Challenge

Telstra has faced a massive change in industry structure with the NBN tearing at the traditional heart of the business; this provided a burning platform for change. Additionally, there was an impending succession of the CEO, significant change at the executive level, increasingly competitive market conditions in the traditional stronghold of mobile, and a recognised need to reduce costs significantly.

The temptation with all of these challenges was for Telstra’s leaders to retreat into their silos or become territorial, when the exact opposite was required to adapt to, and take advantage of, the massive challenges and opportunities ahead.

The new CEO, Andy Penn, decided to unite the organisation around a new and compelling vision. Telstra would become a world-class technology company that empowers people to connect. This vision became the burning ambition and set the context for all of our work together.

Solutions

Initially, we undertook diagnostics to determine Telstra’s level of alignment to its vision, as well as to determine the leadership effectiveness of the most senior leaders. These diagnostics led to a focus on five key streams of work, in close collaboration with key internal change agents.

The first stream aimed to close the gap between leadership intention and leadership impact. Each senior executive received 360-degree feedback, regular personal coaching and developed a ‘leadership scorecard’ to encourage alignment between KPIs, quarterly deliverables and desired behavioural shifts. Team feedback processes were introduced to improve transparency, accountability and goal alignment across divisions. The second stream aimed to build a compelling narrative to support the new vision, which was then reinforced in a broad range of communication channels.

The third stream aimed to increase the productivity of the organisation’s most important meetings. Through quantitative and qualitative data, as well as extensive observation, we agreed ten enablers and ten inhibitors to meeting effectiveness. This resulted in 20 recommendations supported by tools, templates and a range of new practices that were implemented across all key meetings.

The fourth stream aimed to bring Telstra’s values to life. The values were seen as aspirational and were not always translated into leadership behaviour. Together, we turned the values into behavioural standards, measured them regularly and provided forums for feedback and mutual accountability. The fifth stream aimed to increase the effective implementation of the organisation’s strategic initiatives, by setting each initiative up for success using contracting disciplines. A case study project was selected and used as a proof point for the new contracting process to produce clear outcomes with no wasted effort, and this became the catalyst to spread the practices widely.

Given the scale of the organisation and executive commitment to our work together, we then embarked upon an ambitious project to embed all of this work into the DNA of Telstra over time – something that was enabled via technology, capability transfer and close collaboration with the CEO Office, HR, Communications, Strategy and several senior executives who sponsored each stream of work.

Outcomes

Over the three years of our partnership, we were able to significantly increase alignment across executive levels to the vision, values and strategy. Leadership effectiveness at the most senior levels increased by some 20%, off an already constructive base. Meeting effectiveness for executive forums increased by an average of 32%, enabling much greater outcomes with far less effort. The focus on alignment and interdependencies across the organisation enabled peers to collaborate and support one another in the achievement of their goals, breaking down silos that had been present for some time.