The telecommunications industry is renowned for being slow and transactional, where larger players set the terms in a cold, utility-driven relationship. However, as organisations of all sizes will attest, scaling requires moving beyond a vendor just “selling the plumbing”, so to speak. Growth and scale depend on organisations finding a true telecoms enablement partner.
It’s one thing to make the promise of enablement. However, a business cannot credibly promise to humanise its customer experience and adaptability if its internal culture is an ecosystem of disconnected silos. Put another way, an external brand promise is only as strong as the internal reality that supports it. This internal reality is what is widely known as “company culture”.
Backspace realised early on that to avoid slipping into the transactional vendor mould and to instead be a true enablement partner, the leadership would need to look inward and set the tone. Building a culture of enablement demands that ego be replaced with clarity and that, instead of promoting isolated superstars, the business be a connected, communicating system.
Simply put, a clarity‑driven, low‑ego, human‑centric culture is non-negotiable. If business leaders look carefully at their organisations, they may well see that their businesses do not lack talent. Frustrations or bottlenecks occur when the talent is trapped in silos.
The engine of enablement
Company culture is often seen as something secondary to the core business, a nice-to-have. Many think of culture as a collection of ping pong tables in the common area or office lunches.
In reality, culture is the foundational engine of an organisation. Leaders would do well to realise that it’s not “HR’s” job. Leaders should proactively set the scene. It will determine scalability and market differentiation. The most successful organisations enjoy an internal culture anchored in absolute clarity, which is achieved through investing in three core pillars.
- Communication
Silos thrive in the dark. If you and I don’t communicate, we will continue doing our own thing. Here’s an experiment: Think of a time when you had to interact with the finance department of a partner or supplier, having previously worked with their sales or operations teams. It will become blatantly obvious to you when an organisation is working in silos and doesn’t communicate. Your experience will be transactional, and likely frustrating.
The first step in breaking down silos is to foster honest, frequent, two-way communication. This means creating spaces where everyone has a voice, and even more importantly, has direct access to the organisation’s leadership. Whether this communication occurs informally or through structured meetings, flattening the communication hierarchy builds a foundation of trust. This trust is essential when silo walls have been removed.
- Expectation
Everyone in the organisation must have a crystal clear picture of what is expected of them. It’s one thing having rooms full of people doing various jobs. It is another entirely when the organisation as a whole is on a shared mission. A job becomes a mission when everyone understands what’s expected of them in their role, and how that role impacts the business.
Leaders should ensure that every employee has a clear line of sight between what they do and the customer experience. Ensure that there are no “unimportant roles” in the business.
- Insight
Once there is clear communication and well-defined expectations, insight as a pillar becomes a game-changer. True transparency in an organisation requires sharing the why. Sharing insight with the team gives them visibility into two critical areas:
- Where the business is going: The long-term objectives, strategic focus or shifts, and necessary changes.
- How the business is performing: Realistic, ego-free conversations about what the numbers are showing, finding the bottlenecks and addressing them without resorting to blame.
When there is a culture of clarity across these three pillars, a profound shift occurs. Staff stop seeing their work only as a mechanism to collect a paycheck. They understand their role in the bigger picture, take genuine ownership of their outcomes and feel part of something meaningful. When you get this right internally, the organisation can reflect this externally.
Enabling a workforce to enable its customers requires that everyone buys into a simple operational philosophy: Every single interaction, whether it is between staff or customer-facing, should create at least 1% more value for the other person.
In our experience, especially during Backspace’s rapid growth, when your internal environment is built on ensuring mutual value, that exact energy naturally spills over into your customer relationships. Your customers and partners start to see the humans behind the telecoms transactions. In other words, when you align your internal culture with your external promise, you create something far more resilient than a transactional telecoms relationship – you build a scalable, organic engine for growth and true partnership. That’s enablement.
Written by Graeme Thomson, Chief Operating Officer at Backspace Technologies