Nokia: Sisu and Susi

Back in the late 90s, I had the opportunity to work with a company that had Canadian, American, and Finnish operations. The highlight of this job was a visit Finland in 1998. The ritual of sauna, drinks, dinner, and dancing is still a blur in my memory...

The Helsinki stock market was booming during my visit. Like NorTel in Canada, the market was driven by a single company: Nokia. I got my first mobile phone that year; a Nokia 5100 series. It had a intuitive menu system and was a joy to use. Of course, phones didn't need to do much other than make calls and text back then.

Part of the business trip took me to the city of Oulu, north of the Arctic Circle, Oulu has a major Nokia R&D centre and the flight from Helsinki was a veritable Tower of Babel with technologists from around the world on the shuttle.

Our first night in the hotel coincided with the end of the fall semester. It seemed like the whole university had parked their bikes outside the hotel bar for a night of drinking. Earlier in the evening, I had crossed a bridge over the frozen Oulu river and nearly died from the biting wind. These kids were riding their bikes through the same wind - drunk! This was my introduction to that most Finnish of characteristics:"sisu". It's hard to describe, but Wikipedia makes a good attempt. Of course I got it backwards and pronounced the term "susi". This means quite the opposite! More along the terms of "snafu".

Back when Nokia had trouble in the mid 2000's, their CEO said "sisu" would see them through. . Several CEOs later, Nokia is still trying to figure it out. So how did Nokia go from "sisu" to "susi"?

Fortunately, we have an insightful piece that sheds some light. Unlike the usual finger-pointing associated with insiders describing a company's fall, this article is based on over 25 interviews reflecting a wide variety of viewpoints. It has an almost mournful tone. There are many product management lessons to be learned. The clearest example is found in this paragraph:

"In the 1990s Nokia's product development was still very much concentrated on one product - or at the most two products - at any given time. Every product had a clearly-defined team working on it, where the people focused on that one item and no others."

That changed in the 2000's with a component based approach. Now there are rumours of Nokia using Windows Phone 7 as their software platform. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Lemon-Aid

I just went through an accelerated "pre-owned" car shopping experience. The trusty Volvo 850 wagon suddenly became untrustworthy after 14 years and more than 200,000 kilometres of service. The car had been good to me, but it stalled on the way home from a ski trip and wouldn't run for more than 20 minutes before dying. It was sad to sell it to my mechanic for parts, but nobody will buy a car that won't run.

Like many Canadians, I had grown up reading Lemon-Aid as the prime source for information on used cars. I consulted it again. Of course the information is useful, but the organization is really lacking (there is no index!!!) The online site has so much potential for searching reviews, service bulletins, etc... Here's hoping that Phil Edmonston gets some fresh blood involved in this enterprise.

In the mean time, if you are Canadian and want to get a decent idea on the current market values of used cars check out http://www.vmrcanada.com. Most of the data on the web is US focussed. Unfortunately cars are on of those items where the Canucks get ripped off versus US pricing :-(

Oh, by the way I got a 2008 Hyundai Santa Fe in "Natural Khaki" with a beige interior. Leather, sunroof, but no 4WD. It's basically the late 2000's equivalent of the classic mid-size wagon, just made tall.