Whilst I have no revelations that have the shock value of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, I just wanted to share with you the power that emits from the Blackberry and why it is what all mid-management crave.

For those not in the know, a Blackberry is a hand-held device used predominantly to receive and send e-mail, thus allowing owners to constantly be in touch with the office. The take-up of the portable has been phenomenal, with the second quarter of 2007 seeing billion dollar sales revenue and Research in Motion (the makers of Blackberry) preparing to sell their 20 millionth unit.

However it is not just the sales that makes Blackberry noteworthy, it’s the fact that it allows companies to tap into those staff that can’t switch off by giving them a tool that will allow them to work at any time and in any place. The persistent blackberrying by some users is so intense that it has been labeled ‘crackberry’, with the word being nominated in 2006 as word of the year.

Now from a rational point of view, who actually needs to be in touch with the office at all times? You can clearly see the benefits of the CEO, Executive Board and other key decision makers being permanently available; they have the knowledge, the skills and ultimately the remit to make decisions. If the CEO is skiing in Whistler, he needs to be contactable in case something needs sign off RIGHT NOW. In this day and age it isn’t acceptable to allow a deal to slip, a position to worsen or a customer to walk away because someone was chilling with a cocktail in Belize.

Also, the key decision makers need access to information, they need to be kept abreast of developments because simply, they live and breathe the company – if someone comes up to them on holiday and starts speaking about the breaking news on Bloomberg regarding their company, they need to know the inside line. Picking up on this concept of ’living and breathing’ the company, the likelihood is that the very nature of these individuals is such that they won’t want to be away from the company and hence the Blackberry may (perversely) facilitate them to act in a remotely normal fashion when on holiday.

In addition to the top brass, dealmakers should have Blackberries. These guys love work and boy do they work hard and to be honest, if they could, they’d sleep at work. It makes sense to give these guys Blackberries because they are your top 20% (see Pareto’s Law), they are probably carrying 20 people so why hold up their efficiency and drive? They want to get on, you want them to get on and your shareholders want them to get on. Again, still rational and efficient.

Also you have work folk who work from home or from multiple locations, these guys need to be tapped into something like a Blackberry just from a purely practical perspective.

So we’ve seen the rational and somewhat efficient manner in which a Blackberry should be allocated – i.e. to those that are business critical 24/7, the dealmakers and those whose working environment presents challenges. However, the allocation doesn’t stop there, it goes further down the chain and enters into an area where the dynamic of blackberry to blackberry owner changes.

Finally, we come to mid-management.

Firstly, the people who do a sterling job, but simply cannot sign anything off out of hours, therefore don’t really need a Blackberry. Even if this guy or lady is sitting at home finding the missing link at 8pm on a Friday night, they can do diddlysquat until their line has signed it off.  Frankly, if these guys can’t get their work done in regulation (i.e. normal working hours) then we should be looking at how they work not giving them Blackberries to spend longer doing the job and eating into their real life.

Secondly there are those that work in support areas where, although they do important work for the business as a whole, they don’t have much which is urgent at any given time.

These are two groups just love the Blackberry, they love the ‘prestige’, which is a real false consciousness. Whilst the CEO needs it to steer the ship in the right direction, the dealmakers need it to hit their targets and the project manager needs to stay on top whilst traveling, the mid-manager neither steers nor has deadlines, they just desperately, desperately want the Blackberry.

They look longingly at others with Blackberries, they imagine what it’d be like to have one and have toyed with the idea (more than once) of signing off a normal outlook-based e-mail “sent from my Blackberry wireless”. I actually believe that (whilst I have no empirical evidence to back this up), some mid-managers would forgo hard cash in order to get a Blackberry. They see it as a proxy for importance, which is counterintuitive in that a) those that are important don’t need a electronic proxy to tell people their important b) those in the same role but without a Blackberry can see instantly how much more work his Blackberry toting colleague as a result of the Blackberry now does compared to him, with no real impact on their relative abilities to achieve their objectives.

And what happens once they get them? Boy do they flaunt them! They wear them attached to their belts, they get them out in meetings and they become out of office Blackberry warriors – sending e-mails at ungodly hours that frankly are unnecessary and add little value.

So there we have it, a quick expose on Blackberries. We’d love to hear your tales of Blackberry warriors, Crackberry addicts, and ridiculous Blackberrying antics.