The breakup of Ma Bell was tough and ugly, not least for the tens of thousands of employees who were laid off in the mid-1990s—forty thousand of them in one gulp in 1996. Who involved can revisit that era without a little bitterness?
This book by an ex-AT&T insider—former executive vice president Dick Martin—offers a compelling, partial answer to that question. It's partial because the breakup mess is still recent history, and also because, as the author admits, his recap was not intended as a tell-all. He does tell enough to make this a valuable read for many managers, not just those already immersed in telecom lore, since his main theme is the power (and pitfalls) of communicating both internally and externally when a company is in big trouble. Though he looks backward, his perspective is mercifully light on finger-pointing, and we are also spared of any embarrassing soul-searching. He is candid about his own errors of judgment.
Martin was a career man at Ma Bell who served more than three decades, departing in 2002 after five stormy years of handling public relations, employee communications, and brand management. Each chapter is arranged around a specific area of advice, such as "Understand the power of symbols," or "Don't let plugging leaks become an obsession," and he details how he and AT&T earned that bit of wisdom the hard way.
The final chapter sums up several of the most important lessons. In hindsight, he realizes that Wall Street loomed too large in the company's imagination. The street shaped the form as well as the substance of AT&T's messages: "We were positioning AT&T as the answer to the question 'How do I make quick money in the stock market?' as if that were our mission," he writes. AT&T also lost time and energy by focusing on serious, but in Martin's opinion, secondary problems, such as succession and costs, when its goal should have been to clearly define its fundamental business. In addition, he regrets that in the company's darkest times he and the other senior executives couldn't stoke more employee confidence about the mission, causing people to fearfully "fill in the blanks" based on what they learned from the media.
Part of this book appeared in the October 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review as "Gilded and Gelded: Hard-Won Lessons from the PR Wars."
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Ch. 1. Don't Dance to the Music of Your Own Buzz
Ch. 2. Understand the Power of Symbols
Ch. 3. Take Control
Ch. 4. Complete the CEO
Ch. 5. Expect the Dumbing Down of Reality
Ch. 6. Work Inside Out Toward Your Customers
Ch. 7. Don't Let Plugging Leaks Become an Obsession
Ch. 8. Casting Is Everything
Ch. 9. Pay Attention to the Power of the Few
Ch. 10. Don't Confuse Politics and Public Relations
Ch. 11. Say Good-Bye to the Rah-Rah Brother- and Sisterhood
Ch. 12. Stay Off the Treadmill of Expectations
Ch. 13. It's Okay to Change Your Mind
Ch. 14. Credibility Breaks All Ties
Ch. 15. Reimagine Your Company's Mission
Ch. 16. Practice Ambidextrous Leadership
Selective Chronology
Notes
Index