Anti-motivation expert claims iPhone 4 "antennagate”" lost opportunity to “succeed at failure”

A UK-based “anti”-motivation Web site predicts Apple’s plummeting share price in the wake of the will-it-won’t-it be recalled iPhone 4 may not be the end of spiralling confidence in the company due to co-founder, Steve Job’s inability to take “bullish” failure by the horns and turn it into tangible success.

Author and founder of Antimotivationalspeaker.webs.com, Rick James-- who terms his style of rhetoric “anti-”motivational in response to the over-weening nature of the motivation industry -- says that Job’s handling of the “antennagate” affair is the main reason for loss of confidence in the corporation.

James says: “Blaming everyone else –- including by implication the public; your clients -- for a technical oversight that is down to your organisation is not exactly the best example of taking responsibility for failure and turning it into ever greater success; a lesson we can and should all learn from.”

James is referring to comments and recent press conferences held by Jobs who claimed a recent critical New York Times article was “total bull----”, and named competitor’s phones the company had tested in order to justify its own apparent technical shortcomings relating to a loss in signal strength on its new uber-cool must-have gadget.

James says: “If an attendee in one of my seminars had suggested this as an appropriate course of action to resolve an issue: i.e. naming, blaming and shaming the opposition I would have been appalled. To hear it from the mouth of the CEO of the world’s biggest corporation begins to look like arrogance; arrogance is the opposite of acceptance; and, as it says in my Web site and e-manual, ‘Failing to Succeed’: you can’t change anything until you accept it.”

James’ advice to the embattled Apple boss is clear. “Apple will continue to shoot itself in the foot and lose market share until they accept and change what appears to be an ingrained corporate culture of blame-shirking. I suggest they take the comparatively minor failure implied by a technical hitch, accept it and build credibility by their handling of the situation; not compound it by fudging the reality of the problem and their responsibility to customers in accepting it and remedying it.”

 (Ends)