New NBN Co CEO dumps three executives

Just one week into his tenure as the CEO of NBN Co, Bill Morrow has announced a cull of three executives as part of an organisational restructuring.

CFO Robin Payne, CTO Gary McLaren and head of corporate and commercial affairs Kevin Brown have all been given their marching papers. McLaren and Brown will leave the company in July, while Payne will stay on until a replacement CFO is found.

Morrow has also appointed Bradley Whitcomb as chief culture and transformation officer, starting 1 May.

The organisational structure will be tweaked so that the CFO reports to the COO, who will in turn report to Morrow. NBN Co’s chief strategy officer, chief customer officer, chief legal counsel, investor and media relations officer and head of regulatory affairs will also all start reporting directly to the CEO.

Morrow announced the revamp in a letter to NBN employees, a copy of which was obtained by Business Insider and posted online.

In the letter, Morrow states that there are five common causes for a company failing to meet its full potential, and preliminary reviews suggest that NBN Co needs improvement in all five areas. These are a lack of alignment on the company’s goals; unclear or redundant accountability with a confusing organisational structure; inadequate decision-making and performance tracking; poor process management; and a suboptimal corporate culture.

The organisational restructure is aimed at partially addressing the second issue and represents a move to a new process-based structure that emphasises a customer-supplier relationship model, he said.

Morrow will be conducting a series of roadshows in May to discuss the organisational changes and the new rollout model with NBN staff.

IBRS advisor Guy Cranswick said that on balance, NBN Co’s organisational structure probably did need improving. “It wasn't reaching targets and that is the ultimate measure of what it had to do. In conjunction there was some deliberate vagueness in the rollout numbers, which did not please the new government - and that meant the consequences would be stern.”

While Cranswick said he can’t comment on Morrow’s assertion that NBN Co’s workplace culture and process management are suboptimal, he noted that this is “the sort of thing that is said to demonstrate that change was necessary and the outgoing people were part of the problem”.

The restructure is not going to immediately transform the NBN rollout process, but it may well produce results in a few months’ time, Cranswick said. “There are several points of friction between what NBN intended and what it will do, and now the new plan, the governance issues and the whole new structure all fit together,” he said.

“A new structure can yield quick results and the whole plan has been reviewed and the technology mix is now fixed. If it is not working well and quickly, Morrow and Turnbull will be retuning the structure soon.”

Morrow’s letter to staff indicates that more organisational changes are on their way. Cranswick said any other changes Morrow makes will be aimed at speeding up the NBN rollout.

“He has to make sure the numbers are working and fast because [the rollout] is behind schedule and the government has a promise to deliver it sooner and cheaper,” he said. “So any other changes will be to remove any friction that hinders the speed of deployment.”

Pictured: NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow