In our second Thought Leaders Forum issue, I posed six questions to our executives. Some were about technology; others were about the human side of the telecom network. Interestingly, most of our Thought Leaders answered the technology questions with a similar theme. They all agreed that we are pushing the envelope looking for ways to increase bandwidth and decrease operational expenses. Their responses tell me that our industry is on the same page about the obstacles we face. That’s a good thing.

That’s where the similarities ended. Each Thought Leader offered very different perspectives when he or she answered the questions about the human network. In fact, the question that impassioned our Thought Leaders most was: …high-performing individuals within an organization are as good at correcting mistakes as they are at avoiding them. Do you believe that, and should a successful organization embrace that philosophy? Why or why not?

As I read their responses, I couldn’t help but wonder if their team members knew their position on this statement. Would the Thought Leaders teams be reading their bosses view on this for the first time in OSP™ or would it simply be a great affirmation of that which they already know?

This leads me to my last point. As a reader, what do you plan to do with this special section? File it? (Wink, wink.) May I propose a slightly different action? Why not take a few of the questions you find interesting and share your responses with your team. They may be enlightened and surprised by your answers. Or take it one step further and ask THEM to respond to the same questions. They may be taken aback that you even asked.

Whatever your choice, I would argue that by DOING something with these ideas you will be acting as a true Thought Leader. You don’t have to be an executive vice president or president to have valid opinions on these questions. You just have to care enough to take action. The ball is in your court. What now?

Questions? Comments? Contact Sharon via her email: sharon@ospmag.com

   
Randy Tomlin
SVP, U-verse Field Operations
AT&T  |  www.att.com

What does it take to attract and retain great talent in a highly competitive industry such as telecom?

Today, it is not enough to attract and retain talent. To achieve advantage in the highly competitive telecom industry, the key is the development of talent and the ability to place people in positions that will ultimately lead to their success and the success of the business. Ineffective management goes beyond the tangible cost of disenfranchised employees leaving for a more satisfying work environment; it impacts the overall morale of the team and, in the end, the customer experience.

Not every person has the unique skill set required to be a strong leader. Individuals desire a management style that provides clear expectations and effectively communicates the fundamental “why” behind daily activities. Most soft skills can be taught and developed over time, but the critical role of upper management is identifying, early on, those managers who are capable
of successful leadership.

According to Accenture (www.accenture.com), high-performing individuals within an organization are as good at correcting mistakes as they are at avoiding them. Do you believe that, and should a successful organization embrace that philosophy?

There are significant benefits to be derived from an organization that emphasizes correcting mistakes versus avoiding mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes; it is intrinsic to how the human mind learns. If the environment is such that mangers are afraid to make mistakes, you will find that they are afraid to take chances and look for ways to advance the industry and better serve our customers. We can’t get to the next level without rewarding and encouraging the mindset that supports intelligent risk taking.

My own philosophy is simple: successfully finish what I start, and along the way anticipate errors and be ready to find solutions. High performers understand this and their successes come from having the courage to sometimes leave behind the smooth road and maneuver through the speed bumps.

What is the role of testing and troubleshooting in today’s rapidly converging environments?

The role of testing and troubleshooting is nothing short of light at the end of a dark tunnel. As we find better and more efficient ways to isolate and identify troubles, we are taking the required leap to the next level of service provider. Our customers demand immediate resolution, especially in the video entertainment environment; and we must be able to deliver an outstanding level of service. Today our field technicians are required to use a strong analytical skill set to interpret solutions. We will continue to place emphasis on the role of the test set and its capabilities while actively searching for new and innovative applications to put into their hands.

However, understanding the power of remote testing and customer-based diagnostics quickly gets at the next solution for our future workforce. The ability to implement this more cost-effective option and reduce the need for onsite resolution is truly the enlightened path.

Randy Tomlin is Senior Vice President of U-verse Operations, AT&T. He has recently been appointed to this new position on a national level. Most recently Randy has served as Senior Vice President of Network Services West as well as Senior Vice President Network Operations Planning. Since joining SBC in 1982, the College Station, Texas, native has held management positions in various departments throughout the Company, including engineering, technical planning, installation and repair, research and development,
and centralized operations. Randy can be reached via email: ufo@att.com.

   
Tim Parker
President, Byers Engineering Division
Byers Engineering  |  www.byers.com

What does it take to attract and retain great talent in a highly competitive industry such as telecom?

