Rewiring the Telco Operating Model: Learnings from Telenet

Telenet adopted an agile-at-scale operating model across both Business and IT in 2019. Since then, the company has been on an intense learning journey, inspecting and adapting the Culture, Leadership and Operating Model in order to realize true business agility. Initially, Telenet adopted a “Spotify” model and focused heavily on Culture and Leadership changes at the team level. Despite initial enthusiasm there were many structural frictions in the system that failed to get addressed. Many teams became exasperated and the envisioned outcomes were far off. Two years later we initiated a reset of the transformation with a focus on identifying and addressing system elements that were hampering business agility. Tackling these required a paradigm shift for Telenet’s leadership. This talk is an open and authentic reflection on the stages of that journey, from someone who experienced and drove the transformation first-hand.