An Executive’s Tale (cont'd)

"Well, now that's the odd thing," Dave sighed. "Their plan was to reorganize, then assign various people around the company to put together procedures around the new organization, but that initiative seems to be going nowhere. They certainly did not recommend any new procedures themselves - after all, they ' re IT guys and really don't know much about how network operates. Maybe it wasn ' t such a good idea to get them involved after all."

"As a consultant myself I'm not going to comment on that," I said with a smile, "but I think now you can tell me what to do next..."

"Yeah, I get it now, Tom. I ' m going back to the troublesome VP to get his procedures - the ones that he uses internally to get his great numbers and employee satisfaction. I ' ll implement those throughout network. I probably should look closely at how they used to be organized as well and see if we can clone that in the rest of the company. That part is clear to me now. But, how do I deal with the resistance to implementing these procedures? They tried it themselves and it didn ' t work so well. What will make it different this time?"

I smiled. "Dave, did you read that book I told you about this time last year- Execution , but Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan?"

"Well," he said with a look of chagrin, "I did read it, but really have a hard time relating it to this situation."

"Well get it back out and read the section entitled 'Leaders Get the Behavior They Exhibit and Tolerate.' I would be willing to bet a really nice lunch at that steak house you like that your network managers and directors don't like managing to procedures, don't like where they came from, and at best paid lip service to them when they came out, then totally ignored them."

"I'd have to check, but you ' re probably right. I know that nobody's bonus objectives are related to procedures in any way. In fact, bonus objectives in network are not related to business results at all - they are based on internal technical and capital spending targets. That is certainly an area where I think we need to look."

"Gordon Bethune came right out and said it in his book From Worst to First, about how he turned Continental Airlines around. He said, “ What you measure and reward is what you get. ” This is a good example of a business with a lot of the same characteristics as yours: very technical, yet selling services to a non-technical customer base."

"Tom, you've given me a lot to think about, ” Dave said. “ I think I need to get this troublesome VP in my office as soon as possible. Are you available to help me talk to him and the rest of the network team and translate what they tell me into English?"

“You bet,” I replied.

“Well then, it’s lunch time. Let’s get that steak.”

About the author
Tom Wiencko is a professional consultant who has worked in the telecom industry for over 20 years. Mr. Wiencko’s is an expert in many areas of telecommunications technology related to systems and business processes. As President of Wiencko & Associates, he has led projects for major carriers in a wide variety of systems areas, such as the first switch based real-time billing application, a precursor to current pre-paid systems, mediation platforms, performance management, and transport management, ordering and workflow systems. Mr. Wiencko has also personally managed large network integrations and technical consolidations as the result of industry consolidation mergers. He can be reached at: tew@wiencko.com.

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