There are weeks when decades happen
Lenin allegedly opined that “There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen”. This week I believe I took part in a small revolution that was happening at the TMforum meeting in Cascais, Portugal.
I was informed over 20 years ago that the cellular business was different from manufacturing and other services businesses due to the complexity of technology. Human factors had a minimal impact compared to the capital and license costs with a cellular startup, accordingly, I focussed on reducing Product Life Cycle Management (PLCM) cost reduction as this resulted in a positive and measurable impact on the bottom line.
I knew human factors drive business performance, I had been responsible for deploying organisation transformation in AT&T, aligning people, products and processes to the customer, had resulted in the highest increase in profitability, worldwide, in my operation.
Stealth deployment was also required in Gateway Computers, since “investing in people” was perceived to be soft-headed — one boss narrowly escaped injury when he was beating up on his management team with a “I need Olympians — what I have is Special Olympians”. I ended up being responsible for all product introduction in Europe and Asia and global Sustaining, did however give the lie to the wisdom of the company failing to put people first.
The TM Forum was formed in 1988, by communications service suppliers and providers to solve OSI challenges. It now has 850 members and supports a community of 60,000 professionals. My development organisation joined in 2008 as we needed the benefits of established interoperability standards of their enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM), which allowed cellular operators to mix and match components from different suppliers and avoid supplier lock-in. In recent years the evolution of the market has driven the development of their Open Digital Framework (ODF) which aims to transform concept-to-cash from 18 months to 18 days. This is a natural evolution as a market commoditises. This aligns with my past experience above.
Over the last few months, I have been a member of The TM Forum Digital Organization Transformation (DOT) team, which focuses on evolving organizational structures, mindsets, and culture to meet the demands of next-generation…
