John Linton
....tens of thousands of people manage to do it all round the world every year so it can't be very hard........
I had a very long day yesterday as all major review days almost always are. When I think about it, which I did last night for a while, I have always worked in the IT industry, practically before there ever was one (and the acronym at the time was not even EDP it was ADP which will give some clue to how long ago I began this 'career'). In all of that time the one 'constant' was annual or bi-annual change - by which I mean not gradual change but very significant, sometimes, wrenching change. I wonder whether any of the 13 year old clamourers after 1 tb downloads and 1 gbps fibre connections could even understand making an airline reservation system actually work, and give a customer an acceptable experience, on 1.2 kbps links?
So yesterday we made many fundamental changes to how the Sri Lankan company will operate in the future which required some tough decisions to be made here and some even tougher decisions to be made in terms of how the Australian company will now begin have to change to operate over the coming 'new' calendar year. We have been very fortunate to date in both the Sri Lankan company and the Australian company that we have never had to deal with losing any 'key' personnel. When you look into a business future that will require a great deal of change (and a lot more people) it puts in to perspective how very, very fortunate Exetel has been, to date, in not having to deal with that serious problem and how, almost unthinkingly, we have assumed that the people who have joined the company over the time we have been in business can keep on 'growing' to take on more and more responsibility for more and more complex tasks and, also, take on more and more responsibility for first managing other newer people and then 'teaching' them to 'manage' other people.
To date we have built a smallish, vaguely commercial, enterprise with a little over 100 people in two locations. In that time we have hired approximately 10% of the current personnel with some sort of directly applicable previous experience with 90% being new graduates or graduates with very limited work experience none of which has been applicable to our industry or products/services. We have hired one very experienced person as GM of the Sri Lankan company and, very recently, a very applicably experienced Australian sales director. All other current supervisors and managers within Exetel (in both locations) came to Exetel with absolutely no management experience of any kind. We, like all start up businesses, coped with this via very close inter-action with the founders/directors of the Exetel business and therefore, in some ways, the best possible on the job training for future management positions. However that phase of Exetel formally ended when we set up the SL company where, by definition, none of the Sri Lankan employees would work with Exetel's founders and, even at the stage we are at now with 50 employees contact with Exetel's directors would, largely, be limited to a quarterly progress review every 3 - 4 months.
So, half way through this SL company review we are making plans to double the number of SL personnel over the coming 12 months and are looking at how we develop the supervisory and management personnel to make that possible. Of course, we are also basing this calendar years business plan in Australia on undertaking a very similar magnitude 'program and face identical challenges with the one 'benefit' that Exetel's directors/founders still work in the Australian operation at very 'hands on' levels. (actually I'm not sure just how much of a benefit that may be). Whatever way you look at it Exetel will only be able to begin to attempt its currently planned growth if it can dramatically lift the level of management competencies that are currently in place. Right now - I don't know how to do that and I don't think anyone else in the company does either.
The coming two days here and then the balance of the month back in Sydney will need to produce some much better ideas than currently exist. I dreamed that I was at some sort of event last night and I noticed that I was sitting next to Bill Gates. I asked him how he had managed to build Microsoft so incredibly successfully in the early days with his own total lack of management experience. I wish I could remember 'his' answer.
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