Fast track to nowhere

For many years, telecom professionals watched the start-up culture of the computer industry grow and thrive while their own industry was best characterized as slow-growing and monotonous. It must have been a difficult thing to watch. Not only were brand-new computer firms winning over Wall Street, but to work in the computer industry was to be on a career fast track.

That notion certainly did not escape middle managers at telephone companies. These folks, having put in enough years at an RBOC to gain positions of modest responsibility, knew even the most ambitious among them would probably face a slow 20-year climb into senior management ranks, getting there just in time for retirement.

Meanwhile, they must have salivated as their computer counterparts rocketed up the corporate ladder just by eschewing Hewlett-Packard or IBM for one of Silicon Valley's latest start-ups. Middle managers no more, these computer industry people were suddenly senior managers in small but promising firms. They quickly gained the responsibility to make much more important decisions than they were capable of making the day before, and their careers advanced 20 years in the blink of an eye.

Telecom middle managers finally got their chance to do the same a few years ago when a start-up culture began to take root in the telecom industry. People without previous executive experience were quickly awarded the keys to the front office at small but promising firms.

At the time, this trend was seen entirely as a good thing. Telecom careerists were empowered by opportunity and put in a larger spotlight. Telecom companies became more about the fresh faces in their executive suites, and the picture of the traditional, stoic telecom executive was rendered out of style.

Now with many of those start-ups out of business, in bankruptcy or acquired, many of the fresh-faced executives have just as quickly exited the spotlight. In the wake of the company failures, there have been many popular targets for blame — Wall Street's expectations were too lofty, big investors used the companies for quick returns and abandoned them, the business plans were too ambitious.

But rarely do we cast a critical eye on the fast-track folks who jumped from middle management to senior management with a simple change of address. Despite the fact that — like their predecessors in the computer industry — many of these people leapfrogged 20 years of professional experience in a single job change, we are loathe to suggest that they personally screwed things up or maybe they were not experienced enough to make the decisions that their new jobs put them in a position to make.

To be brilliant and aggressive gives you a few of the ingredients you need to be an effective executive. The other ingredient is experience, and the first two traits may not compensate for the third. This is not to say there should be no more twenty-something CEOs. It is not an issue of age but an issue of having accumulated experiences that have taught you how to fill out a job as a supreme decision-maker.

When companies go down the tubes, top executives seem to go into some equivalent of a witness protection program. They move on to other jobs in other locales, while the rest of us are left to assess the company's failure based on numbers, perceptions and strategic plans. Often, those inexperienced executives seem to only marry up and never down, possibly because the aura of having been a leader now defines them.

Start-ups have given telecom middle managers a way out of the corporate bread line and a way onto career fast tracks. However, in the rush to speed up professional evolution by exponential factors, we are forgetting the value of experience. If you have not learned anything, you cannot teach anything.
Contact Dan O'Shea at doshea@primediabusiness.com.