While the book was being written we lived through the global financial crisis, the dotcom bubble, the 9/11 attacks on the United States, wars, revolutions, and various smaller events in world history.
Nokia saw good periods and bad periods and the crumbling of its dominant market position. In preparing the book I got to know the leaders of Nokia extremely well: their ideas, anxieties, joys, sorrows, and dreams. I learned how Nokia was led and why the company will have a place in the economic history of the world. I also learned why strategies are sometimes impossible to implement, and why success may be impossible, even though all the stars seem to be promisingly aligned. That is why this book is named Against All Odds.
I thank Jorma Ollila for some terrific conversations, for enjoyable and memorable moments. I thank everyone I interviewed and all the information sources I used. I thank our Finnish publisher Otava for its patience and strong support. I thank everyone who has read and commented on the manuscript at various stages. In particular I thank Tuukka Hetemäki, who edited and corrected the text during the final stages without sparing either his intellect or energy. And I thank my wife Melek Mazici for support and understanding during this extended project.
— Harri Saukkomaa
WE HAVE MADE SOME MINOR CHANGES for readers of the U.S. edition. The most significant is that the epilogue now goes up to 2016. It also briefly covers the most recent developments at Nokia and offers American readers some insights into Nokia’s achievements in the United States.
We are happy and proud that our book has been published in the United States. We wish to thank our translator Richard Powell, our publishers Jim Pennypacker and Maven House, and our agent Elina Ahlbäck for their outstandingly fruitful collaboration.
— Jorma Ollila Helsinki
May 8, 2016
NO ONE WAS HAPPY when I was chosen as Nokia’s CEO on 16 January 1992.
Nokia’s share value immediately slumped by ten percent, ending the day four percent down. That told us what investors thought of my prospects. Commentators thought I was too young – I was then forty-one – and too inexperienced to lead a great Finnish company. Nokia’s employees feared the worst: a former banker and finance director had been parachuted into the smoldering ruins to salvage what he could and sell it to the highest bidder. My family’s view was that I had taken on an impossible task. They expected it would take over my life completely, so that my three children would be lucky to see me late in the evening, if then. Perhaps the next time they saw me would be on our summer holiday. All in all a promising start.
I have to turn this around, make it positive, I thought as I left Nokia’s head office that dark evening. I myself was happy, even though others disapproved of my appointment. At least there was an end to the dithering and uncertainty. I had my own ideas on what Nokia’s CEO should do. Even so I had barely the faintest idea of what I had let myself in for. This made life easier: I had boarded a roller-coaster whose terrifying swoops, loops, and dips I could never even have imagined. If someone had jumped into the car beside me and told me the success story Nokia would be, I wouldn’t have believed them. If someone had asked me what kind of future I expected for Nokia, I’d have replied: “I haven’t a clue.” If, that is, I’d been compelled to be honest.
If someone could have described just how bad my most difficult times at Nokia would feel, I wouldn’t have believed it. Or if I had believed it, I would have revoked my decision to take on leadership of a company sinking under the weight of its financial problems. I was captain of a vessel where only the bridge remained above the waterline: the hull was already submerged, and water was coming into the engine room.
The previous CEO had been sacked after falling out with the chairman, who had then retired. The chairman before him had committed suicide. After that there’d been an attempt to sell Nokia to the Swedish firm Ericsson, which had been wise enough to decline the offer. No wonder then that morale within the company was at rock bottom. My appointment as Nokia’s CEO would mark the end of one era in the firm’s history, and the start of a new one. I did not, however, yet know that back in 1992. I knew only that the previous generation had tasked me with rebuilding the company they had all but destroyed.
Nor of course could I know that I would lead Nokia for over fourteen years. At that time I didn’t dare think as far as six months ahead. When I was offered the top job at Nokia, I had remarked to my wife Liisa that it was a position one could lose at a moment’s notice. The shareholders might have had enough, the investors could withdraw their money, or the company’s share price could fall so low that it could be snapped up like a tasty snack.
Our competitors perhaps were happy with my appointment. They thought the Nokia story was in its final chapter, otherwise a former finance director would not have been chosen. The company would quickly be sold, either as a whole or in smaller parcels. All our competitors had to do was await Nokia’s disintegration and it would be ready for plucking.
My compatriots were scarcely happy with my appointment. I had been a student politician, and after that I had worked in an American bank. These were not plus points. Student politicians were basically unsound, and it would have been more patriotic to have worked in a Finnish bank. Many people in Finland had no idea who I was. My background was unusual for a chief executive: Finns might well ask what this forty-one-year-old engineer and economist knew about factories or the lives of the people who worked in them. It was a good question: in their position I’d have asked it too. I came across as an impatient, smartly dressed banker with a stubborn look and an excellent memory for figures. I had so much self-confidence that I had no idea how many ways there were for me to fail as Nokia’s CEO.
I was ready to roll up my sleeves and get down to work. Lots of work. I could do it and I would enjoy it, but on its own it was not enough. I also had to find something that would enable both Nokia and me to survive. I had to find good people who would believe in the company. I had to breathe new life into the company, so that people would believe in themselves. Otherwise we would be lost in that sea where lie so many shipwrecked companies whose names no one remembers.
I and a few other managers of my age at Nokia had a dream. As a dream it was perhaps a little mundane, of the sort one can actually put into effect. We looked around us and saw that Finland and the Finnish economy were close to collapse. We looked at Nokia and we noticed that the company had not been led properly. Nevertheless we knew that Nokia was a fine company. We knew that this company, which had been given to us to lead, could clearly do better than before. We wanted to demonstrate that to the whole world.
This is an account of our time at Nokia during its transformation from an old-fashioned Finnish conglomerate to a global enterprise. It’s also the story of how by chance I became CEO of Nokia, though I should have been a physicist or an economist. It’s an account of our team, the people of Nokia, who set out to follow an everyday dream. It’s a story of exceptional success, but at the same time of the poor judgment we sometimes showed, and the bad decisions and mistakes that we made.