Re: Roger Bamber - A farewell to arms
Rod Speed
> Forty one years after joining the Post-Master General's Department as
> a cadet engineer, Roger Bamber is about to leave the building. The
> Telstra veteran was in a mood to reminisce when Director of Executive
> Services, Michael Grealy, caught up with him. Here's Michael's report.
>
> Roger Bamber is holding court in The Hellenic Club in Sydney's
> Elizabeth Street rattling off the gems of advice he's collected in
> forty-plus years like he'd heard them for the first time yesterday.
>
> "Show me where I said it" from State manager Ken Douglas in 1967.
> "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it" from one of Roger's
> first bosses, Tudor Davies, in 1969. "In management, everything is on
> the record" from Engineer Jim Sharp in 1970 and "Town only reads one
> page memos," manager Bill Spratt's advice in 1973.
>
> Get the picture? The man is a walking historian, his life a
> chronology of the PMG, Telecom Australia and Telstra. Always at the
> forefront of change. His wit and wisdom could fill a small volume.
>
> Roger Bamber joined the PMG as a cadet engineer in 1966 and surprised
> his interviewer by admitting his ambition was to be the
> Director-General.
> He'd come from Sydney University and student politics at a time when
> (Justice) Michael Kirby, (NSW Premier) Nick Greiner and Geoffrey
> (Hypotheticals) Robertson were contemporaries. Once, when he knew his
> group did not have the numbers, Roger organised for a meeting to end
> in chaos via a bombardment of tomatoes from the back of the room.
>
> At the PMG it was a time of meeting the growth in Sydney's western
> suburbs and the Central Coast and Roger spent his first five years as
> a planning engineer in those regions. In one nine-month period at
> Penrith he led a team which connected 2500 customers at one exchange.
> "It was a constant challenge to convince people in Melbourne of the
> need to spend money to meet the growth of Sydney," he said. "It is
> something I have been fighting all my career."
>
> He recalled that Gough Whitlam had done a deal with unions leading
> into the 1972 election to ban contract work. "That led to the PMG
> being over-manned and our numbers grew to 100,000."
>
> At 30 Roger was appointed a District Telecom Manager, the youngest in
> NSW and the second youngest in Australia. He has held management
> roles in construction, corporate and business sales, and service and
> operations. He led Telstra's 17,000-strong national field workforce.
> With the creation of Telstra Country Wide in 2000 under Doug
> Campbell's leadership, Roger became Managing Director TCW in NSW and
> was famous for his direct engagement with customers to solve their
> problems. In the past two years he has been Executive Director,
> Sydney Major Metro for Telstra's Consumer business. All up, it's a
> contribution that is hard to match and one that's given him an innate
> feel for customers' needs.
> Roger Bamber started as District Manager at Burwood in 1977"I
> started as District Manager at Burwood in 1977 when only 50 per cent
> of houses had fixed line telephones. Within five years we had taken
> that up to nearly 100 per cent."
>
> Friends say life around Roger is often unpredictable. Roger's "12
> immutable laws" include "loyalty is like a bank account - built up in
> the good times and drawn on in the tough times." Another is "crises
> are exciting; if bored, invent your own crisis."
>
> In fact, there's been little time for Roger to be bored as he's led
> from the front, organised resources and motivated the teams in some
> of our biggest challenges over the past three decades.
>
> In 1977 Roger was quickly on site at the scene of Australia's worst
> rail crash, the Granville train disaster. "We lost half of the
> coaxial cable to Melbourne and Granville was severely isolated."
> Roger led a team of 250 to restore services.
>
> In 1987 Roger led the repair team in charge of fixing the massive
> destruction to Sydney's cable network, and faced off with radio
> announcer Alan Jones on the issue.Three years later, when Ansett
> Airlines lost its reservation system computers in a fire, Roger and
> team had them back working within 24 hours.
>
> In November 1987, Telstra faced a massive series of cable cuts to
> Sydney's network one Friday evening. "Someone used an angle grinder
> cut 36 cables in 10 locations in the tunnels from Railway Square to
> Martin Place." Services to Sydney's financial, security and
> commercial sectors were seriously disrupted but the Telstra team
> restored 90 per cent of services by Monday morning. Not only did
> Roger lead the team on the ground but he earned plaudits for his
> straight answers from radio announcer Alan Jones.
