EightBlack.

I’ve got 6 degrees of separation to Telstra at the moment.

And I’m now convinced that there maybe more to the Telstra “transformation” than meets the eye.

Let me explain.

My good friend, Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson presented to Telstra’s Top 200 sales people over the weekend. The audience included the Head Mexican (Sol Trujillo) and his 3 Amigos (marketing man Bill Stewart, operations guy Greg Winn and special adviser Phil Burgess).

I spoke with Michael on Monday and he is thoroughly convinced that the new team at Telstra are a lot more than smoke and mirrors. And Michael should know - his consulting clients include some of the largest company’s around and he’s seen it all before. He worked for Jack Welch at GE when he was based in New York for 14 years and he likens the current transformation at Telstra to what was taking place when Jack Welch decided to turn a behemoth like GE around (Welch went on to grow the company from US$30 billion a year in revenues to US$300 billion).

I was sceptical at first at bringing a contingent of Americans into the main leadership positions. After all, what was wrong with appointing someone like the universally respected Roger Corbett?

There are countless others - or are there?

And I’m not even that patriotic about insisting that we have an Aussie run what must arguably be one of the most difficult gigs in the country.

You have to give Sol and his sidekicks credit where credit is due.

The rollout and deployment of their new Next-G network was nothing short of amazing. It came, as the yanks would say “out of left field”

You also have to admire them from not giving a rats toss about what the government thinks, all the way from Helen Coonan to John Howard. I dont think it troubles any of them that they wont be invited to Canberra’s Xmas Party.

Telstra needs a kick in the arse. Big time. It’s slow, sluggish, full of bureaucrats and has more politics, mini-uprisings and coups than a third world country.

I think a large portion of the Australian community would have been thinking, “well Sol has gone and done it now, he’s pissed off the government, even John Howard, the stock price is in the toilet and selling T3 will be about as easy as selling cocaine to the Amish”.

Many of the press were salivating like Pavlov’s dog over Sol’s imminent be-heading.

The tall poppy syndrome that is still alive and well in Australia would have said “see we told you an American wouldn’t work” and returned to putting up with mediocre returns, mediocre service and a fat, overweight Telco that certainly wasn’t interested in servicing the customer.

However, Sol and the 3 Amigo’s dont seem to be going anywhere. They’ve settled in - comfortable and ready for the street fight. They’re shaking the tree alright. And that’s a good thing.

And you know what, as much as it pains me to say it, I just think they may be onto something. I think they just might make it.

Because Telstra is like an aircraft carrier - it would be a bitch of a thing to steer, but holy christ, when you did get in on course and then unleashed the payload, the results can be devastating.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 7:11 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.