So, in news this morn­ing, it appears that the Depart­ment of Broad­band, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the Dig­i­tal Econ­omy, has made one of its few bright deci­sions for the year in exclud­ing Telstra’s bid from the National Broad­band Net­work. I’m no telco pun­dit, but as an inter­ested cit­i­zen who will be affected by the NBN and any Tel­stra involve­ment, I do have an opinion.

News sto­ries at the ABC and Aus­tralian IT con­firm that Tel­stra Chair­man, Don­ald McGauchie, is less than delighted. Tough, frankly. The bid was incom­plete and triv­i­alised the process as well as the impor­tance of the NBN itself. Telstra’s last-​​minute, recy­cled bid was an act of cor­po­rate con­tempt at best. This sort of behav­ior on the part of big cor­po­rates does not win friends and influ­ence people.

The con­tempt with which senior Tel­stra man­age­ment treated NBN was uncon­scionable and a remark­able dis­play of cor­po­rate hubris. It flies in the face of the cor­po­rate cul­ture that we in the con­nected world can see that Tel­stra peo­ple on the ground are try­ing to fos­ter with the changes at Now We Are Talk­ing and the use of tools like Twit­ter and @BigPondTeam to really con­nect with customers.

Good num­bers of the work­ers have made mis­takes, learned and moved on from their old ways to a much bet­ter, more open and con­nected organ­i­sa­tion. The senior man­age­ment con­tin­ues to believe that being, to quote a trad­ing phrase, “big swing­ing dicks”, is going to get them what they want. I hope that the Fed­eral Court tells Tel­stra to pull their heads in when the inevitable case comes before the Full Bench.

Inter­est­ingly, the cul­tural changes, which were detailed in a recent arti­cle in AFR Boss, don’t seem to be being lived by the senior management…

My friend, Stil­gher­rian, has more analy­sis.