John Linton ....Plus Ca Meme Screw Ups.
The end of another week cutting in half the time left to finish the myriad of planning and other tasks left before taking a break. The efforts over the past week don't seem to have diminished the length of the 'to do' list nor does the finalisation processes relating to next years business plan seem to have made much progress....though given the time and effort put in to them by various people that should have been the case. We continue to make some progress on a number of fronts though and perhaps I will be able to go on leave on Monday week with a relatively clear conscience.
During the past week I have met with each of people who report directly to me and thanked them for their amazing efforts over the past 12 months and shared with them the results of the planning for the coming year while ensuring, as best as I am able, to explain why we are making the many changes that they will be part of over the coming months. It is a very pleasant experience to sit down with the key people in your company away from the office for a couple of hours and realise what truly competent and nice people you work with.
Steve will complete that process with the people he is responsible for when he is in Sydney next week. Steve and I will also meet with two of our three major suppliers next week to 'brief' them on the changes we are undertaking with a much less comprehensive set of explanations. We will then hold an end of year celebration function next Friday evening after which I don't intend to think about things Exetel very much over the following three weeks until we break our trip home from Europe via Colombo to do the end of financial year reviews of the operations in Sri Lanka.
So, I realised that this was a "long weekend" a couple of days ago which, while days of the week have no meaning to me in terms of carrying out the work that needs to be done in running a business of Exetel's size, it does slow down communication with the world beyond Exetel which, because of our planned departure date, is a bit of a nuisance as it reduces the number of 'working days' by 20% next week. I suppose that really means that I have got out of the habit of planning to use three or four day weekends usefully and by constantly forgetting them find them a mild irritation rather than a pleasurable break. It's a sad commentary, at least in some ways, that a person can find no difference in the pleasure derived from their 'work' to the pleasure they derive from anything else....although that could, at least in some other ways, be seen as a plus.
One new 'head ache' that needs to be addressed was this offer sent to me by a blog reader from a company called Pennytel:
http://promotion.pennytel.com/
I didn't bother to read the details which I assume will not be as good as the 'head line' but for such an 'offer' to be made at all by a reseller of Optus wireless broadband services seems very strange to me. gigabytes of Optus wireless data would cost Exetel very close to $A140.00 a month - I can't conceive of how Optus Wholesale can sell to anyone at a price that permits their reseller to make such an offer. Apart from the offer by Pennytel it would be logical to assume that Optus is making similar offers to its other wholesale customers which makes a dog's breakfast of attempting to find any sensible way for Exetel to provide a viable Optus based wireless broadband service in the future.
So part of this weekend will have to be spent removing all expectations of revenue (let alone profit) derived from Optus wireless services which leaves a hole in the just completed planning processes and a very bad taste in my mouth for so completely screwing up over three years of efforts by Exetel personnel and wasting so much money - it is yet another reminder that whatever little ability I may have thought I once had in making sensible decisions is now consigned to the quickly receding past and that I need to find a less expensive way of wasting my time in the coming year.
I suppose that is one useful thing about long weekends - they give you time screw up one more time.
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