John Linton .....to make a major contribution to the IT/Communications industry....who can ever forget what Bill Gates did at the age of 22?
We had the Exetel end of financial year cocktail party last night - nothing fancy - we booked a room at one of those nice pubs near the casino and served some finger food with an open bar and selected some very good wine with no restrictions on the mixed drinks people could order. We ordered a bus to pick everyone up from the office at 5.30pm and had last drinks at 8.30 pm - so it wasn't either elaborate or long but enough, for those with that inclination, to move well past 'sobriety' and for those not inclined to do that to have a chat with whoever they wished to including some people from our major suppliers whom we also invited (and to, once again, fail to work out how the 'close up' conjuror kept fooling them with his 'magic').
The only 'formality' was showing the new TV ad for the first time (in its not quite finished state) and I made a short address which was less than 5 minutes and by no means formal because I speak in the same way I write this blog - on topics uppermost in my mind at the time and without notes or "visual aids". The ad looked really good - very simple but makes the point strongly and easily and without hyperbole, condescension or annoyingly. Everybody, perhaps because of the alcohol, was very enthusiastic and our suppliers also said nice things about it so maybe it will do what we hope in rural and regional Australia. Time enough to consider that when it begins to run tomorrow week.
Although I see our people every day, or perhaps because of that, it seems it's not until you see them all together in a smaller space and in a much different 'atmosphere' that you notice differences to the past. One of the obvious differences is that even with moving almost all our back office functions to Sri Lanka there are a lot more people working in Sydney than there was a year ago. The second obvious difference is that approximately 20% of our Sydney personnel are females and with their 'cocktail dresses' and other glamorous attributes make a big difference to the 'atmosphere' and one has to admit the noise volume - not that's a bad thing.
The other major aspect remarked on by two of our supplier personnel was the overall extremely young age of Exetel's personnel which one of them expressed as "John, how on Earth do you cope with all these Gen Yers?" I had never noticed, except in a generally vague way, but his point was well made. Although we have no 'help desk' personnel in the North Sydney office any more our personnel are mostly in their very early 20s and I suppose this does contrast with our suppliers whose average personnel ages are early to mid 30s with far more 'senior' people making up a relatively high proportion of total staff. I have never given it any thought other than very casually. In my commercial experience, including very obviously my own situation at the start of my working life, I have never seen being very young as much of a hindrance to working in IT/Commuications where technology rapidly evolves and changes and, in many ways, the 'fearlessness' of youth is quite a significant advantage.
I very much doubt that Exetel is in any way much different to all start up 'technical' companies where, by definition, the overwhelming constraints of budget and time generally mean that your recruitment is based on university graduates which then ensures, once you pass the 'start up' phases your first line managers are promoted from that hiring age group who themselves continue to manage people only a year or so younger than themselves as the recruiting basis doesn't change. All of Exetel's "management" is promoted from within the company which means, after five + years of operations it is almost completely Gen Y (with the obvious exceptions of its founders who are older than time itself).
While the lack of experience is evident in almost everything a very young person says and does, that is an inevitability. The fearlessness more than makes up for that in almost all situations and the enthusiasm that 'freshness' adds to decision making is priceless in an industry like communications. If I had to put a value on what I regarded as the most desirable characteristics in a manager I would rank 'experience' nowhere and innovation and fearlessness at the top - I would not disqualify any person on 'age' or lack of experience - either old or young. So when another supplier person asked me if I thought having practically no-one in Exetel who had worked in the industry before coming to Exetel was a downside of this 'policy' I said if there was a downside I hadn't noticed it.
Driving home I thought about the 'age' issue a little more and saw no reason to take any different attitude to Exetel's recruiting nor the process of only promoting from within the company - something that in the years I was with IBM I saw work without any downside for the almost ten years that I was there and have either copied unconsciously or because as I said earlier there really is no other option for a start up company. We do need to find a future CEO or COO/General Manager (perhaps both) within the not too distant future and that will pose some quite serious problems; in many different ways.
It will be something Exetel's directors will need to seriously consider over the next month or so but my current view is that we woud work out the same pragmatic approach to that as we have to all our other personnel issues to date. We certainly won't be recruiting a "seasoned executive from the industry" as someone suggested to me recently - I think my dismissal was phrased along the lines of "seasoned is what I expect the Christmas turkey to be and when ever I hear the word "seasoned" I associated it with a "turkey"" - that ended the conversation quite abruptly.
I suppose it's entirely possible that Exetel will go from having by far the oldest CEO in the Australian ISP 'space' to by far the youngest. Then again, yet again, I may be completely wrong.