In addition to a competitive salary and benefit package, you must offer candidates the opportunity for personal and professional growth. They must sense that your company has a “buzz” about it; that if they accept your offer, they will be afforded the opportunity to be working with emerging technology. Once you get them in the door, it is important that you provide them with the necessary training and support and give them adequate room to operate.  Within reasonable limits, don’t hamstring them with petty boundaries and policy requirements.  They will expect immediate feedback and will want to advance in direct relation to their level of contribution, without being held back by staid polices regarding seniority and grade.

Why is the position of manager increasingly becoming nothing more than a title, rather than a means of action?

We take an entrepreneurial approach to our operating units.  They look a lot like small franchises, the managers operate a lot like owners, and we encourage that “if it’s to be, it’s up to me” ownership attitude.  Couple that with the fact that many of our managers are promoted from within the ranks, and it’s easy to see how they may struggle with letting go of their old responsibilities.  We battle that in several ways.

First, we teach our managers that their top priority is the success of their employees. There is a direct relationship between the advancement of their employees and the success of their management careers.

Second, we assist the manager in changing gears from doing to facilitating. There must be a support structure in place to handle those old responsibilities and adequate training to assist in learning the new. The incentive package must also be aligned with this goal in mind.

It’s not an easy sale. It takes patience and effort for a manager to train their replacement on duties they genuinely liked doing in addition to being good at them.

According to Accenture (www.accenture.com), high-performing individuals within an organization are as good at correcting mistakes as they are at avoiding them. Do you believe that, and should a successful organization embrace that philosophy?

I would not subscribe to that philosophy. An old football coach always told us that we would play as we practiced, and I found that to be true.  So it stands to reason that in making a lot of mistakes, high performers may become proficient at correcting them, but they will also keep making them.

The individual high performer may believe that getting it right first or fixing it later to be a time neutral proposition, but it’s certainly not the case for others in the chain.  To think otherwise is costly to the organization and insensitive to your colleagues. Having the work done correctly in the first place allows the organization to realign its assets in more efficient roles, alleviates unnecessary tension within the organization, and makes a better performer of the so called high-performing employee.

Tim Parker is responsible for the overall business operations of the Engineering Division of Byers Engineering Company. The Engineering Division provides outside and inside plant project management and design services to the telecommunications and utility industries. The Division’s 1,100 employees include routine and senior design personnel, CAD technicians, registered communications distribution designers, professional engineers, special right-of-way and permitting agents, and marketing, recruiting, and support personnel. Tim can be reached via email: tim.parker@byers.com

   
Manish Bhandari
Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing, Emerson Network Power’s Energy Systems business
Emerson Network Power  |  www.emersonnetworkpower.com

Why is the position of manager increasingly becoming nothing more than a title, rather than a means of action?

I think the problem with the statement is the legacy definition of the word manager as a manager of people. To my mind, a professional in the position of a manager is a driver of people and processes in an increasingly interconnected world.

Companies over a period of time have been evolving to a metanational format where they place their best resources in the best geographic competency area. The people who manage these distributed resources (i.e, managers) need to re-equip themselves by being more strategic in their approach. The managers have to ensure that the processes and deliverables plan support each other even if they have limited face-to-face contact with the project team. They also must have the mindset of giving prominence to project goals and not take a turf-based approach. The employers have to do their part by providing additional exposure to regionally experienced associates to help in their transition to global professionals.

New broadband access services are continuously being introduced. How does this affect network engineers and technicians in their daily test challenges?

It’s a different world. The basic tasks of connection and attenuation have a significantly higher amount of complexity. Engineers/technicians can be trained for these tasks, but that is a resource-intensive solution.

Once we recognize that this is just the beginning of the broadband revolution and these issues are only going to get more complex, it becomes essential to move toward smarter networks. The IP infrastructure in the outside plant environment is capable of monitoring as well as remote problem resolution. However, there needs to be a focus to drive investments into specific products that actually make it happen. We also need to incorporate a higher number of wireless and sensor-based technologies for optimizing wireline networks. Smart networks not only will allow the operators to better manage the technical solution and workforce, but also will achieve the goal of reducing the total lifecycle cost within the network.

What obstacles can possibly slow down the growth and evolution of telecom technology?

At this time I do not believe that there is anything on the horizon, short of a complete global economic collapse, that will stop telecom growth. We may see some bumps along the road but fundamentally, more and more people want to be connected and have the ability to transmit higher numbers of bits-and-bytes.

The threats, consequently, are not for the telecom sector, but for individual players. Sector growth will cause a technology churn for better, faster networks and devices, and the operating companies have to fight for their space in the marketplace. To ensure competitiveness and relevance, it is essential to correctly deploy capital and people investments. Companies with a bias for velocity ultimately will succeed.

