Life & Living:  From the Eye of the Divestiture Storm to Getting a Bagel from a Nobel Prize Winner

 

 

Preamble:

 

 

I’ve had, to me, an interesting life.  I never expected, much less planned, its twists and turns.  There are 2 common threads:  1.) being close to diversely talented people who I genuinely liked, found interesting, and learned from … and 2.) finding myself in an eclectic set of quite enjoyable situations where I had the opportunity to grow and learn and have some fun.  Almost all the time I thought I was contributing something worthy and valuable. 

 

 

I like to tell stories.  (For my wife Bunny’s taste, too repetitiously.)  Here’s one of them.  I hope you enjoy it.  I welcome your feedback.  Did you enjoy it … or did it bore the ass off you?  Either way, why?  I’d also like to hear your ideas for other things I might write about.  Just leave a comment or DM me on Facebook or LinkedIn.

 

 

The Story:

 

 

In 1981, I’m 33 years old, 12 years into my career, and a mid-level manager at AT&T’s HQ, known as the General Departments.  I’m working in the Network organization.  I was a generalist but if I had a specialty, it was network operations planning and management.  A lot of days, I’d start the day with my work agenda only to be diverted into some special project.  It was frustrating until I finally concluded that my “real” job was serving as an on-call generalist internal consultant.

 

One late evening in December 1981, I suddenly found myself in the middle of what would become the biggest corporate restructuring in history: the Bell System divestiture.

 

It began in a conference room, aptly known as the War Room, in Basking Ridge, NJ.  I’m one of about 20 people who were gathered on short notice for some hush-hush meeting.   Hush-hush meetings were rare; I can’t remember another one.  One of my all-time best bosses and role models and, later, friend, Larry Mead, and I were returning from an unmemorable business-as-usual meeting.  We stopped at Larry’s office.  His secretary told us to call our wives and tell them we’d be late … and to show up in the War Room post haste.  What for?  They wouldn’t say, she replied.

 

As it turned out, we’d been summoned to assess whether the draft divestiture agreement could be operationally implemented.  The Gods needed an answer the next morning.  

 

We were limited to one copy of the 20-page document.  Someone read the first page and passed it to the next person until we had all read it.  This took a while.  We then discussed it for a couple of hours, making sure we all understood it the same way and trying to find fatal flaws.  In the end, it was easily unanimous:  yes, we could do it. 

 

And do it, we did.

 

For the next 2 years, I grew into one of the lead architects, designers, and project managers for turning the divestiture agreement into operational reality. 

 

Heady times indeed for a kid from rural Western Maryland.  One of the cool things about AT&T was if something needed to get done and you had an idea on how to do it, raised your hand and volunteered, you often got the chance to do something big, something way, way above your paygrade. 

 

Those 2 years were intellectually exhilarating and exciting.  Every day demanded some breakthrough creativity to figure out how to do something that had never been done before:  how to do it, how to do it with excellence, how to manage and lead it, how to resolve conflicts.  

 

It was intense.  One night at 2:00am, I was finally done for the day and left my office on the 4^th floor of Building 3.  (The stunning pagoda-style Basking Ridge complex had 7 interconnected buildings, ranging from 2 to 4 stories and each with 2 levels of underground parking, designed to not spoil the rolling countryside with a high-rise and acres of above ground parking lots.)  Instead of being deserted at 2:00am, it looked like 2:00pm on a normal day.  There were more than a few people walking through the halls.  There was a guy hard at work in the Xerox room.  I got on the elevator to the underground parking garage.  The elevator stopped at every floor and more people got on.  My long day was not unique to me.

 

It was fun and often funny.  A camaraderie forms when everyone’s running on caffeine, adrenaline, and sheer stubbornness to do the “impossible” on an “impossible” schedule.

 

When divestiture happened on January 1, 1984, everyone in the Bell System … all 1 million of us … had to be assigned to one of the resulting entities.

 

The good news:  I had choices, good choices.  The bad news:  I didn’t know what direction to go:  return to our family and friends and the comfortable familiarity of my home Bell company, C&P Telephone Company of Maryland (which became part of Bell Atlantic, and later today’s Verizon), go to Bellcore (the piece of Bell Labs assigned to the Baby Bells), or go to AT&T (either the long distance services business or the equipment and software manufacturing and R&D business).

 

I asked Bunny what she thought we should do.  She’s a wise counselor with great instincts who always sees the silver lining in every cloud.  She said let’s stay in NJ, we like it here and you get to work with top-notch people on important stuff.  She saw a “How’re you going to keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree” scenario.  

 

After deciding on AT&T and being recruited to join the equipment and software business, I arrived early one pretty Fall morning at AT&T Bell Labs’ HQ in Murray Hill, NJ a few months later.

 

There, I met my wonderful colleague and friend, Steve Allen, a seasoned finance expert with a Wharton MBA who taught me about finance, competitive analysis, business, and strategy in the real world.  

 

We were scheduled to review a draft presentation to AT&T’s Board with the President of AT&T Network Systems and his EVPs.  

 

Steve and I got on the elevator with a very well-dressed fellow in a 3-piece suit.  He’s carrying a big brown paper bag.  He asked who we are, what we are doing, and where we are going.  The nerve of some people!  

 

We got off the elevator before him and started setting up in a conference room.  A few minutes later he appeared without his suit coat but still carrying the bag.  He opened it and asked if we wanted a bagel.  Sure.  It was a good one too, still warm.

 

After a while, a secretary arrives.  We ask her who the guy with the bag was.  She gives us that “really, who are youguys” look but answers gently:  Arno Penzias, VP for all of Bell Labs Research; he brings bagels in all the time.  (One of the many endearing things about Bell Labs was the absence of ostentation.  You couldn’t throw a slide rule without hitting a PhD from one of the world’s finest universities, and likely one of the world’s foremost experts.  Using first names was the norm and no one ever used “Doctor.”  Arno was Arno, not Dr. Penzias.)

 

I go home that night and tell Bunny that she’ll never guess what happened to me today.  What?  A Nobel Prize winner gave me a bagel.  Kind of validates your instincts about staying in NJ, doesn’t it?  Smile.