Sipping my lunchtime chocolate milk, I see that JP Rangaswami is moving on to be CIO of BT’s services division. I predict he’ll have impact far wider.
He’s fibbing, though, about his job title. If you’ve watched any of his “Enterprise 2.0” writing, you’ll know his real job title is Chief Cultural Change Officer. JP’s built an incredible open infrastructure and culture inside what should be the most stifiling of environments, a heavily regulated licensed bank.
BT doesn’t get everything right, but they’re miles ahead of the average telco in re-inventing their business. The list of things they’re doing right is rather longer than the lists of errors and omissions. Hiring JP says volumes about how much they’ve changed, and what kind of company they want to become. This isn’t Telco 1.0 any more, Toto. 21st century culture for 21CN.
If I were working for a competitor, this would be a very black day, because unseen from the outside, they’re about to become a lot more dangerous. And if you don’t know who, why and what I’m talking about, be even more deeply concerned — you’ve got a lot of blog reading to catch up on.
UPDATE: OK, I’ll relent and offer some clues: DRKW have a cost-effective, interchangeable, commodity infrastructure largely built on open source tools. (Telco equivalent: Iliad in France, who are cleaning up with the Free brand.) Their internal comms have been revolutionised by using the “Best of the Web” tools and technologies like blogs, wikis and RSS. Walls dividing the different information silos have been torn down. Sharing is encouraged, hoarding goes unrewarded. The hyperlink rules, not the boss’s email inbox. DRKW spends money on things that make a commercial difference, not “me too” IT products from the usual vendor suspects. I can see why JP’s going to services: it’s all about people, not systems. Betcha he’ll be deploying social computing technology all over the place, and the employees don’t have a clue what’s about to hit them or how good it will be.
When I look back I can now see how disconnected I was at Oracle from the “hive mind” when stuck out at a client site doing consulting work. The change in a decade is just frighteningly large, but a lot of people are still having trouble deciphering the timetable for the cluetrain.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 02:42 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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I like your expansion in the "update". It came hours after I had finished saying to someone that it is OK to play "Telco 2.0" on the outside but you also have to do it on the inside - I was recommending the use of SocialText.
Posted by: at September 28, 2006 12:36 PM