Manish Bhandari leads Global Sales and Marketing for Emerson Network Power’s Energy Systems business. Energy Systems is a provider of telecommunications solutions through its DC Power, Outside Plant, and Service product portfolio. Mr. Bhandari previously was responsible for strategic planning activities for Emerson Network Power, including the acquisition of the Marconi OPP&S business.
After that acquisition, he joined Energy Systems and was responsible for the enterprise and Outside Plant business. Manish can be reached via email: manish.bhandari@emerson.com and via email EnergySystems@EmersonNetworkPower.com.

   
Étienne Gagnon
Vice President, Product Management and Marketing
EXFO  |  www.exfo.com

New broadband access services are continuously being introduced. How does this affect network engineers and technicians in their daily test challenges?

Access networks do evolve fast. Network engineers and technicians work with broadband service technologies that can change almost on a monthly basis. None of the new technologies is ever future-proof, as today’s groundbreaking technology can very well be outdated
in two years. Which makes broadband communications both exciting and…unsettling.

Since new technologies are frequently introduced in such an early-adopter market, operators can rely on very few standards establishing interoperability between equipment from different manufacturers. This compli-cates the real-world deployment of such technologies, because it requires specific, dedicated tools that might be obsolete in a couple of years. As a result, field crews are constantly deploying and maintaining new technologies on which they have no background and that they have
to learn.

So yes, a rapidly-evolving environment brings its fair share of technical challenges, but also a certain amount of stress for network engineers and technicians, because the one thing that does not change is the end-user’s expectations as far as the quality of experience. Subscribers do want the service innovation, but they expect it to be flawless right away.

What is the role of testing and troubleshooting in today’s rapidly converging environments?

In such a fast-changing technical environment, carriers and service providers often encounter installation, activation, and maintenance issues that are as new as the technologies. This is why test tools and procedures are crucial allies for carriers, as they can make the difference between deployment success and failure. Deploying within the specified timeframe and budget and with the quality level expected by customers has a lot to do with the methods and procedures that are followed and the test tools that are chosen.

When system manufacturers develop the new networking technologies, it is critical to gather early information on these innovations. And since leading test and measurement providers interact both with those who develop the technology and those who deploy it, their mission is to bridge the gap between how the technology was devised and how it can be optimally implemented. In other words, working with the developers and early adopters throughout the innovation process puts test providers in the unique position to share their expertise with network service providers and guide them through the deployment phases.

What obstacles can possibly slow down the growth and evolution of telecom technology?

There are three main obstacles combining technical, financial, and marketing aspects. First, the risk of telecom operators capping the bandwidth demand increase. We see it more and more: carriers starting to cap their customers’ bandwith availability. Ultimately, this slows down the bandwidth increase, which has been driving telecom growth over the last decade and beyond.

Second, the capacity for subscribers to pay for the upgraded technology. Of course, most subscribers will welcome better services, provided that they can afford them. We are currently witnessing an economical slowdown whose impact is still unknown when it
comes to a typical household’s capacity to pay for telecommunications services.

Third, the quality of the customer experience. Most subscribers will be interested in benefiting from better, faster broadband services…until they suspect that they might experience occasional downtime or failures, leading them to prefer their old services over better, yet inconsistent services. Therefore, service providers that deploy a new broadband technology must accept the challenge of doing it without sacrificing the quality of experience.

Étienne Gagnon was appointed Vice-President of Product Management and Marketing in May 2003 and, in May 2007, he took on the responsibility of all the telecom business units: Optical, Transport and Datacom, and Access. As such, he is responsible for EXFO’s general marketing direction on both the product level and communications level. Mr. Gagnon is also responsible for the marketing communications of EXFO Brix Service Assurance, further to the completion of the acquisition in April 2008. Étienne can be reached via email: etienne.gagnon@exfo.com.

   
Tammy Snyder
Network Operations Center Supervisor
Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU)  |  www.gru.com

What does it take to attract and retain great talent in a highly competitive industry such as telecom?

It is important to recruit individuals who share the same core values. For GRU, a municipal utility, the value of being owned by the community we serve is very important in helping us reach our goals. A similar core value doesn’t require the individual be a “yes person.” It is alright to disagree and present alternatives. As leaders, we must remind all of our teams to listen to other points of view.

