NBN Co CIO: The IT leadership strategy of Australia’s new telco - Part 1
- 15 August, 2011 11:04
- Comments
NBN Co CIO, Claire Rawlins with mentor and former BT colleague, Al-Noor Ramji
NBN Co has a head start that would leave many telcos green with envy. Armed with $27 billion in government funding, and at least $9 billion from debt markets, the two-year old National Broadband Network wholesaler has the resources and backing that could catapult it ahead many of its decadesold equivalents.
That’s not to say the challenge before the organisation isn’t any less daunting; within the decade NBN Co is set to change broadband in Australia. The monopoly wholesaler is bound by carefully worded legislation to provide equal access to many of those it will compete with on a shiny fibre-to-the-home network, and satellite and wireless offshoots.
Read more Australia’s National Broadband Network
Best of all, the company is starting with a clean slate.
Although the company will need to scale rapidly in the coming years, adding at least 1000 staff in the next year alone, there are no unnecessary obstacles within the company itself.
Read more about IT leaders in CIO Australia’s Management category.
Clearly, Rawlins felt the same way; she turned down two senior positions at financial institutions to join NBN Co in late 2009. Just 18 months into the role, however, she admits it was something about which she was initially naïve.
“One of the things I’ve underestimated is the amount of ingrained thinking,” she says. “You need to encourage people to think out of the box and not just repeat what they already know.”
The funding and publicity surrounding the company are boons enough for NBN Co to attract the best and brightest minds in the business. About 15,000 people have responded to job offerings at the company so far. But the organisation’s immaturity can hinder as much as it can help.
“You don’t have a common culture, you don’t have a history as a group,” NBN Co’s chief enterprise architect and Rawlins’ second in command, Bill Barnett, says. “What you have are little tribes of people who each came from a common background so it can be really hard to achieve coordinated action across that group of people.”
Despite NBN Co’s growth since its first board meeting in April 2009, there is a way to go before the organisation builds the kind of culture associated with the likes of a well-established telco such as Telstra, or even a smaller provider. And it is culture that is needed for the company to thrive; an idea championed by Rawlins’ ex-colleague and mentor, Al-Noor Ramji.
Ramji, Rawlins and Barnett have all crawled through the mires both of financial institutions and telcos during better part of two decades, in companies such as British investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, US telco Qwest and British Telecom (BT), where, as first group CIO, Ramji was responsible for integrating the network and technology of a telco whose legacy surpasses most others.
Ramji would by no means call his time at BT an easy ride. ‘Legacy’ — both in terms of systems and thinking — is often considered to be counterproductive to change management, particularly when combined with ingrained attitudes, but Ramji acknowledges the advantage of a team whose relatively high average age and inherent experience brought with it a foundation that benefited his change agenda.
They became affectionately known as the ‘Weebes’ (‘we be here before you, we be here after you’). Thanks to their efforts, by the time the new IT heads arrived, BT’s workforce had up to 144,000 established network and infrastructure metrics, providing the basis to implement and effectively gauge the merger of the telco’s systems over the next six years.
Read Part 2 of this interview - Going commercial
Follow CIO Australia on Twitter: @CIO_Australia
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email CIO
- Follow CIO on twitter
-
Why change management doesn’t work
-
Larry Page wants to see your medical records
-
Dual-Persona Smartphones Not a BYOD Panacea
-
After two-year hiatus, EFF accepts bitcoin donations again
-
CIOs struggle to deliver timely mobile business apps: survey
-
Governance For All - Empowering IT and Business Content Owners
Governance for all is more than an IT initiative or a goal written in a plan document; it’s a strategy that unites IT and business content owners to achieve their SharePoint goals. At its best, governance means empowering self-governance, with tools like delegated access, effective reporting, and automated policy enforcement. This white paper explains how to create a “governance for all” strategy that will enhance SharePoint adoption and its benefits to the organization. Read now. -
Clearing the Clouds for Midmarket Businesses
Cloud computing promises to help midmarket companies reduce cost and complexity in the IT equation – and gain the flexibility and agility they need to thrive. Yet charting a clear course to the cloud isn’t always easy. In this paper, we aim to clear the clouds. We examine different cloud computing models, discuss the types of requirements that each can best address, and consider what midmarket businesses should look for in a cloud solutions provider. -
The Big Data Security Analytics Era is Here
Large organisations can no longer rely on preventive security systems, point security tools, manual processes, and hardened configurations to protect them from targeted attacks and advanced malware. Henceforth, security management must be based upon continuous monitoring and data analysis for up‐to-the‐minute situational awareness and rapid data-driven security decisions. This means that large organisations have entered the era of big data security analytics. Learn more.
Get exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis. 
