The Telco Executive Merry-Go-Round: When Innovation Means Musical Chairs
There’s a particular kind of déjà vu that hits you when you work in IT long enough in Australia. It’s that moment when you read about an executive “shaking things up” at a major company, only to discover they’re actually just the same person who was shaking things up at their competitor six months ago. This week’s episode: Optus replacing their departing CIO with an ex-Telstra CIO.
Mark Potter is heading out after four years at Optus, and in comes someone from the very company they’re supposed to be competing against. The reaction online has been… well, let’s just say the cynicism is palpable, and honestly, I get it.
Look, I’ve been in the tech industry long enough to know that executive musical chairs is nothing new. There’s a limited pool of C-suite talent, especially in specialised roles like CIO, and even more so in Australia where our market is smaller. But there’s something particularly dispiriting about watching our major telecommunications companies essentially trade executives back and forth like they’re swapping footy cards.
Someone pointed out that it’s not just telcos – Qantas and Virgin do the same thing. It’s a duopolistic ecosystem where the same faces rotate through the same positions at competing companies. And that’s the problem right there, isn’t it? When you’ve only got two or three major players in any given market, you end up with this incestuous corporate culture where “fresh thinking” means hiring someone who was doing essentially the same job at your main competitor.
The thing that really gets under my skin is what this means for actual innovation. When the same people keep rotating through the same positions at the same companies, where’s the genuinely new perspective supposed to come from? Where’s the person who’s going to challenge the status quo rather than just rearrange it slightly?
I’ve seen this pattern play out in my own career. Back when I was doing DevOps consulting, I’d watch organisations bring in new leadership with great fanfare, promising transformation and modernisation. Six months later, we’d be implementing the exact same infrastructure patterns they used at their previous company – whether or not they actually suited the new organisation’s needs. It’s like everyone’s reading from the same playbook, just changing the company logo on the cover.
The CFO position is also being replaced, apparently with someone from Aussie Broadband. At least that’s bringing someone in from outside the Telstra-Optus duopoly, which feels slightly more promising. Smaller companies sometimes breed more creative thinking out of necessity – when you don’t have infinite resources, you actually have to innovate rather than just throw money at problems.
What frustrates me most is that this executive recycling happens while ordinary workers in these companies are constantly told they need to “upskill” and “stay relevant” and “embrace change.” Meanwhile, at the top, it’s the same familiar faces playing corporate Tetris. The bar seems remarkably low for executive accountability – you can oversee mediocre performance at one company and still be considered a great hire for the competitor.
This isn’t really about any individual person – I’m sure the new CIO is perfectly competent. But competent isn’t what our telecommunications industry needs right now. We need visionary. We need someone who’s going to actually fix the infrastructure problems, improve customer service, and maybe – just maybe – treat consumers like they’re more than just captive audiences in a market with barely any real competition.
The broader issue here is about market concentration and what it does to industries. When you’ve only got a handful of major players, everything stagnates – including the talent pool. We should be looking at ways to increase genuine competition in the telecommunications sector, not just accepting this cosy arrangement where executives waltz between competitors and nothing fundamentally changes for customers.
Still, I suppose there’s one small mercy in all this – at least it’s not Sol Trujillo. Sometimes you’ve got to appreciate the small wins.