> By now, the Greek salad has disappeared and Roger is eyeing his
> grilled snapper as he looks at changes over the years.
>
> Roger Bamber - speaking at a conference "We had a lot of
> resistance to change in the late 70s and early 80s. All businesses
> must grow, change, be invigorated and cut costs. They can't stand
> still and Telstra is no different.
>
> "People make things happen. People make the difference. Good
> leaders attract good people. They paint the picture, they educate,
> they listen and they take people with them. Equally, the rot starts
> at the top and bad leaders encourage bad performance," he says. "It
> is really about teamwork, bathing in reflected glory but not seeking
> the limelight yourself."
> Roger recalls a 1997 missive from Telstra's first US-born CEO Frank
> Blount that's made his collection: "Where are your worst performing
> areas? Where are your best managers? If I had to ask that question of
> you a third time I would be talking to your replacement."
>
> Of current CEO Sol Trujillo, whose "Catch the vision or catch the
> bus" makes Roger's list, he says:
>
> "One of the things that Sol and Greg (Winn) have reinforced is to
> pick your partners and make them successful too. In a lot of cases we
> had got into adversarial relationships. Both sides have to win, the
> supplier and the customer."
Pity those clowns are so stupid that they cant manage to
grasp that the same thing applys to the govt and telstra too.
> Roger has a reputation for creative thinking. He worked around union rules restricting the laying of cable to five
> drums a day by making the cable drums bigger.
He should have had the balls to put a fucking bomb under the fucking union.
Blount did.
> He says one of the biggest changes came in 1983 with the opportunity to recruit people at all levels into the company
> instead of the restrictions of growing it from the base up. "Now it is fairly routine - we are not relying on
> recruitment decisions of 1990 to meet the needs of the company in 2010."
And you get those fuckwit yanks at the controls too.
> "If you want to look at change, when Telecom Australia started we didn't have the internet, mobiles and the
> directories were losing money. Now they are all multi-billion dollar businesses. The introduction of fibre optic
> cable, packet switching and the personal computer, they are the big differences. Culturally, I think the company
> changed when Frank Blount recruited Rob Cartwright from CRA to head HR. - he wasn't popular at the time but he was
> vital in breaking the role of the (Arbitration) Commission over the relationship between manager and staff."
Pity it was decades late.
> Roger certainly does not miss the old days of getting approval from
> Canberra for rolling out new technology. "It could take years so the
> speed to market just wasn't there," he says. "One thing that Sol and
> Greg have done for this company is speed. You can have the right vision, people and technology but they have
> introduced speed into the equation."
Pity about the stoush with the govt that they cant possibly win.
Will Kemp
> He'd come from Sydney University and student politics at a time when
> (Justice) Michael Kirby, (NSW Premier) Nick Greiner and Geoffrey
> (Hypotheticals) Robertson were contemporaries. Once, when he knew his
> group did not have the numbers, Roger organised for a meeting to end in
> chaos via a bombardment of tomatoes from the back of the room.
Ah, he's obviously been giving Trujillo lessons in tactics!
Foley U. Matthews
<apark...@team.telstra.com> applied digits to the keyboard and
routed the information from some kind of brain (presumably), thusly:
>Forty one years after joining the Post-Master General's Department as a
>cadet engineer, Roger Bamber is about to leave the building. The Telstra
>veteran was in a mood to reminisce when Director of Executive Services,
>Michael Grealy, caught up with him. Here's Michael's report.
>
>Roger Bamber is holding court in The Hellenic Club in Sydney's Elizabeth
>Street rattling off the gems of advice he's collected in forty-plus years
>like he'd heard them for the first time yesterday.
>
> "Show me where I said it" from State manager Ken Douglas in 1967. "If
>you can't measure it, you can't manage it" from one of Roger's first bosses,
>Tudor Davies, in 1969. "In management, everything is on the record" from
>Engineer Jim Sharp in 1970 and "Town only reads one page memos," manager
>Bill Spratt's advice in 1973.
>
>Get the picture? The man is a walking historian, his life a chronology of
>the PMG, Telecom Australia and Telstra. Always at the forefront of change.
>His wit and wisdom could fill a small volume.
