John Linton ......but I've been too busy to notice?
There are so many negative aspects of commercial life at the moment it is becoming more difficult to maintain sensible perspectives about many of the major operations and plans for new operations that are currently occupying my, and other Exetel people's, time. Let me say that I do not believe a word printed in the financial media and I never listen to radio or watch TV financial news because, at the end of the day, anyone who actually could understand anything real about finance is making money using their knowledge not printing it/speaking it for free on public media. However the torrents of uninformed, almost entirely negative, opinions that wash over every business conversation I seem to become involved with since I have returned from holidays is becoming unsettling. It's as if there is no 'good news' at all. Announcements (as opposed to pronouncements, like this are the real concern:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8812260/World-facing-worst-financial-crisis-in-history-Bank-of-England-Governor-says.html
Perhaps now the football is over, and was over for many team's supporters/followers some weeks ago, 'financial news' has been used to fill the conversational voids - there is only so much speculation on the team's prospects for next season that can be done at this time. I have no other explanation as to why so many totally uninformed people I have spoken with lately seem to think they have a valid opinion on what will happen to the world's finances generally, Australia's in particular and our industry's in detail. But if the people I have spoken to over the last ten days are right then everything is about to fall apart...and probably stay that way for the foreseeable future. Personally I don't see that immediately happening in the very few/limited areas of commerce that Exetel is involved in but the constant deluge of negativity is beginning to 'fray my nerves'....and that's after only ending my holiday only a few days ago.
There is no doubt that very significant changes began to happen in our industry from the time Krudd began to meddle in the industry in an attempt to bolster the chances of replacing the Howard government. This was either the trigger, or at least part of it, for Telstra to make massive changes to the way it does business - essentially to eliminate wholesaling services and to prepare to re-capture its eroding monopoly. This 'seismic' change has been making its way through various aspects of the communications industry for the past few years destroying many of the previous methods of doing business and ensuring that doing any sort of business became more difficult for everyone - including Telstra. While I think it's pretty clear how this will turn out to be in three years time, perhaps a little longer, it is much, much harder to see what will happen quarter by quarter between now and then.
This is neither a good nor a bad thing - if anything it's simply a cyclical thing which is easy to say but very difficult to 'live through'. We had rough years in FY2009, FY2010 and again in FY2011 - but survived them intact and having made some good progress towards the major changes to Exetel that we have been pursuing for almost three years now. The first three months of the new year turned out slightly above target and the acceleration of our corporate growth has continued. Our ambitious plans are on target, admittedly with a huge, and increasing, amount of work to be done every day into the wild blue yonder but that is all positive. Of course we have huge challenges to overcome but then any business that plans to grow will always face huge challenges - particularly in financially challenging times.
I think the most sensible thing now is to stop talking with people who express negative views based on too little knowledge. It proved to be a sensible antidote to Chicken Little.
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