Spun out of TVNZ more than a decade ago, with ambitions to become a major telecommunications player, it added internet service provider Orcon to its business in 2007 at a cost of $24 million.
At the time, Kordia needed to rework its business because its core analogue broadcast assets were becoming redundant with the arrival of digital transmission and internet streaming.
The desire to be number three in the telco market, behind Spark and Vodafone, was the declared mission when Bartlett, 35, stepped up from his role as chief executive at Orcon to head Kordia in 2012.
"That's bold, but I didn't feel it really played to Kordia's strengths," he says. His first move was to sell Orcon, the company he'd run for the previous seven years.
It was done without a backward glance.
"It wasn't even bittersweet," says Bartlett. "I've got a lot of affection for Orcon and it needed to have the right owner and we weren't it."
After being hived off to private investors, Orcon was sold again last year to CallPlus and now sits under the M2 umbrella.
"That sort of down and dirty retail, commodity, scale game, that's not Kordia; it was never going to be."
Instead, Bartlett has focused the business on to what he considers its forte: mission-critical networks.
Broadcasting is still part of the portfolio, running alongside a contracting and consulting arm that builds and maintains networks across New Zealand and Australia, and a business telecommunications operation aimed at medium-to-large enterprises.
I feel like the work we've done over the past few years has brought Kordia to being a modern business.
"Maybe that seems that we now don't have the ambition we used to have.
"Well actually, we're going faster than we ever have, profits are stronger than they've ever been and the balance sheet's never been stronger, so the market's really responding to this shift from broadcaster/broadband to mission-critical networks."
The sunset of a monopoly business doesn't make for a particularly motivating workplace, says Bartlett, so a real shift was needed to reset the business culture.
Although it's about leading the business in a new direction, including a move into smart downtown offices over the road from its rival Spark, Bartlett says the real evidence is in business results and customer satisfaction, which are both riding high.
The company, including its independent Australian business, recorded a loss of $3.8m last financial year, but is back in the black with a $9.2 million profit for the 2015 financial year on revenue of $248 million."
Kordia is now debt-free, says Bartlett, which gives it strategic options and potential returns to its Crown shareholder.
"I feel like the work we've done over the past few years has brought Kordia to being a modern business.
My evolution as a leader and my maturity has had to adapt to Kordia as well. You can't just expect as a [chief executive] to come in and impose your will on a business.
"It probably wasn't a modern business three or four years ago. It was an ex-government department."
Kordia remains 100 per cent government-owned, and though it has caught the eye of potential buyers amid wider telecommunications industry consolidation, Bartlett says the company is not on the market.
He is the first non-engineer to run Kordia - he succeeded Geoff Hunt, who now heads construction firm Hawkins - and says there were some questions about the ability of a young, "internet marketing guy" to do the job.
"My evolution as a leader and my maturity has had to adapt to Kordia as well.
"You can't just expect as a [chief executive] to come in and impose your will on a business.
"You need to set leadership and you need to set tone, but you've also got to listen as well."
Bartlett says he has admitted to people that he came in with some preconceived ideas about Kordia and the people working in it.
"Maybe the people that have been here 40 years, they're the past ... "Well actually, a lot of the guys that have been here a long time, they are innovative, they keep reinventing themselves and I've got a huge amount of respect for what they contribute.
"That's not universal, but if you look around the business now, some of our stand-out performers are those that have been here a very long time.
"They've adapted; I can, too."
