Kicking off day two of BlackBerry World, CEO Thorsten Heins had a 'meet the press' season.

Focusing on this first three months in the job, Heins opened by saying part of the change he was driving at RIM was to start communicating more with the press and analysts.

"I spoke to a lot of people. I've had a lot of different input, before I decided where I wanted to take RIM," he said of his early experiences as CEO.

New horizons

Not wanting to criticise the previous management, nevertheless, he said, "We have a little fat on the hips. We need to become a lean, mean, hunting machine."

Part of this has seen Heins restructure the upper management team, with co-founders and ex-co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie sidelined.

"I have established a management team I have full belief in," Heins explained, saying that previously there wasn't always one individual who was accountable for specific operations.

This shift has also seen the company building out more local product teams, which will provide flexibility, while reporting into a strong management structure.

"BlackBerry 7's launch wasn't coherent," Heins stated, saying that the company would soon be hiring a CMO to manage its marketing message.

Growing pains

Heins said that part of RIM's problem was it grew too fast.

"When a company is growing fast, you lose line of sight of what everyone is doing," he explained.

"Everything becomes an opportunity, but it becomes there are parts of the business that are exciting but aren't core."

The point now is that RIM needs focus.

"I'm a [originally] physicist so I like lasers," he said. "It's high energy focused on a very small point."

This is my crowd

Of course, that focus - at present - is on BlackBerry 10 - a platform that involves hardware, software and cloud-based services.

Heins said that when RIM looked at other OS solutions - such as Android or Window Phone - he wasn't confident that they give it the ability to differentiate. That was why RIM took the hard decision to do its own new, ground-up OS.

More conceptually, though, Heins says that RIM's overall focus on what he labels 'BlackBerry People'.

"Who is our target customer? They are people who want to succeed, but not necessity in terms of business," Heins said, pointing out it could be in terms of sports, family or other life goals.

And when it came to questions, Heins was combative and confident.

"We know we're in a big fight at the moment, but I'm not here to be in the game. I'm here to win."