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What happens when you take over a telco whose own customers say it sucks?
The reality behind the turnaround - half an hour of complaints at every barbecue, and emails landing in the CEO’s inbox telling him exactly what customers thought of him personally.
In this episode of The Ryan Tan Show, I sit down with Jason Paris - outgoing Chief Executive of One New Zealand - during his final week in the role after almost eight years.
When Jason took over Vodafone New Zealand in 2018, he did something most CEOs would rather outsource to corporate affairs.
He stood in front of his people, put the words “Dear Vodafone, you suck” on the screen, and read the customer complaints out loud - including the ones attacking him personally.
Then he published his own email address and invited customers to send him more.
He still reads them.
What followed was not just the usual corporate ritual of changing the logo and declaring victory.
Earnings went from $463 million at acquisition to over $600 million. Vodafone became One New Zealand, the passive tower assets were sold, and One NZ became the first mobile operator globally to commercially launch a nationwide Starlink Direct to Cell texting service.
Jason’s pitch for the peculiar economics of covering New Zealand was rather memorable:
Sixty million sheep. Five million people.
But this conversation goes well beyond telco.
Jason grew up in Invercargill, raised by a sixteen-year-old solo mum. His father left immediately and never came back. He was rejected from teachers’ college, lasted three months at university and has never held a degree.
He built the career anyway.
Banking. Radio. McDonald’s. Nokia. TVNZ. MediaWorks. Telecom. Spark. Vodafone. One New Zealand.
🏗️ What Was Actually Broken
- What Jason found when he got into the CEO role
- The three problems driving the customer experience: network, service and value
- Why the team already knew what was wrong but often lacked the freedom to fix it
- Why admitting “we suck” proved more useful than another transformation deck
- Why he describes walking into Vodafone as “discovering a gold mine”
🌏 Cutting the Anchor
- Why Vodafone Group’s ownership model became a handbrake
- How centralised decision-making limited the New Zealand business
- What changed when Infratil and Brookfield bought the company
- Why local ownership gave management more room to actually manage
💰 Infratil, Ownership & Value Creation
- The passive tower sale
- Why private ownership can support a longer investment horizon
- How much of the result was genuine operating turnaround versus financial structure
- Why the quality and values of a board matter as much as the money
- Why Jason says being brilliant is not enough if you are unbearable to work with
🧠 Culture, Empowerment & Leadership
- Jason’s three leadership principles
- Why “you can’t be good at work if you’re not good at home first”
- Why the person closest to the customer should be trusted to make the call
- Why leaders should hire people better than themselves
- Whether One New Zealand’s culture survives once Jason disappears from the inbox
📧 The CEO Inbox
- What customer emails tell him that executive meetings cannot
- Why senior leaders often stop hearing what is really going wrong
- Why transparency gives him licence to defend his people when the customer is wrong
🔄 Earning the Right to Rebrand
- Why a new name means very little if the old problems are still underneath it
- What had to be fixed before Vodafone could become One New Zealand
- Why the rebrand came years after the turnaround began
📡 Starlink & the Future of Connectivity
- Connecting a phone in your pocket to satellites hundreds of kilometres above Earth
- Why telecommunications infrastructure is usually invisible right up until the moment it stops working
- Why satellite changes what mobile coverage can look like
🇦🇺 Australia vs New Zealand Telcos
- Why the two markets have taken different paths
- Jason’s view of the leadership at Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom
- Why, perhaps inconveniently for angry customers, he thinks the telcos deserve a little more credit than they get
🤖 AI, Automation & Fewer Jobs
One of the most direct answers in the episode.
- Why automation has already removed the need for hundreds of roles
- Jason’s honest answer on whether One NZ will ultimately need fewer people
- Where AI should take over repetitive work
- Where people still matter most
- Whether society can adapt as quickly as the technology - and who ultimately gets the economic upside
👨👩👧 Fatherhood & Priorities
- How growing up without a father shaped Jason as a dad
- Why he said no to Elon Musk and a SpaceX rocket launch
- What his daughter said about her Year 6 graduation that made the decision easy
- How he decides which moments he absolutely needs to be there for
❤️ The Father Who Never Came Back
Jason has always called him his father, not his dad.
So I ask what he would say if he could have one conversation with him now, knowing the man and the father he became.
He takes a moment before answering.
It becomes the most personal part of the conversation.
🌱 One Person Who Believes in You
Jason shares what One NZ’s work with disadvantaged young people taught him about the single factor that can change the direction of a young person’s life.
It also turns out to explain quite a lot about Jason Paris.
🚪 Knowing When to Leave
- Why eight years felt like the right time
- Why staying longer could have blocked the people coming up behind him
- What he is handing to the next generation of leadership
- Why leaving while things are working may be harder than leaving when they are not
🪞 “The Mirror Never Lies”
A line Steve Hansen once gave him.
I ask what the mirror tells Jason as he prepares to walk out of One New Zealand for the final time.
After eight years in the job, his answer is remarkably short.
This is not just a telco story.
It is about turning around a business, changing ownership, building culture that outlasts you, using technology without losing humanity, raising a family, backing people and knowing when your job is done.
And, occasionally, admitting to an entire company that the customers may have had a point.
Connect with Jason: linkedin.com/in/jason-paris-3404565
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