When Elaine Carey takes the stage at 3Arena next week, it will be more than a symbolic appearance at the Dublin venue that carries the company’s name. 

For the newly appointed chief executive of Three Ireland, the employee event will mark the launch of one of the most ambitious structural transformations ever undertaken by an Irish telecoms operator — and one of the largest agile programmes attempted by any company in the country.

“Am I terrified? Yes, I am. Is it a really bold move? Yes, it is. But I think if we, as a telco, want to transform ourselves into something greater for the customer and, if we want to grow, we can’t do what we’re doing today. We just can’t,” she says.

What Carey is about to implement is known as “enterprise agile”. 

The model, pioneered in technology teams but now spreading across whole organisations, replaces the traditional hierarchy with cross-functional groups focused on outcomes. 

Instead of decisions flowing up and down a pyramid of managers, employees from different departments are grouped into “squads” and “tribes” that deliver specific goals in short bursts, known as sprints. 

The aim is to strip out bureaucracy, empower employees to act quickly, and bring products to market faster.

It is, in Carey’s words, about “creating and responding to change” — and doing so at the speed customers now expect.

So, what was the rationale for the transformation? How did Three Ireland prepare for it? And, crucially, what will it mean for the customer?

Why Three Ireland is changing

There was no great surprise when Elaine Carey was appointed chief executive of Three Ireland earlier this year, replacing its longstanding boss Robert Finnegan. A Co Limerick native, Carey had served as the company’s chief commercial officer in Ireland and the UK, where she oversaw its retail and commerce business, its customer care teams, and led its products and proposition portfolio. 

She had worked with the telco since 2007, having had stints with Esat and what is now Eir. 

Three Ireland has almost half of the Irish market. However, Carey believed it needed to radically change how it was operating if it was to maintain and grow its position.

Enter “enterprise agile”. 

For Carey, the rationale was straightforward: Scale and complexity were slowing the company down.

“A business of our scale and size, it just gets complicated,” she says. 

“Customers are way more demanding of the service that we are providing and also the products and propositions that we’re offering them. We had got a little bit complicated. In the traditional level of hierarchy, it takes time to make a decision. The empowerment starts flowing up the organisation rather than around the organisation. And we went, is there a different way of doing this?”

Telecoms is under particular pressure. Networks demand heavy capital investment and operate under strict regulation, yet customers benchmark their experience against digital-first players like Netflix, WhatsApp or Zoom. 

The way Carey sees it, telcos must behave less like utilities and more like nimble service providers in order to thrive.

A recent report by the consultancy firm McKinsey summed up the dynamics: “The days of the traditional telco are dying. Today’s leaders know that they need to abandon timeworn industry playbooks and instead organise themselves to embrace new, agile ways of working that can deliver real value now. Facing industry consolidation, pressure to find new sources of revenue, and growing expectations for technology and AI, they’re aiming to become faster and leaner customer-centric tech organisations.”

Carey is equally blunt: “Technology is going to leapfrog to a new level in the next six years, and the way we are today, we will not handle that. If Generative AI really does what it says on the tin and we’re not operating at a level that changes the dynamic of how people interact to solve problems, we will not be ready for that.”

Before committing to the enterprise agile project, Carey and her colleagues went looking for proof that agile could work at scale. Working with McKinsey, they visited a telco, a bank, an airline and a retailer to see what had driven their transformations.

They asked simple questions: Why did they do it, and how much value did it create?

And the more they asked those questions, the more the answers became obvious. 

For banks, agile was about keeping pace with fintech challengers; for airlines, it was about simplifying bloated processes and improving service; for retailers, about matching the speed of e-commerce rivals. For telecoms, the urgency is even sharper, given the twin pressures of infrastructure investment and digital competitors.

“After having those conversations, it became really, really clear that we did not believe that we could deliver the growth for our organisation the way we’re structured today. It’s too complicated. It takes too much time and it’s too long-winded,” she says.

Last September, Three Ireland made its call. “We said, ‘Listen, we’ve made a decision to go’. It was a go/no-go decision. Based on what we saw and based on what we believed it could do for our business to grow, we made the decision to go,” she said.

What it looks like in practice

Agile comes with its own vocabulary — tribes, squads, chapters, sprints, quarterly business reviews. Carey acknowledges the jargon but points to the principle.

“It’s not rocket science. It’s just a different way of working. What it means is you are very focused on value creation and outcomes. That’s the focus,” she says.

Teams are assembled around customer outcomes, not functions. 

“We ask the question, ‘Who do we need around the table to deliver that specific outcome that delivers that specific value?’ Okay, we need a marketing person, we need an IT person, we need a product person, we need a finance person, we need a data person, and they’re all in it together. And that is the power of it,” she says.

The structure is different to normal working environments, according to Carey, who stresses that failure is part of this new process. 