Second, it is critical to cultivate an environment where everyone shares in the victories. There is not a single group within an organization that can exist without the other areas of that organization. Without sales there is no engineering or OSP, and without engineering there are not sales, etc. Each functional group brings something to the table and has a value to the organization. At the end of the day, every employee wants to be valued. If they aren’t, they will keep looking until they find a place that appreciates their unique talents.

Why is the position of manager increasingly becoming nothing more than a title, rather than a means of action?

We need to evaluate the non-management tasks being performed and determine the value to the organization. If there is little-to-no value, why were those tasks performed in the first place?

Not since the turn of the last century has so much transition occurred in the telecom industry. We’re moving from copper to fiber, and we need good leaders to make the transition successful. We need to ask ourselves: are we hiring managers rather than industry leaders? Industry leaders cultivate skills through years of experience. To be a leader, the only requirement is to know the corporate goal and possess the ability to get results, whether you are technically a manager or not. In this day and age, we all wear many different hats, and sometimes it is confusing which hat we need to hand off and which we just need to leave behind.

According to Accenture (www.accenture.com), high-performing individuals within an organization are as good at correcting mistakes as they are at avoiding them. Do you believe that, and should a successful organization embrace that philosophy?

I absolutely believe that an organization should embrace this philosophy - within reason. I have a saying: “It is not the mistakes you make but rather how you recover from mistakes that make a difference.” If members of a team are afraid of being fired for making a mistake, the organization will continue to do the same old thing the same old way and get the same old results.

We are a progressive industry and our experts should be encouraged to try new things, while keeping in mind the impacts failure may have on our peers and our customers. As a matter of principle, we should always have a Plan B and quite possibly a Plan C. We work in a world of theory most of the time, and “in theory” and “in reality” are two different things. If there isn’t a recovery plan, then moving forward is irresponsible.

Tammy Snyder has been with Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) for 21 years. Since 1998 she has supervised the Network Operations Center for GRUCom, the telecommunications arm of the utility. In addition, Tammy serves as the Sales Representative for GRUCom’s Residential Broadband service, and holds primary responsibility for negotiating contracts and maintaining customer satisfaction for
high-speed, fiber-optic-based Internet service to large apartment complexes in Gainesville, Florida. Tammy can be reached via email: SnyderTJ@gru.com.

   
John Rose
President
OPASTCO  |  www.opastco.org

What does it take to attract and retain great talent in a highly competitive industry such as telecom?

Companies seeking to attract and retain the best talent must develop an organizational culture that accounts for the nature of the work, the nature of the employee, provides job satisfaction, and demonstrates a willingness to evolve. The creator of the “Dilbert” cartoon came from Pacific Bell, whose corporate culture was more military/chain of command than the army or navy. This top-down culture creates many pointy-hair bosses who don’t understand the operations they manage.

Successful companies are willing to push decision-making down the line to make their jobs satisfying and empower their employees. Doing so helps to foster an environment in which employees can be productive without feeling controlled or micromanaged.

Bad managers cannot possibly be responsible for 95% of employee turn-over; if so, it means most managers must be bad at what they do. As Harrison Ford said in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the Germans couldn’t find the ark because “they’re looking in the wrong place.” In this case, intense negative scrutiny of managers is looking in the wrong place if the goal is to retain quality talent.

Statistical analysis is an important tool, but it is only valuable when focused upon the root cause of a given problem. I once saw a specific study of health-related problems experienced by British bus drivers citing lack of exercise as the cause of drivers’ ailments. Another citation of the same study identified occupational stress as the key culprit. These were two vastly different interpretations drawn from a single study.

So, if the 95% employee turnover figure were true, then only 5% of employee turn-over is due to employees finding better opportunities or other reasons. Organizational culture and structure, creating job satisfaction, empowerment and finding the right job
for the right person are all part of long-term employee retention.

Why is the position of manager increasingly becoming nothing more than a title, rather than a means of action?

Transition is really another term for change.  A company must deal with change before addressing its managerial philosophy. In the past, managers did not need to know the nature of a particular type of work in order to shepherd it along. In today’s information economy, managers need to know not only the nature of the work, but how to perform much of it on their own. OPASTCO has successfully retained many of its key directors over the years by embracing change such as advancements in network technology that enable collaboration in ways that were not possible before. Telecommuting is also a productivity-enhancing tool that helps employees achieve success. Willingness to embrace change fosters a team-oriented approach that strikes the right balance between managerial and non-managerial tasks.

According to Accenture (www.accenture.com), high-performing individuals within an organization are as good at correcting mistakes as they are at avoiding them. Do you believe that, and should a successful organization embrace that philosophy?

