Telstra’s proposed split-up of management roles in 2023 is part of a radical shift in corporate practice with roots in management theory. Managing people is quite different to managing resources. The trouble is that, historically in practice, organisations have been structured hierarchically and divisionally and people have usually been lumped in with other resources in the various levels of the hierarchy and divisional silos. People became managed like physical resources. What Telstra proposes is in part motivated by what Harvard Business Review authors have identified as two key shifts magnified by the forced remote working of the COVID-19 pandemic – a skills shift requiring managers to coach workers rather than oversee performance tasks, and a structural shift requiring leadership in more-fluid environments. The Telstra restructure, if approved by regulators, is expected to cost \($126\) million. It will aim to flatten the hierarchy down to just three levels. Then, as part of a plan to separate work and management, two distinct roles will be applied to leadership across the organisation in the form of either managing people or managing work. The splitting up of people management and job management will allow incumbents to focus and specialise. Leaders and managers will have the freedom to focus on their strengths and the two separate yet related. contributions of tasks and people can flow more freely in the new structure. The skills shift can be managed better by people-focused leaders while the structural shift can be handled by resource and task-focused leaders.

Questions Mainstream
1. What aspects of the proposed restructure may be expected to encounter some resistance to change?
2. To what extent would the restructure, if approved, assist Telstra to better reflect the features of a learning organisation?
Critical
1. Explain why splitting leadership into the two different functions is expected to benefit the people who work at Telstra and organisational performance overall.
2. Explain whether this restructure would allow Telstra to rest easy after it is implemented, or whether more change initiatives are needed going forward.