I wouldn’t normally do this but I can’t see much publicity to sell the album and hopefully this may generate some money for ChildLine…
The event (minus the “Sons Of Albion”) can be downloaded here Disc 1 and Disc 2I’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.
Dermot Gleeson, chairman of Allied Irish, ducked to avoid the missiles after addressing an extraordinary general meeting at its Dublin HQ.
Pensioner Gary Keogh said he felt compelled to throw the eggs after Mr Gleeson tried to speak over another shareholder.
Mr Keogh, from Blackrock in south Dublin, was removed from the building.
He said he was extremely angry after losing his pension in the economic downturn.
"The whole board should be replaced by Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck," he added.
"I have no pension. My pension now is wiped out because of AIB. I cannot sell the shares because they are useless.
"If we didn't live in a tolerant society, the chairman and the rest of the board would be hanging by their necks with piano wire out on the road."
I took part in a panel discussion today about networks. Over seventy industry leaders from across the UK. Was FTTH (fibre to the home) a good investment? Would FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) be cheaper and just as good? How do network operators reduce their costs?
I was surrounded by people all intensely interested in networks. One person (a Welsh MP) pointed out that the EU defined broadband as anything above 150kb/s and some other organisation had defined it is anything above 256kb/s (from memory). The UK government had so far not defined what it means by “broadband” and therefore the ambition to get broadband into every home by 2012 probably achievable simply by defining UK broadband as anything above 32kb/s.
However….During the discussion it was easy to get caught up in the hype and technology and how you could get 40Mb to the home. Would the customer pay for it, and how much?
Consumers don’t by broadband because they want broadband – sure early adopters and techys might get into a “my broadband is bigger than your broadband” type of discussion, but, as the actress said to the bishop, it isn’t about size its what you do with it.
Consumers buy broadband as a means of getting to content. In fact going back to the basic telephone service people wanted to talk to other people. The networks provided the connection and the consumers the content.
Technology and assets give companies a barrier to competition. Their ability to control and use the technology allow them to dictate the way it is used and who uses it.
The record industry is a good example – recording studios and vinyl pressing plants were expensive and inexcusable technologies for new companies to invest in and entre the market. They were certainly not in the reach of the consumer. But as new technologies came along so it eroded this control/power. Pressing plants were sold off as what differentiated one label from another was not how well the record was made but what was on it.
Broadcasters had technology but also had the benefit of limited radio spectrum. The licensing regimes of the UK and Europe, meant that it was difficult for new entrants to make the investment and take the risk to bid for a license. This additional barrier (lower in radio broadcasting) kept them in control and complacent, beyond the natural life of their business models.
Anyway back to networks… These too are starting to lose their power as one network (fixed line or mobile) starts to look very much like the other. Why chose one over another: –
What has changed for the network operators is that the desirable/compelling/valuable content that customers want to get to, is not user generated, point to point of voice and data.
So what do network operators (service providers) need to do? Do they want to simply survive or do they want to transform?
Railway operators never got into air transport. Yet they were wealthy organisations at the time and could have easily expanded. Enormous synergies in scheduling time tables, selling tickets, reservations, engineering operations, logistics of rolling stock/planes, and staff roles. But they were rail operators, stuck with the technology and not the transport market need they serviced.
Networks operators follow the same route, married to providing networks and not the fulfilment of the consumers’ demand for content access.
So how do I see the network providers evolving, as apposed to becoming a low cost commodity utility? One thought…
The telephone directory was a way of customers finding out information about what (or in this case who) was on the network. As the internet grows (around 5,000 pages/second in 2008) it is increasingly difficult for the consumer to find what they want. Google (fast as it is) is throwing up a mountain of information to sort through. How many pages am I going to visit before I find the information I was after? You Tube. Very funny clips, but if I have to spend 50-minutes watch dross, to find a 3-minute gem, I’m going to start to rely on my friends sending me a link in an email. Much more efficient!
As content (quality, professional production) gets onto the internet, how does the consumer no it even exists, let alone where to find it. Is there a role for the network provider to be trusted recommender or aggregator of content? Is that worth paying for? Collect information on what I like and sell it on, but let me see some benefit. And not just in the adverts
I think it is almost impossible to predict what the consequences will be if 40+Mb/s is delivered to the home but some indicators now are not good.
Of the population that can get broadband, the take-up is way less than 50%. So not the “must have” technology.
Of the people that do have broadband around 50% get less than 1Mb/s download speed. Assuming that they are putting up with this (as they continue to pay) if not delighted, then 4Mb/s would probably fit their current needs not 40Mbit. “What about HDTV?” I hear you cry. Does anyone want to stream live HDTV over the internet?
