I’ve worked in the telecoms industry in the UK for over 37-years and I’ve observed is several cultural changes. Post Office Telecommunications was the monopoly corporate national UK provider, that become British Telecom the newly privatised corporation having to deal with competition and regulation to the BT we have today in a relatively, free and open market.
I wouldn’t like to say which cultural era was best however, the current culture that started to take hold in 2006/7 I think spells a dark period that may eventually see BT disappear.
A bit of history, from my perspective...
In the beginning the public corporation knew what was best for you. Everyone needed a functional telephone and it was Black or Ivor. These, along with all telecoms equipment, was tested and tested to be as near perfect (functionally) as possible. They were put out to field trials for up to 5-years before being launched on the general public. They worked and they worked well, but there was no choice. I once asked why they didn’t offer a “Mickey Mouse” phone? I’d seen one similar to the photo and loved the integration on form and function.
The answer? “The telephones we provide do not need gimmicks, they work and they last longer than this plastic rubbish and most of our customers don’t want them anyway”. Nicely pompous, with a dash of arrogance and a denial of what might be. Six years later the phone above was available.
In the run up to privatisation things started to liberalise at the time these seemed like great strides, in hind sight they seem trivial. As an example the TRIM phone
This hadn’t gone through the lengthy testing and field trials and had two major problems. One, it was so light that you couldn’t turn the dial without holding the base unit to prevent it spinning around and taking off across the room. Secondly the illuminated dial was radioactive. A push button version soon emerged. Speed had replaced testing, testing, testing.
The culture, which this is really about, had started to change. There were still rules and processes that had evolved through the civil service and were the core of culture. Rules such as; if you were promoted you had to change departments. This stopped a number of potential bad practices (rife today) and moved people and their knowledge around the business. I have to say benefitting both in the long term. Some things were bad if you asked “why do we do X?” the answer would often be “because we have always done it this way.”
Once privatised BT had to change the culture and the biggest obstacle was the managers and staff that had spent a lifetime in the organisation. So, bravely, BT offered a very generous voluntary leaver package which resulted in a mass exodus of this obstruction to cultural change. The result… It was a company with Alzheimer’s. Nobody left seems to know why or were we had done stuff and a lot of time was spent relearning and reinventing. However, with reinforcement from training initiatives such as “Get it right first time”, “Putting the customer first” and “Total Quality Management” the culture changed from “we know best and we’ll do it in our own time” to become “if it seems reasonable well do it for you and as quickly as we can.”
The change allowed visionaries to be heard, to see the possibilities and to get teams behind them. Competition hadn’t really kicked in and there was less focus on making money (even so BT did make lots of money). I’d also have to say business was still largely a voice service with small amounts of data and even smaller amounts of media on very specialist infrastructure.
The company still had staff canteens. These provided informal knowledge sharing. A mix of managers, operations, sales and commercial staff reinforced communications and team identity.
Canteen closure and the wholesale introduction of home working enable the better utilisation and rationalisation of buildings but the short term easily identifiable financial gain has had a long term less measurable cultural impact.
Mobile phone, the Internet, digitisation and convergence opened up telecoms to more competition. Smaller, more responsive and focused on specific (often high value) market segments resulted in a panicking. Outsiders, apparently visionaries that understood the technology and the way the market would develop were brought in. They unfortunately turned out to be simply riding the wave all the way to the dot.com bubble burst. Everyone at the top seemed to get swept along and confused visionary with story teller. The bigger the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow the more believable the story. Make even a slightly cautionary comment and “you’re being negative”. Make a robust case against doing something and you’re dismisses as one of those poor unfortunate people that “just don’t get it”.
In the last few years it has become a macho culture (I don’t just mean male). Who can shout the loudest, who claims “I did this” when it all went right but seems strangely absent when it all goes wrong. Now culture is to get the next “big win”. Almost like a sugar rush or drug induced high the company looks for the next £200m deal rather that a regular stream of lower value, often higher margin deals.
The story for these £200m deals predicts a future. Targets are set appropriately, forecasts are made and NO ONE DOES DETAIL. So you get… example … To meet the revenue forecast and profitability we need to have just ten national customers on board. This is an ideal service for any rail network operator.
Small boy; “But there aren’t 10 national rail network operators in the UK.”
Apprentice hopeful; “I don’t want to hear that negative talk.”
One month later
Apprentice hopeful: “So where are our ten leads?” I need some honesty here if we are not up for the job we should say so now”
Small boy; “But there aren’t 10 national rail network operators in the UK.”
Apprentice hopeful: “Don’t let me catch you saying that again”
Small boy: “But I though you wanted some honesty”
Apprentice hopeful: “You’re fired..”
If you reward flamboyant risk taking who become the “I travel business class” elite you really shouldn’t be surprised if others jump on the band wagon. Some of those old civil service rules where babies that went with the bathwater.
As the good people leave under this crushing culture those left are a mix of people that:-
· Have been there so long they have become institutionalised and will never leave.
· Would get found out for talking bollocks in a heart beat
· Are unemployable in the real world
· Come from finance where numbers are the on truth and “they get it”
I believe that BT faces as big a cultural challenge as when it was first privatised. The difference is that then the need was obvious and now the need hides behind spreadsheets and management speak.
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