John Linton
......for some personality types of which I appear to be one.
We held our monthly board meeting earlier this week which comprises brief updates by each of Exetel's Australian managers, an in depth examination of the financial state of the business as a whole over the past month and any required modifications of the current operating plan followed by a fixed agenda review of the company in terms of future progress and opportunities which we usually do over lunch in some pleasant restaurant most often. We have been doing this monthly since February 2004 in a similar format and it has proven to be a useful review process to which each of Exetel's three directors contribute to in their different ways. This meeting was as pleasant as most and there were few real problems to address of any urgency but, for reasons I can't put my 'finger on', it was vaguely unsatisfying and that has 'nagged at me' for the past two days.
It has become obvious, at least to me, that we have gradually moved away from the initial time frames and 'size' objectives we started the company to achieve getting on for six years ago. Our overall objectives haven't changed in any way at all (providing the lowest cost services at the highest levels of quality and therefore benefiting all Australian human and non-human inhabitants) but the number of customers/annual revenue at which this becomes achievable is turning out to be far larger than our initial estimates of 100,000 customers and a simple product/service set. That is almost certainly due, mostly, to our naivety with a smaller contribution from technology's tendency to widen it's impact each year more significantly than most people plan for.
So what I thought might well be possible to accomplish within 5 years is clearly not going to be possible (that time frame having well and truly passed). Which leaves more than one problem. As far as I can see the volumes required to make the sort of difference we had in mind when we decided to 'create' Exetel are going to require something like another 4 years of very, very hard work to achieve and that is assuming the new estimates are more accurate than the estimates we started with; which is by no means certain. Even if the estimates are somewhere in the ball park the size company in terms of personnel and facilities is likely to be at least three times the size of the current company and therefore of a very different composition and operational methodology than the current company and will require very different management styles than that on which we have based Exetel so far. It's not something I can look forward to with any great enthusiasm.
I am uncertain whether I, personally, am even close to being the right person to take on such a venture as everything that I personally can contribute to building a small business I have already done over the past six years and, within the limits of a $A50 - $60 million annual revenue company, I am very happy with what we have achieved over that time. I am even happy to complete, should that be possible, the more than doubling of Exetel in terms of revenue and personnel over the next 12 - 18 months by growing the corporate part of our business very rapidly - that is something I know how to do and have little doubt about being able to going very close to achieving it if not achieving it to the last dollar and cent. I'm pretty sure that I also know how to grow our residential business much faster than we have grown it to date but I'm not as sure about that as I am about growing the corporate business.
So, perhaps in my arrogance, I am not doubting that we possess the knowledge or ability of achieving the monetary targets that are involved in having a greater effect on the Australian marketplaces that are necessary to bring about the changes that are necessary. I am doubting the desirability of devoting another four years to trying to accomplish that - which if it isn't attempted makes the efforts expended over the past six years by so many people (within and outside Exetel - suppliers and customers) of much less value. I suppose the easiest 'solution' is just to proceed on month by month and see how it turns out - it has worked out pretty much as planned so far in monetary terms for the investors, suppliers and customers so far and the fact that the overall objective has not been even vaguely achieved is probably of only real importance to me - this is my last commercial venture and I wanted it to be a worthwhile contribution to the country of my 'adoption'.
Not everyone can always achieve what they want to get from their lives - perhaps some of us have to settle for just trying their best most of the time but not actually ever accomplishing anything.