The resignation of Dr Phil Burgess yesterday might seem like the beginning of the end of Telstra’s American executive era but somehow I suspect his legacy will endure.
Burgess is well beyond retirement age, has important family obligations and has more reasons than not to return to the USA. And he’s hardly severing his ties with the company – he will remain as an adviser to CEO Sol Trujillo and is joining the Centre for the Digital Future in California, which has close ties to Telstra.
Burgess has made a difference to Telstra that will far outlast his departure – and that is still little understood by the company’s competitors. He has changed the firm’s DNA in the sense that his successors and staff will continue and build on his mission—rather than abandon it.
And in many regards, he was less controversial and more effective than it would seem at first appearance – much of his supposedly polemical public persona was defined by charisma-challenged competitors who were compelled to demonise him because they offered such little value themselves as contributors to the public debate or to their own employers.
For example, as various pundits and commentators decried his Now We Are Talking website, they missed the point of the exercise. Telstra is criticised across the media and on the web every day. NWAT is more than a propaganda tool – it’s a counter-balance that serves as a motivator of the company’s large staff force who rarely hear the firm’s views in anything more than the occasional executive memo. It helped build a sense of mission for a firm whose integrity and business practices are challenged on an almost hourly basis in public fora.
EXPANDING THE AUDIENCE: Likewise the company’s campaign against regulation – while only partially successful to date – was hardly as aberrant as often depicted. Telstra had been saying these things in government submissions to an audience of about nine-and-a-half people for years, Burgess’ great achievement was to get the debate onto ABC morning radio and the pages of tabloid newspapers. As much as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission would hate to admit it, Burgess played a key role in forcing more rigour in its determinations. Indeed, I suspect that some more recent pro-Telstra regulatory decisions wouldn’t have occurred without this activism.
But skepticism about regulation is hardly as sociopathic as some in the industry would have one believe – the current national government has installed a minister for deregulation in the Cabinet for heaven’s sake! And the fact that the ACCC has dramatically lifted its game in terms of the basis for its regulation is a good thing for everyone.
Indeed, it is a measure of Burgess’ attributes that he could count both the current and former chairmen of the ACCC – Graeme Samuel and Alan Fels – as personal friends. This is a country that too often treats public intellectuals as lepers and Burgess made a valuable contribution in giving this country an informed outsider’s take on the efficacy of our institutions and civic processes. When he went off-topic and spoke on areas such as corporate governance and media reporting of government he was particularly interesting. He also underlined the sad reality that too many of our business and policy leaders offer too little in this regard.
Burgess’ replacement David Quilty has for most of his career worked behind the scenes as an adviser to the powerful, not as a front man. As far as I know he has only made a couple of public appearances in his time at Telstra but this will need to change. His Optus opponent Maha Krishnapillai has already made a strong start in forging a more activist persona, and Telstra will need to ensure that Quilty and his key regulatory and media operatives including Tony Warren and Chloe Munro maintain a public presence.
Whatever one’s views, telecommunications and broadband are too important to the future of the economy for there to be a vacuum at the nation’s largest mediacomms player. Quilty and co have an expansive template to work with.
As for Burgess, he is apparently writing a book—which will include his reflections on his Telstra stint. It may not prove to be the next Latham Diaries but I, for one, can’t wait to read it!
- Grahame Lynch
