The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Leon Williams has begun “the repairs to flight BTC” with an extensive management restructuring, with well-placed insiders yesterday suggesting turbulence lies ahead at the privatised communications carrier.

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) newly-appointed chief executive, in a July 9 internal e-mail to staff, announced a restructure that switches the management structure to one that is island/geographic-based, as opposed to function/job-based.

Explaining the rationale for the switch, Mr Williams told BTC’s several hundred staff members: “BTC presently employs the Matrix Management Model for its organisational structure. The Matrix Management Model was tried in Grand Bahama in 1993 and failed.

“As a result, I was appointed the assistant general manager for Grand Bahama and Bimini in 1995. It was tried again in Grand Bahama in 1999 and failed. As a result, Kirk Griffin was appointed senior vice-president for the northern Bahamas.”

Mr Williams went on to list several disadvantages with the existing BTC management structure, arguing that “competing agendas and emphases” among senior management could confuse staff and pull them “in different directions, which can lower productivity”.

A “lack of clarity” over-burdening of middle management could also result, Mr Williams argued, with BTC’s senior managers finding it harder to achieve results as they were competing with their colleagues for staff.

“A conflict of loyalty between line managers and project managers over the allocation of resources,” was also cited by Mr Williams.

“Costs can be increased if more managers (project managers) are created through the use of project teams.”

As a result, Mr Williams gave six BTC senior managers responsibility for different island territories, all reporting to Patricia Walters, BTC’s senior vice-president of customer operations.

“I would hope that the entire crew of flight BTC will embrace these changes as we prepare ourselves for the upcoming battle (liberalisation,” Mr Williams added.

Yet well-placed Tribune Business sources yesterday suggested Mr Williams was returning to his ‘comfort zone’ by restoring the BTC management structure that existed pre-privatisation.

And this newspaper was told that Mr Williams seemed less than comfortable with the management team he has inherited from departing predecessor, Geoff Houston.

Apart from having yet to hold a group meeting with his senior executives and vice-presidents, Tribune Business was told they found out about Mr Williams’s management restructuring at the same time as BTC’s line staff - from the July 9 e-mail.

“He’s going back to his comfort level,” one well-placed source said of Mr Williams’s management restructuring.

“What he’s put in place represents a style and structure that existed pre-privatisation. It’s a product of an era long past.”

Under the post-privatisation structure established following the sale of the majority 51 per cent stake to Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC), BTC’s management was organised along functional lines - marketing, sales and technical etc.

One source, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that “the challenge” with the system initiated by Mr Williams was that while the Family Island managers would be good at supervising staff, they did not have all-encompassing knowledge of BTC’s operations.

“We’re sitting now wondering where it’s going to end up,” said one BTC source. “It’s very strange. A very strange world here now.

“There’s a sense that he’s [Mr Williams] not comfortable with his executive management team. He’s made no effort to meet with the executive team as a group, and introduce himself, since he came into office.”

The new BTC chief executive was thus “running the ship without the input of others”.

This newspaper was also told that Mr Williams’s interview with ZNS last week had taken BTC staff by surprise, with no one knowing plans for the restructuring and 30, 60 and 90-day plans he mentioned.

In his July 9 e-mail to staff, Mr Williams added that “we have started the repairs on flight BTC by the installation of a COW (Cellular on Wheels) at the R. M. Bailey Park, and one on Baha Mar Boulevard, last weekend”.

These mobile towers are designed to combat week points in the cellular network coverage, and plans for their deployment were said to have been underway prior to Mr Williams’s appointment.