Employees must be empowered to act. Sometimes they will make mistakes. However, if your organizational culture allows employees to act, make mistakes, and fix their mistakes, you will have more progress as an organization than you would if you didn’t empower them to act at all. Organizations stagnate when employees are afraid of making mistakes. It is up to an organization’s leadership to accept that when employees make decisions, sometimes those decisions will not be the same ones that the leadership would have made and mistakes may be made. It is part of employee development and empowerment, and ultimately, more good decisions will be made than bad ones.

John Rose is president of the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies (OPASTCO). His career in telecommunications began more than 39 years ago at C&P Telephone Company. Rose worked for the Rural Electrification Administration, now known as the Rural Utilities Services (RUS), serving first as chief of the Loans and Management Branch and later as director of the Telecommunications Management Decision. He also worked for the United States Telecom Association, now known as US Telecom. John can be reached via email: membership@opastco.org.

   
Dennis Krutsinger
Vice President and General Manager,
Communications Markets Division, 3M  |  www.3M.com/telecom

New broadband access services are continuously being introduced. How does this affect network engineers and technicians in their daily test challenges?

The largest issue revolves around specification targets for new applications. Take for example VDSL2 application using an integrated protection copper block. Previous test standards do not cover the VDSL2 frequencies, and the combination of block with integrated protector was missing from the test standards. Generally, the works of the Standards Bodies lag behind the market and applications for at least some components. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the development engineers to make judicious decisions on how to set the test targets, often drawing from existing test standards, combining tests from different test standards, and sometimes extrapolating the test standard to higher frequency regimes, and so on.

Having said this, the actual tests and equipment is often not much different than the previous ones, once the new test specifications are arrived at.

What obstacles can possibly slow down the growth and evolution of telecom technology?

As a result of an insatiable demand for bandwidth, driven by new and interactive applications, the telecom industry seems poised to enjoy continued growth for many years to come. However, several factors could threaten such an optimistic outlook:

1. The aforementioned new services fall under the category of non-essential expenses. A recession triggered by macro-economic factors such as exorbitant crude oil prices or a continued sub-prime related real estate crisis could slow down demand to the point where telecom providers become reluctant to invest in new broadband infrastructure.

2. Cost-per-home-passed is a key metric by which investors judge the future financial performance of telecom providers. As the cost of raw materials keeps skyrocketing, the purchase price of products they need might increase to the point where they can no longer stay on the cost-reduction path they promised their investors, resulting in a sharp drop in their market capitalization.

3. For most telecom carriers, the ability to remain profitable is tied to having broadband and wireless revenues that offset the sharp decline they face in fixed-line voice revenues. Besides a decline in broadband appetite as described previously, any significant threat
to wireless revenues could tilt the balance towards an unprofitable bottom line.

What is the role of testing and troubleshooting in today’s rapidly converging environments?

With the emergence of NGN and Triple Play now a reality, QoE for the subscriber takes on paramount importance. For the service provider, that means a new focus on QoS. With today’s Intelligent Network devices, most data performance metrics are available remotely via CPE WAN Management Protocol standard TR-069. This shifts the focus of testing away from protocol analysis (which is being routinely monitored in real time by IN gateways and STBs) and again toward the primary physical asset of the provider: the media. TR-069-enabled devices can tell you when packets are being dropped and sync is being lost, but they cannot always tell you why.

For FTTP networks this means testing to verify the integrity of the distribution fiber and all the splices and connections from the splitter cabinet to the ONT. In FTTN networks, the demands on The Last Mile copper are enormous.

An understanding of radio frequency physics and frequency domain measurement techniques is now a basic requirement for the technician supporting NGN rollouts on FTTN networks. If a truck needs to roll, the technician must be able to verify the trouble and correct it quickly or another IPTV customer is potentially lost. Comprehensive loop qualification and troubleshooting methods can be the difference between a smoothly running Triple Play system and lost subscribers.

Dennis Krutsinger brings more than 30 years of industry experience to his role as 3M Communication Markets Division vice president and general manager. His 3M career began in 1977 when he joined the Microfilm Products Division as a sales representative in Denver, Colorado. Since then he has held numerous leadership roles in sales and marketing as well as business development for 3M in Brussels, Belgium, and Taiwan. As vice president and general manager for the Communication Markets Division, Mr. Krutsinger leads a global team, based in Austin, Texas, that provides practical, scalable solutions to telecommunications service providers around the world.

3M can be reached via email: commtech@3M.com.