“We’re going to work in two-week sprints to deliver the priorities we all agree and align behind at quarterly reviews. We may get out of those 90 days and go, ‘This is wrong, we shouldn’t be doing it, or we can’t make it happen, or what we have delivered is not fitting for the customer’. So, that ability to fail is a key component as well of the actual operating model.”

Transparency is built in, she says: “There’s a town hall every 90 days that everyone can attend, see exactly what’s going on in the organisation, and exactly where funding, resource, et cetera, is being utilised within the organisation.”

Carey acknowledges that it is a bold approach. So, to de-risk the move, Carey tested the approach in two pilot “tribes” earlier this year.

“In those 90 days, in those two trial areas, we delivered more than we would have done in six months in our old model. And we’ve got an absolute proof point of that,” she says.

Engagement scores told their own story. “Our overall company engagement is really strong. It’s in the 80s. What we’ve done is we’ve pulled out those that were in those trial areas for the last six months, and their engagement is in the 90s. So, it’s not marginal. It’s materially different versus our legacy hierarchical environment.”

For Carey, the link is direct: Engaged employees mean better customer experiences.

A new model of leadership

One of the biggest shifts will be in how leaders engage with employees across the organisation – and how they will engage with leadership, including herself. 

In Carey’s words, the days of “command and control” are over.

“The leadership team – and we are now known as a leadership squad – have to lead by example. We become servant leadership versus command and control,” she says.

At the same time, the leadership of Three Ireland has been almost entirely rebuilt. When Carey became CEO earlier this year, just two executives from the previous team remained. In the months since, she has hired new heads across almost every function. For Carey, this blank slate was – and is – an opportunity.

“The prospect of hiring a mostly brand-new leadership team is a unique chance to shape Three’s future. Our new leadership team is invested in what I’m trying to do as the CEO and where I want the organisation to go. People are genuinely excited,” she says.

In practice, the new agile structure means leaders are no longer there to sign off on decisions but to enable others to deliver. “What we do is we empower the new leaders in our organisation, below leadership level, to actually have everything they need to make them and their team successful. So, whether that’s funding, whether it’s people… our role then is just removing barriers.”

Most Irish corporates remain hierarchical and centralised, and agile transformations elsewhere have often stumbled when senior managers failed to let go. Carey is determined not to let that happen. 

Culture shift

Structural change is challenging; cultural change is harder. An employee survey six months ago revealed some home truths.

“One of the things was that we tried to do too much. We are juggling a million plates in the air. We have a command-and-control environment. And we’re not sure that we can make mistakes and be supported. And that was a bit of an eye-opener for us as a leadership team to go, hold on a minute, that’s not where we want to be,” she says.

She adds: “Fundamentally, we want to go from juggling 50 million balls to having very clear prioritisation. We want our people to feel supported, and go from, ‘I’m not sure I can make a mistake’ to complete psychological safety.”

The shift will also change how career success is measured.

“The only measure of career development and success was moving up the chain. I became a manager – how many people reported to me? But do you know what? Not everyone wants to be a manager. Some people want to be just really good at what they do and to enjoy what they do. In this world, it really is about the individual contribution that you deliver. And that’s what you get recognised by,” she says.

For many employees, that could mean broader opportunities to contribute and grow without being forced into management tracks that don’t suit them, according to Carey.

Customers at the centre

Ultimately, Carey says the transformation is about delivering better for customers.

“The customer has to be at the heart of everything you do here. Because without them, we don’t have a business. And sometimes again with hierarchy, the customer becomes a number rather than a person, and the wrong decision may be made – it’s about remembering that there is customer behind it all who has a requirement that we need to provide,” she says.

“It’s our obligation to service them, because this is what we should do. We provide connectivity. What is connectivity? It’s the root of how everybody connects today.”

McKinsey’s research suggests agile can deliver up to 30 percentage points of improvement in customer satisfaction, 30 per cent better financial performance and 50 per cent gains in operational performance. For Three Ireland’s customers, the prize could be faster innovation and more responsive service.

Carey is candid about the challenge. “It’s going to be as tough as hell because we have to change. I have to change. Not alone in my new role, but how I operate. We fundamentally need to change. As a brand new leadership team, we know how much work lies ahead of us, and we’re going to be doing all of this while we’re trying to bring a brand-new culture to the organisation and a brand new methodology. The good thing is that we’re all learning together.”

Next week’s launch will be just the start. The first 90-day cycle will test whether the model holds at scale and whether the early buzz translates into sustainable change.

“It’s genuinely creating excitement in our organisation that we haven’t had for a while – probably since before Covid,” she says.

If it succeeds, Carey believes Three Ireland will not only have reinvented itself but may also provide a model for how large Irish businesses can embrace agility in a way that delivers for customers and empowers employees. 

This is sponsored content and has been produced in association with Three Ireland.