Take the scenario that there are two adults and two teenagers, each simultaneously watching a streamed HDTV programme. 10,000 lines in an exchange area x 4 40,000 video streams. Will the backbone cope –
“Some will be watching the same programme?” Even if they are if two people watch the same if they start at different times they are different streams.
“Cache the content in the local exchange!” for how long? 3 hours of HDTV per person adds up to a lot of storage.
I’m sure 40Mbit to the home will come. It could enable social change (maybe even a revolution) with people working from home and a growth in cottage industries, a reduction in travel and CO2 emissions. Our kids are already used to interacting and socialising and would probably be easy to adapt and adopt this working environment. But will we look at the society that creates with pride?
Continuing the theme of measuring stuff… Measuring things gives a number, numbers are factual and absolutes, thereby giving the illusion that the results are scientific and trustworthy. Science would say that if you repeated the experiment (measurement) again, that you were more than likely come to the same or a very similar result.
Market surveys, are a measure of consumer behaviour are frequently so badly designed that I often wonder what they do with the results. Everyone thinks they can design a questionnaire and I’m sure that some are designed by idiots.
I get frustrated when I want to give my opinion on a subject and get a question that is ambiguous, irrelevant or partial.
Example:-
Do you trust shop assistants in Dixons? Yes or no.
Does this mean trust their expertise, honesty, that they are a shop assistant, only while they are in Dixons. If it means expertise, that depends on what product I’m looking for, their confidence, and the advice/answers they give.
If I trust a shop assistant in one shop do they think I homogenise their entire workforce as being trustworthy (or not). Sure some shop seem to train (motivate) all there staff to sell the most expensive thing as fast as possible. But just because they push the extended warranty (something I don’t believe in) doesn’t mean I don’t trust them. I realise this is company policy and it is the company I don’t trust.
So you see an apparently simple question has lots of possibilities… and there is more!
A classic mistake with a survey, that I was once told (urban legend or true?) was to be careful who you ask. During WW2 they asked the crew of returning Lancaster bombers where they had been attacked from, by the German fighters. They answer was “From underneath”. So they improved the defences under the planes and found that the losses increased. Why?
Well they asked the returning crews. The ones that had got shot down where attacked from above and it was the defences on top of the plane that needed improvement.
What kicked this train of thought off was, I go asked to complete a survey on distance learning by the 20th April. But I don’t start the course until the 23rd and I am unlikely to have an opinion of any value for several weeks at least.
Listening to the news today and there is a story about someone (an expert) advising language teachers to coach their students for the oral exam by practicing the conversation as scripts. The conversations are apparently recorded and an examiner listens to them to award a mark in an exam.
Is this cheating? If you don’t live in a country or community that regularly uses the language, then to some extent you probably are learning the language by rote. The exam is to test the student’s ability to be able to hold a conversation in a foreign language. In this case, the student can hold a specific conversation, but not an impromptu conversation. So I’d say it’s cheating!
Why are they (the teachers) doing this? Well exams are not just about how good the student is. The exams are used to determine the teachers and schools performance. By having more students pass or at higher grades they (teachers and schools) improve there position relative to their peers. It probably means more money or at least less interference.
I was reminded of the need to cut down times on hospital waiting list. In this case time on the waiting list were cut but having “pre-waiting lists” or if the patient was going to be on the list too long referring them back to the GP and taking them off the list. All sorts of innovative ways to ensure those that were measuring this got what they wanted.
The police crime rate clear-up (the percentage of crimes solved) is measured and at one time they were doing deals with criminals that if they confessed to more crimes. So the crime clear-up rate went up but the amount of crime also went up! Why? Well once a crime had been “solved” there was no further investigation, so the real culprit was never found and was free to continue to commit crimes. And do we believe the statistic anyway?
Again those that were doing the measuring got what they wanted but like so many measures the effect and affect (or the action and results) are not linked as tightly as first thought.
So sales targets and bonuses result are difficult in these times. Innovative sales people insure they are associated with any deal that is about to be one, especially if its big. They spend more time monitoring their industrious colleagues then creating and closing their own deals. Lo and behold all the sales targets are met but the overall sales/sales person are falling. The company is blind to the true market position.
Boards of companies often have a measure on their performance that is related to the share price. If the price per share goes up they must be doing a good job! But being an innovative lot they organise the company to use its profit (or maybe take out a loan) to buy back shares from the market. Simple example: company worth £100m and 200m shares, value per share 50p. Company spends £50m and buys 100m shares now the company is still worth £100m but only 100m shares so the value of each share is £1. The board pat themselves on the back for their ability to double the share value and award themselves large bonuses on the back of their success.
So be careful what you measure as you will probably get what you measure, but not necessarily what you want.
