Battered after a poorly timed launch into foreign markets, Australian telecommunications manufacturer Tennyson was a sorry sight. Despite innovative technology and a raft of enthusiastic resellers, the company had over-capitalised on a global marketing campaign that went pear shaped when tech stocks hit the wall. The company had withdrawn its shares from trading to lick its wounds and find the strength to return to the market.
Tennyson needed a General, and Leigh Coleman was looking for a challenge.
Having chalked up 13 years in the US, Coleman was also ready to come home.
"My wife is Australian, but we met in the States, and raised two American children," Coleman says. "I always knew I would come back, it was just a matter of when."
As he leans back in his chair in a pub on a glorious Sydney afternoon, he describes his travels as a fundamental to his ability to operate effectively in the corporate climate. A stint in the US, Asia or Europe has become a necessary tour of duty for many in higher management, especially in IT, and Coleman is glad he cut his teeth on foreign soil.
"The world is divided into some major trading blocks," Coleman said. "You have Asia, Europe and the Americas - Oceania and Africa just get left out."
While he admits this grand isolation has its benefits, as the recently appointed CEO of Tennyson, Coleman is looking for opportunities to overcome the isolation.
"Tennyson is like a lot of Australian companies," Coleman says. "Great people, great ideas but low on commercial experience and industry nous."
It is this industry nous, rather than a penchant for IT, that Coleman brings to the position. His reputation for turning companies around began over a decade ago, on a different continent, and in an entirely different industry - textiles.
While the rest of Australia was celebrating the Bicentennial of the first fleet's landing in Sydney Cove, Coleman was successfully expanding and growing the Australian arm of industrial textile giant Blydenstein Willink. As is often the case in business, his antipodean success only earnt him the opportunity to create similar miracles elsewhere, and when the company's US based operations were began to crack around the edges Coleman was called in to patch it up and relaunch the company.
"Basically I was charged with turning the whole thing around and making it grow," Coleman said.
The shift from textiles into IT came towards the end of the 90's when Coleman began focussing on Y2K issues, a role which saw him travel from China to Mexico and back again evangelising the need for IT systems protection.
When the new year made his old career largely obsolete he moved into the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) arena, focussing on the implementation of the technology rather than the technology itself.
"I am a gadget person, I want to know what things can do and see how they can be used," Coleman said. "I know what I need to know to run a company, but am I a technology person - absolutely not."
And in June this year he spied a technology for which he could see immediate markets and implementations.
"I actually approached Tennyson about three months ago," Coleman said. "They were quite advanced in the preparations to relaunch on the ASX, they had already been through an extensive transformation and consolidation, but they were still looking for someone to take the helm so I offered my services."
Now that the company has again set sail Coleman is focussing on further developments. Taking aim at the lucrative data voice convergence market Tennyson has made the often painful transition from an R&D company with a great product, to an IT company with a commercially developed product line.
"At the end of the day there have been plenty that didn't survive," Coleman said. "Now that we have made it through the toughest patch the potential is endless."
