commentary I think we can now conclude that, on balance, Telstra went backwards during the Trujillo era, and that the board's decision in June 2005 to sack Ziggy Switkowski and install a team of expensive Americans to run the company was a mistake.
Trujillo was a smart, almost blinding salesman, but to my mind — and to many others — he was too arrogant and condescending.
Sol Trujillo used to say that he had to perform a rescue job, but now it is David Thodey who has to rescue Telstra from him. Trujillo was a smart, almost blinding salesman, but to my mind — and to many others — he was too arrogant and condescending.
There is one very fine positive that he will leave behind as he and his team all return to their homes: the Next G mobile network. It was a brilliant decision, executed well, and has modernised that part of the company superbly.
But the negatives far outweigh that single positive. In particular, the culture of Australia's most important company has deteriorated in two important ways: customer service is appalling and relations with all arms of government have been smashed.
The first of those is the worst. At first there was a wary acceptance of Telstra's shockingly unfriendly attitude towards its wholesale customers because it was understood that they are also retail competitors. It was all part of Telstra's forceful protection of shareholder value, we were told.
We used to blame the system that had allowed Telstra to become both wholesale network supplier and retail provider. We might disagree with its approach, and think that surely a company had to look after all of its customers and not pursue one lot through courts, but at least there was a focused retail strategy going on (we were told).
Now we can see that the retail strategy, if there really was one, has been a failure. Sol Trujillo said he was introducing a culture of customer focus and improvement in retail service, but he didn't do it.
Telstra is now one of the least customer-friendly businesses in the country. It is virtually impossible to deal with: even the employees hate having to ring the company to get something done. Making a minor change to one's phone service can be a nightmare.
This is the greatest failure of Telstra's leadership. Relations with the government and the ACCC can be repaired virtually overnight — Minister Stephen Conroy and ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel are intelligent and flexible people who will take the new leadership at face value, although Thodey and Catherine Livingstone start on the back foot.
But the damage to its reputation with customers will take years to repair and require immense effort and cost.
And this, in my view, is the reason Telstra should be split up: not because of some theoretical regulatory preference, but because it has shown itself incapable of operating effectively as an integrated telco, looking after both sets of customers.
David Thodey will now plead: "Give us another chance". The answer should be that it's too late — no more chances.
This article by Business Spectator's Alan Kohler is reproduced on ZDNet.com.au courtesy of a reciprocal publishing agreement.
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and the $2B paid to Accenture is an absolute disgrace. What have they delivered?, absolutely nothing. Almost enough for a Royal enquiry.