>
>Roger Bamber joined the PMG as a cadet engineer in 1966 and surprised his
>interviewer by admitting his ambition was to be the Director-General.
>
>He'd come from Sydney University and student politics at a time when
>(Justice) Michael Kirby, (NSW Premier) Nick Greiner and Geoffrey
>(Hypotheticals) Robertson were contemporaries. Once, when he knew his group
>did not have the numbers, Roger organised for a meeting to end in chaos via
>a bombardment of tomatoes from the back of the room.
>
I'll have to keep that one in mind...
Foley U. Matthews there | http://fumthings.blogspot.com/ Personal
are no e's in my true email | Automatic Transport for S.E. Queensland.
Visit the Ellen Foley Info | groceries online, home delivery.
http://www.go.to/ellen-foley | dislike football (Australian).
thegoons
was a ruthless prick.
"Alan Parkington" <apark...@team.telstra.com> wrote in message
news:SfaFi.33629$4A1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> Forty one years after joining the Post-Master General's Department as a
> cadet engineer, Roger Bamber is about to leave the building. The Telstra
> veteran was in a mood to reminisce when Director of Executive Services,
> Michael Grealy, caught up with him. Here's Michael's report.
>
> Roger Bamber is holding court in The Hellenic Club in Sydney's Elizabeth
> Street rattling off the gems of advice he's collected in forty-plus years
> like he'd heard them for the first time yesterday.
>
> "Show me where I said it" from State manager Ken Douglas in 1967. "If
> you can't measure it, you can't manage it" from one of Roger's first
> bosses, Tudor Davies, in 1969. "In management, everything is on the
> record" from Engineer Jim Sharp in 1970 and "Town only reads one page
> memos," manager Bill Spratt's advice in 1973.
>
> Get the picture? The man is a walking historian, his life a chronology of
> the PMG, Telecom Australia and Telstra. Always at the forefront of change.
> His wit and wisdom could fill a small volume.
>
> Roger Bamber joined the PMG as a cadet engineer in 1966 and surprised his
> interviewer by admitting his ambition was to be the Director-General.
>
> He'd come from Sydney University and student politics at a time when
> (Justice) Michael Kirby, (NSW Premier) Nick Greiner and Geoffrey
> (Hypotheticals) Robertson were contemporaries. Once, when he knew his
> group did not have the numbers, Roger organised for a meeting to end in
> chaos via a bombardment of tomatoes from the back of the room.
>
> Roger has a reputation for creative thinking. He worked around union rules
> restricting the laying of cable to five drums a day by making the cable
> drums bigger.
>
> He says one of the biggest changes came in 1983 with the opportunity to
> recruit people at all levels into the company instead of the restrictions
> of growing it from the base up. "Now it is fairly routine - we are not
> relying on recruitment decisions of 1990 to meet the needs of the company
> in 2010."
>
> "If you want to look at change, when Telecom Australia started we
> didn't have the internet, mobiles and the directories were losing money.
> Now they are all multi-billion dollar businesses. The introduction of
> fibre optic cable, packet switching and the personal computer, they are
> the big differences. Culturally, I think the company changed when Frank
> Blount recruited Rob Cartwright from CRA to head HR. - he wasn't popular
> at the time but he was vital in breaking the role of the (Arbitration)
> Commission over the relationship between manager and staff."
>
> Roger certainly does not miss the old days of getting approval from
> Canberra for rolling out new technology. "It could take years so the speed
> to market just wasn't there," he says. "One thing that Sol and Greg have
> done for this company is speed. You can have the right vision, people and
> technology but they have introduced speed into the equation."
>
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Michael
"People make things happen. People make the difference. Good leaders
> attract good people. They paint the picture, they educate, they listen and
> they take people with them. Equally, the rot starts at the top and bad
> leaders encourage bad performance
s
"thegoons" <theg...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:4706fbf2$0$26433$8826...@free.teranews.com...
Marts
> I remember hearing from Telstra staff in country NSW that this Roger Bamber
> was a ruthless prick.
Dunno about this particular guy but you usually don't get to the top by playing
the nice guy card. When you're in a large bureaucratic organisation, largely run
with a public service mentality, promotions aren't earned by being nice to your
workmates or those below you.
This is particularly so if your work performance requires budget cuts, and the
easiest way to achieve this is by reducing employee numbers.