepeverything in check and order. Check and order is defined in a company by the norms of thecorporate environment. These norms might be compliance norms or an appetite for risk. Everytime there's a factor that comes in to drive change, the system views it as taking a path ofdestruction. The system fights the change because it wants to preserve balance.

The challenge comes when the system is not aware of its failures, or gaps which couldbe likened to sickness in the human organism. It’s as though the organism doesn't understandthat it’s sick, wanting to preserve “the norm” at all costs. Everything that steps in to potentiallyhelp or cure is fought because of a lack of self-awareness. The system says “Hey, I'm fine,there's nothing wrong. I want to preserve the system. So I want to keep everything in checkusing the compliance and risk norms that we have in place.”. Not the most fortunatecomparison, but it’s the same with addicts, and people who are in denial that they need help

Why this lack of awareness you may ask? Put simply, it's frustrating when employeesrealize that there’s a glitch in the system and there’s a problem that must be addressed. There'sa deficiency. If you want to treat the deficiency in the corporate system, it’s complicated, andmost people simply want to ignore it. Preferring comfortable stories, to the cold hard truth.Leaving the system to trundle along without addressing the deficiencies can further poison thelifeblood of an organization, or a living organism for that matter.

The reason they’re not helping is often simply due to a lack of information, and lack ofinformation results in a lack of WHY. Why should I do anything about it? And sometimes weknow deep down that we have a problem, but we prefer ignoring it and hoping it goes away.Sounds familiar?

Unfortunately, as people age and corporations age, the illness and various diseases andconditions start to show up. We can’t control everything that’s happening to us, but if we do notconstantly self-reflect, or if we ignore the information we get, disease spreads and people andcompanies die. In large companies, if the top management is too far away from the field, theinformation arrives at the brain (CEO) when it's too late and something's gone badly wrong.Then you have the memos such as the one sent by the Nokia CEO in 2011 - The BurningPlatform. Trying to stop the bleeding or spread of the disease sometimes is done with severecuts (similar to surgical interventions), but sometimes it’s too late and even cuts are not helping,mostly because they try to prevent the spread by amputating, say, a leg, but because nofundamental change is being made, they still expect to compete in sprinting or triathlon, and westart losing because we needed to maybe switch sports, or move to adaptive category, and thattakes building new skills and competencies, which is a part of the change process, that’s mostlynot taking place.