John Linton
The new calendar year has begun exceptionally well with applications for new ADSL1, ADSL2 and wireless broadband services all tracking at over 50% higher than for the first 8 days of January 2008. Naturally 8 days is not a truly indicative period of what is going to happen but it has been something I've looked at each year of Exetel's 'life over the last 5 years and it has been a pretty good guide to what the full year tracks at. So the indications are that we will attract a much higher volume than we did last year when we operated the company very, very conservatively in many ways despite the lack of real signs of any overall economic downturn.
We made a payment yesterday to start the ambitious project in Sri Lanka which, if it is successful, will play a part in beginning to ease the rural poverty in that country and also reduce the shooting of the dwindling number of wild elephants there. We also sent out the increased monthly payments to the endangered species programs we, and our customers support - totalling well over $A50,000 for January (mainly because of the large initial payment to the Milk/Elephant project but also because we have increased the money we commit to each of the projects we support).
Our monthly recurrent bill run was a new 'record' but it only grew by a very small amount because we, unlike any other data communications company in Australia, reduced the plan charges for over 50% of our CURRENT customers by quite substantial amounts AS Well AS increasing the down load allowances on ALL current plans - something that is extraordinarily rare in this industry.
We also hired a record number of people in a single month as well as giving a record number of employees salary increases and I notice our payments of commissions to agents has continued to increase to a very substantial level and our purchases from suppliers reached new highs in December with payments to Optus becoming the highest recurrent amount we have ever paid in one month to any supplier....all payments were made ahead of their due dates.
In terms of every 'bench mark' we measure the progress of the company against - Exetel is doing better now that at any time in its existence and there are no indications in any of the things that we measure that this trend will not continue over the coming months - there appears to be no 'cloud, no bigger than a man's hand on any horizon' that I can meaningfully scan.......but, and this is the issue for me personally.....I lack any sort of enthusiasm for the daily tasks I perform and nothing I do goes anywhere towards re-kindling the enthusiasm, let alone the creativity that seemed to be so easy to bring to bear on any given situation in the past. Like any busy manager I dismiss these feelings by simply getting on with the next task and then the next but as a part owner of Exetel I look at the results of my efforts with less and less tolerance for the quality and creativity of the work I perform.
I think I'd have had more than a 'quiet word' with any person either in Exetel or in any other organisation in which I've held some sort of overall management position who began to perform as I am doing lately but I can't seem to find the words I need to say to myself. An odd situation and one I am failing to address let alone resolve....and, yes, not being a complete fool I have run through all of the obvious options. Doubtless a solution will be found, one way or another, in the near future but in the meantime it is annoying to wake up each day with little or no enthusiasm for the day ahead.
So it was with a great deal of relief that I woke up this morning with the understanding of what was causing my dis-illusionment and how to 'banish' it forever. It was so simple and so obvious it is embarrassing to realise how stupid I have been. All I have to do is stop having contact with total d***heads and actually listening/reading what they say. If I do this I will get 40% of my day back and I can do something about restoring some sort of reasonable health which is the root cause of all of my current problems.