John Linton .....and it's almost the end of August.
This will be a good month for Exetel in terms of revenues with practically all aspects of our business performing above (or in the relevant cases - below) the levels set in the business plan. Perhaps that only means that the various targets we have set are too modest and therefore too easy to achieve? Whatever the reasoning the company overall feels 'tighter' than it did towards the end of the last financial year.
Being part of running any sort of business or other type of organisation is a very significant responsibility particularly when the decisions you make have effects on many other people within the operation and, in the event you supply services/products to end users, any decision you make has at least a 'ripple effect' on many tens of thousands of other people. The article I cited yesterday brought back memories other than those of aspects of long forgotten technologies. Together with those happy thoughts about my very early days of association with what was to become the IT industry were less happy thoughts about some of my and other people I worked with experiences with "managers" who I had the misfortune to encounter over those early years.
I could best sum up my experiences of being "managed" in those first two decades of my business life by saying that I was unfortunate enough to only ever have one manager who I remember with any sort of enthusiasm. (given other people's experiences perhaps I was actually fortunate to have had one I have positive thoughts about). I was not particularly disadvantaged by those experiences, partly because I was a 'natural survivor' (ten years at boarding school from the age of seven teaches you to survive better than any other scenario I have subsequently encountered), and partly because when I became involved in 'selling things' my sales performances protected me from the sheer indifference and often casual 'brutality' of the "people" appointed to be my first and second line managers. When I worked for smaller companies than IBM in Australia at more senior levels (Sperry Univac and then Fujitsu) I realised that management lack of care/interest in employees reached to the very top of those companies with CEOs completely incompetent to carry out their responsibilities (this from detailed first hand observation and experience) and who would struggle to remember the names of more than a handful of people within their organisations.
So what has all this self indulgent rambling got to do with anything? Probably very little other than I have begun to notice that Exetel has grown to a point where I would struggle to know how the people management within Exetel is being done. This has happened gradually over time and the slowly increasing number of people employed in Exetel's two main locations. This is entirely my own fault and although I could point to the unbelievable onerous nature of operating a small/medium business in the Australian communications industry over the past three years - that is no excuse for beginning to become like the people I have despised all my working life.......too busy looking after my own interests to properly carry out my 'managerial obligations'. I see too many instances of people not adhering to the few simple tenets of discharging a manager of people's duties.
I don't like what I am currently seeing and need to address the issues when I have fully understood them. I am hoping that a few weeks in Europe doing very different things will help me revive my flagging spirits and allow me to address what I have clearly neglected for far too long.
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