There have been some exec changes at Telstra, including the announcement of Kate McKenzie as CMO. Nothing unusual, or terribly noteworthy about that, but I was struck by one sentence in the announcement, regarding the new CMO appointment:

"For the first time, Telstra’s product developers will be brought together with those people responsible for the strategy, pricing, promotion and market analysis of those products."

Read that a couple of times. Essentially, for the first time in Telstra’s history, those responsible for product strategy will be working with those responsible for product delivery!

Strategy and implementation talking to each other? No good can come of this!

Does beg the question, though, what happened before this?

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not shocked that this is true. I suspect it’s true at lots of companies. What shocks me is their honesty, even if it might have been unintentional.