Although Megan Nicholas is heading a division that focuses on mobile services, it's still Telkom, with its image of old, grizzled engineers who still call women "missie".
"Sometimes I'm like a square peg in a round hole and the culture shock scared me for six months," Nichols says. "I've had to learn to shut my mouth and be as diplomatic as I can and tone down my straightforwardness."
The average age at Telkom is 42 compared with 29 in the cellular industry, and the average tenure is 18 years. "I'm 42 so I'm the average age but, in cellular, I'm a pensioner," she says. "I'm called 'young lady' by one guy who started working here when I was nine months old."
Nicholas does look a bit like an Afrikaner missie, sporting big blonde hair and wearing a string of pearls. But she's much earthier than that, and has enough testosterone to override the girly genes, probably because her mother died when she was a teenager.
"I was raised by my father and brothers so I have a lot of boy ways in me," she says. "You grow up differently and maybe tougher. And because I was the youngest of six, I'm definitely a survivor. Being the last born in a big family means I'm very loud, and my outspokenness comes from that, because you either speak up or get flattened."
Nicholas is the managing executive of Telkom Business Mobile, the division trying to persuade corporate customers to adopt Telkom's mobile services so they get all their communication needs from one supplier. In a market that's already saturated, success depends on churning customers from other suppliers. "It takes innovation to get people to switch to Telkom," Nicholas says. "When we launched, I went to a lot of customers and asked, 'What aren't you getting from your current supplier?' They said they were confused by the tariffs, and asked why they could only upgrade every two years."
Nicholas sees her forte as building start-up operations, and mobility is a start-up area for Telkom. She has built up her team from six people to 95 in the last 18 months, but winning deals is slow, no doubt partly because of Telkom's reputation as a sluggish giant.
It's a problem she's well aware of. "The process at Telkom can't change; it's been there for 20 years, so I say, 'Don't break the rules, make new ones'. Otherwise we will never get anywhere because we are so different to the fixed-line side. We bring a whole new dimension with a new generation of entrepreneurs."
I'm a very good leader, but my team says I have the ability to crap them out completely, because I'm entirely honest if I'm unhappy about their performance.
Megan Nicholas
Nicholas joined the cellular industry in 1994. She previously worked for Imperial Car Hire, where she learned the crucial skills of customer service. When a former Imperial colleague suggested she join him at Teljoy, she took the opportunity. "We had an amazing time at Teljoy. We were selling to corporations and at 23, we were all making a lot of money on commission." She laughs as she recalls how 'escort agency' girls were her big customers, paying R10 000 in cash so their cellphones stayed connected and customers could call them. "Imagine how cellphones changed their lives!" she says.
Dumbest move
Later she joined Cell C and during eight years there, she rejected repeated offers to join Motorola as its country director. Finally she succumbed, just as they restructured the company and wanted to do a big relaunch without putting enough money into it. "I had to relaunch everything because they were in turmoil, and then Google ended up buying them out. It was the dumbest move I ever made," she says. "There are times you put your head in your hands and think, 'Why did I do that?' But you need to learn from it and I learned a lot of life skills."
She resigned as the conflicts with her boss escalated, and took a sabbatical to regain her lost confidence. Then she weighed up various job offers to make sure she didn't repeat her mistake and chose to join Telkom. There, she is one of only four female managing executives in a company of 22 000 people.
It bugs her that women are such a rarity in the telecoms industry, and that even fewer women make it to the top. Telkom runs a Top 50 Women scheme to fast-track promising candidates into higher positions, and it also has a strong graduate programme that offers 12 months of work experience.
Nicholas is augmenting those official schemes with informal mentoring of her own, since several women have told her they want to learn from her.
Although she has never had a mentor herself, she has collated bits and pieces of wisdom from other people and applied them in her own life. Now she's paying it back by inviting younger women to sit in on her meetings to see how she handles situations.
"If I see good people, I make sure I groom them. If I don't have two people who can take over my job, it means I haven't done my job properly," she says. "You shouldn't be scared to grow people as it means you've done your job right."
The youngsters she's mentoring may see some fireworks. "I'm a very good leader, but my team says I have the ability to crap them out completely because I'm entirely honest if I'm unhappy about their performance," she says. "But I'm very clear on how I'm going to rectify the situation."
Telkom could gain a new generation of firebrand women if her young prot'eg'ees learn too much from her. But perhaps that's just what it needs.
Caption: Survival of the loudest Megan Nicholas, Telkom Business Mobile, believes her outspokenness stems from the fact that she's the youngest of six, and growing up, you either spoke up or got flattened.
First published in the August 2014 issue of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine.
Share