LESSONS FROM A TELCO COLLABORATION

I was at a meeting recently with a funding provider for sustainability projects and we were discussing how to make the best of the funding, the opportunities for collaboration and the need for a clear path of action unimpeded by the red tape of outmoded regulations, threat of litigation and myopic thinking. I was reminded of a work experience I had in 2005 working on a project as a consultant to multinational Telco (name of company deleted) when they were bringing in the first 3G networks. At the time competition between major (and minor) Telco’s was pretty fierce and certainly there was a race against time to get to the market first. Whilst this was a commercially driven exercise, the Telco (name of company deleted) who was the driver of the initiative, had been going through some deep level values based organisational change.

They had recognised they needed to get beyond having the pretty vision and values posters on the walls and had committed to bringing them to life. They really struggled with this at all levels as they realised they had to measure their success against different criteria in addition to making a profit. Further, they needed processes, tools, measures, support, rigorous honesty and courage for this to succeed. It was a massive cultural change and no small undertaking. Some parts of the business were really embracing the change and some were yet to be convinced. I had been working with a cross section of the leadership team training internal facilitators, champions and coaches to support the process. It was well underway when the 3G project began. This was one such venture which I believe was an outstanding example of a values driven collaboration.

The joint venture was to install 450 sites around Australia to facilitate the implementation of the 3G network. It involved two major mobile networks, a mobile phone manufacturer, a multi national land acquisition company, a technical company which manufactured transmission towers and one which installed them. This was a big budget project.

The mission involved groups that had not worked collaboratively with each other before. Despite their different corporate cultures, every group agreed to act in accordance with the Telco’s (name of company deleted) values model. They defined the JV values in their first project meeting, identified the common meaning of them, extrapolated behaviours – and stuck to them. Their entire strategic rollout was filtered by these values. The project came in ahead of time, within budget and was such a success that it was written up in the British financial papers as a world first. The collaborative effort in the commercial Telco environment was unparalleled.

As I observed the unfolding of the project, some of the stories I heard were remarkable, heart warming and funny. To paraphrase some of the land acquisition and installation guys, I heard them make comments like these: “It was unbelievable, our community complaints have decreased to practically zero. It really does work when you talk to people about what you are doing and why. We even had some good suggestions from them. We were easily able to change some things to accommodate community needs.” These very practical and highly technical specialists were able to use their values to communicate with each other and the broader stakeholders to keep the project moving forward. Another paraphrase I heard was about an internal decision on one aspect of the work, “Well mate, if you’re talking about giving a ‘fair go’ (one of the values) how is that giving (the other party) a fair go?” A simple question but I realised that it gave them common language and a process to deal with situations as they arose. I am not suggesting there were no problems or arguments, there were, but the project team were amazed themselves how well they got on and how quickly issues were resolved.

Although there were the standard legal, policy and procedural aspects to the JV, the entire team from executive to field were free to just get on with it. They had the benefit of all being situated in the same space for the project duration, so they could confer with each other very easily. They could make fast decisions; they had the principles they had agreed to as a reference point; and a common language and processes to make things happen. There was a lot of camaraderie and good will. Decisions were made and executed and completed on a daily basis without the need to involve legal. This is not to diminish the relevance or importance of legal, policy and agreements within the industry, but simply to say they stayed out of they way while this group voluntarily aligned and self organised to get the job done. They did get to market first.

From someone who has worked in both the community and the corporate sector it was very interesting to me how this rolled out. True, they were in it primarily for market advantage, but what they learnt about working together and using a principled approach was nothing short of awe inspiring. They simply cut through a lot of unnecessary, outdated or irrelevant processes to enable this project to be achieved expediently. It really showed me something about the power of alignment and intention, and having clear line of sight along the path of action when something needs to happen in a short time line.

I think the elements in this example are instructive in how we address the impacts of environmental degradation, peak oil, climate change and the some of the misinformed and myopic thinking that accompanies these critical issues. The stakes couldn’t be much higher, and how well we proceed has huge ramifications for how we live our lives into the future. We do need to organise and resource ourselves differently. We do need to create new models to communicate, collaborate and act on our own behalf. We do need to generate aligned action without losing the autonomy and particularity of individual communities.

We don’t have time to impeded by misinformation, red tape, short term thinking, politically motivated agendas and single (usually economic) viewpoints. Communities need to increase their level of resilience, have the authority to act on their own behalf, the latitude to experiment and innovate without fear of litigation and have access to accurate information, education and resources. It is imperative that all levels of government and local communities work together to achieve this.