John Linton
We held Exetel's 59th consecutive monthly board meeting yesterday and finalised our 'batten down the hatches' decisions and actions for the coming unknown period of commercial operations in Australia. I still see no evidence of any company CEO who makes public statements in the print or electronic media making any forecast about the futures of their businesses other than that they have no idea what early 2009 will bring let alone will happen to their businesses for the balance of 2009 and on in to 2010.
For the last hour I have been half watching Fox's Monday Money as I scan the rest of the business press and do various other parts of the start of week work processes and, at least it seems to me, that the lack of ability to see what is even happening today is now a complete mystery to any business person who has ventured an opinion this morning. It's not any different to the 'tenor' of such TV 'analysis' that has been broadcast over the past few months and certainly the people commenting are no more respected or erudite than in the past but the consensus is becoming more solid and more, at least slightly, "hysterical".
The consensus, as I heard it from half a dozen commentators over the past two hours, about the G20 'decisions' in New York over the week end was they were inconsequential generally and completely irrelevant to Australia though undoubtedly Krudd will spout some stupidities when he returns from his latest pointless junket. As I could see no possible value coming from that meeting it was already irrelevant to me.
One exception this morning , in terms of credibility, was Gerry Harvey who is always good to listen to because he has always been successful in what he has done and he has been through the Australian economies ups and downs for the past thirty years and his statements have a 'gravitas' that is missing from most others. His comment was that he had no idea what would happen between now and Christmas and beyond that it was a total guess. His advice - take it a day at a time and do all the sensibly conservative things you can - take whatever tough decisions have to be taken and keep yourself very visible to your employees and explain more than you ever have in the past what you are doing and why.
His key advice -
a) don't be tempted to make statements about any aspect of your business to your suppliers or your shareholders or financiers that you aren't 100% certain about.
b) never make a promise to any employee you aren't 100% certain you can keep.
c) Difficult times are a fact of life in business - they come at times you are often unprepared for but they, eventually, come to an end.
Stating the obvious you might well say and certainly nothing new - but it doesn't do any harm to have the obvious re-stated every now and then - particularly when you haven't got a clue about what the future holds.
I'm not sure whether I'm lingering longer than usual over my start of week tasks because there are a whole series of difficult decisions that have to be made as soon as I complete this daily ritual. The tasks involve all of our major revenue streams and while we have thought about them a great deal and discussed them several times it's still a daunting job to actually execute so many decisions simultaneously - or at least serially with no breaks between successive implementations.
We will complete the introduction of the PAYU plans by the end of this week with the ADSL1 plans 'going live' on the web site sometime later today and the ADSL2 plans by the end of the week.
We will also make a decision on how we provide ADSL1 services by the end of this week and see if there is some way of getting away from Telstra's clutches - though that doesn't look as hopeful as I thought it might over the weekend.
The chances of offering a broader geographic coverage for ADSL2 is something that may be possible but I have my doubts as to what is being talked about verbally will actually transform into a contractual offering we can make use of - maybe my cynicism will be proved wrong for once.
We will also consider whether we can move to 'Phase 2' of HSPA delivery this week based on getting the last of the 'loose ends' tied up - again, probably too optimistic a time frame - but maybe things are more possible now so many major suppliers are 'hunting' for new business as their start of year forecasts are now looking so incredibly wrong?
We will leave all our current plans/service pricing in place as it seems that those offerings have retained their 'market appeal' and have exhibited no decline in uptake or retention ability - at least up to today. Our objectives in adding to the current 'marketplaces' that we address is designed to protect us against any sudden change in that situation.
So its a fairly crucial week or Exetel as we put the last aspects of our 'tough times' decisions in place - in terms of our product/service offerings.
Christmas is looking a long, long way away.