Guy Laurence has been busy since becoming the President and CEO of Rogers. He’s travelled Canada from coast-to-coast, a total of 22,000 kilometers, and met with over 10,700 employees. Laurence has also spoken with leading Canadian companies, such as Air Canada and Bombardier, and conversed with all the major political leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
His goal for this journey was to understand Rogers from “the inside out.” He asked each individual their thoughts of Rogers as a company, specifically what they should keep, what they should change, and what they would like to see in the future. The result was a plan that will unfold over the next two to three years called “Rogers 3.0,” something that was not from his mind, but directly from listening to the “customers, employees and shareholders.”
During an interview with media late Friday afternoon, Laurence was bold, direct and blunt. He’s a happy man on a mission. Laurence sees the last 30-40 years of Rogers as being “pioneers” within the industry, but proudly declared they are not “a company that intends to go backwards. This is a pioneering company, we believe in innovation.”
Rogers has several assets in every arena, such as media, publishing, radio, home services, internet, wireless, entertainment, and sports franchises. All these will be coming under one roof — not playing on separate teams — called “One Rogers.” The goal is to make all these individual parts, especially all its unique content sources, come together to create a symphony that plays beautiful music.
“I am not a acquisition junkie,” said Laurence. “We will be utilizing things we already have… We will double down on innovation.” As stated before, they “will focus on fewer, more impactful initiatives and execute with more precision to deliver on our game plan.”
There are seven key areas that Rogers will be re-shaping — see them all here — and Laurence noted they will focus on its strength of being a “strong Canadian growth company” and leverage all their assets to make the customer experience solid. He understands that while innovating, which he was quite fond of Next Issue and Rogers Home Monitoring, they neglected “their home,” which in his mind are the people that actually pay the monthly bills. Customers will be a prime area that Rogers will focus its attention on.
As for the people within Rogers, the company will hone in on consumer and business markets and split the company up to serve these markets. The management has been shifted around and will operate “One Rogers,” which he declares is “a single brand unit that will handle all brands.”
We’ve already seen 3 key executive departures. Rob Bruce, who was previously President of Communications was shifted to lead the “Consumer Business Unit,” decided to leave the company because his new duties were basically cut in half and “was not big enough.” Bruce will be staying on until the end of the year to help with the transition of this new strategic plan. As the business continues to take shape, Laurence said “there will be job losses at the management level,” but the company will be investing in front-line staff.
There will be a new marketing plan coming down the pipe. The focus was not revealed, but Laurence stated “the advertising we’ve taken in the past was relevant for the past.” A new era has started.
Final few words were that “we are going to take what we’ve got and grow as a symphony.”
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