If there's one thing I love about the Internet and blogs, its the immediacy of the information. Something happens somewhere in the world, and five minutes later you can not only find 10 or 20 articles reporting the facts, but even more bloggers reporting their own take on what happened -- often with insider information. Apple's iPhone 4 antenna problems are now widely known, as is the company's response, which was first to deny that there was a problem, then to pooh-pooh it, and then to hold a press conference last week in which Steve Jobs (who took a break from his Hawaiian vacation) admitted that there was indeed a problem and that Apple would provide "bumpers" to iPhone 4 owners for no charge to fix it.
So back to the blog thing. I was intrigued to read a blog post yesterday by Joe Frontiera on the Washington Post website titled: A rotten Apple? Leadership follies from antennagate. In his post, Frontiera says that although Apple got a few things right in its handling of the iPhone 4 antenna problem, they also got a lot wrong. He goes on to present a set of five leadership lessons for companies that find themselves in a similar situation in the future. Here are the five lessons -- it's worth your while to read the entire original post to get the details:
- Communicate, don't fall behind.
- A leader's job is to educate.
- Vulnerability isn't always a bad thing.
- Attack problems -- they won't just go away.
- Sometimes an apology goes a long way.
