‘How is it that Australia could see she wasn’t crisis ready, but the board missed it?’: PR crisis experts weigh in on Bayer Rosmarin’s Optus exit
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin followed inexcusable inaction with a defensive Senate appearance, then a swift resignation on Monday.
It’s been quite a month for Optus – less than a fortnight after the country was left reeling from the largest infrastructure failure in our country’s history (aside from Olympic Park station) the telco now finds itself in reparation mode, chief-less and with its next-most public leader currently fighting to clear her name of corruption charges.
As we do when a massive Australian company (at least on the surface of things) stutters and splutters, we ask the PR crisis experts for their reactions. Was Bayer Rosmarin’s resignation the correct move? Who should Optus put in the top spot next? Does it even matter who they choose? Let’s find out, shall we?
Agree with Wilkinson & Haslem, disagree with Ellis. As an Optus customer who went through both the data breach and now the outage, I am very happy to see KBR going. Her responses on the day of the outage infuriated me, and you could tell she wasn’t the right fit for the business. Definitely needed to go – and we do care who the CEO is when there’s this many issues happening with the second largest telco in the country, who also hired the ex Premier being investigated for corruption. As Haslem said, they need a full review and prune, and realignment with their brand ethos of “yes” which their executive team clearly doesn’t follow currently.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person…
Seriously though, anyone who has spent any real time in the business with KBR, she could put on a decent facade externally but she was a leader with minimal EQ, ruled at times from a place of fear and instilled a culture that would NOT be conducive to being proactive for preparing for such potential problems.
Optus=Singtel. Do they really care that much about Australian consumers? It’s just subsidiary for them that gives them an extremely strategic foot in the door here.
The fact that we all still think it is Australian shows how good the marketing can be, when they try. In a year’s time Singtel will still be making money from us.
Optus problems run deeper than a bad choice of CEO, running up to the board and who made that choice. Problem is it is not a public company in AU and not a proper board with the same accountabilities as a punlic company when it goes wrong. If it were a proper board clean out and questions of the Chair would be being asked. That’s not hapoening!! KBR was never CEO material, the proof of that was evident in her execution (pardon the pun) of the job she did at Optus, but indications were clear from her time at CBA where those shortcomings were already very evident to many who worked with and around her. It was only unfortunately going to play out one way. Know your strengths and more importantly know your weaknesses as a CEO and build a team aroudn you accordingly – that’s what good CEO’s do, and what this bad one didn’t do.
Sorry without financial compensation means nothing, especially from a multi-billion dollar company. crocodile tears.
I love the misogynistic overlay that blokes cant help give this story.
What exactly is the “misogynistic overlay” you refer to?
The individual in question was paid millions to do a job. She did the job in a fairly average manner by all objective measures.
Is she not to be critiqued by males because she is female? Surely this is offensive to any woman in a leadership position.
Hamish McLennan is the process of being smashed in the press and Alan Joyce was forced to jump on his sword by the same third parties, so are we honestly going to pretend that it’s a case of misogyny?
How about ‘wealthy, privileged executives do a shit job and are held accountable by stakeholders?’