https://www.businessinsider.com/att-ceo-john-stankey-memo-spurred-right-kind-of-dialogue-2025-8
He is hated, as witnessed at the employee group conference last week.
This article references a 1% response rate to the survey saying it was an effective memo. lol!!! Stank says some employees understand. That doesn't mean they aren't actively planning to leave this shithole.
Stankey considers all T employees canaries in a coal mine.
That man is f’ing nuts!! “ loyalty- and tenure-based approach” T has NEVER BEEN THIS. People stayed because the company treated employees well. Treated them like HUMANS. Is he trying to label CARING as “loyalty and ensure based” ?!
Is “market based” where you treat everyone like second class minions working in coal mines?
Please someone make this make sense.
@aq
FOR THOSE UNABLE TO ATTEND IN PERSON
if looks could ki-l, he was dead before he sat down.
AT&T's CEO isn't sure why his corporate culture memo went viral, but he says it has spurred 'the right kind of dialogue'
By Dominick Reuter
John Stankey had a hunch his now-legendary memo on AT&T's corporate culture might eventually become part of the public domain, but the scale of the reaction still surprised him.
The telecom giant's CEO made his first comment on the reaction to his words on Tuesday morning on CNBC, several weeks after Business Insider exclusively obtained and published the document.
"You got a copy of that?" Stankey asked CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Stankey said he wrote the memo expecting it could end up in the public eye and that he seeks to be transparent in his approach to running the business. Still, he said he wasn't sure why his comments attracted so much attention.
"The fact that people spent as much time on it for as many days as they did was probably a little bit of a surprise to me," he said. "I don't know why that is — I'm not an industrial psychologist."
In the memo sent August 1, Stankey said that the 140-year-old company is facing a historic transition that requires it to "disrupt itself" in order to remain relevant.
Part of this transition involves a shift away from the loyalty- and tenure-based approach to employee relations in favor of a "market-based culture" that emphasizes performance.
"Maybe I struck a chord in some regards," Stankey told CNBC. "But most importantly for me, I think the memo was very well understood within the business, there's been the right kind of dialogue around it."
Internally, he said the reaction has been mixed.
"I can't say everybody's happy about it, but I think the vast majority of AT&T employees understand the direction we're headed, and that's a really good thing," he said.
The memo sparked considerable discussion among Business Insider readers, with around 1,490 responding between August 4 and August 26 to a survey that asked whether the memo was an effective way to communicate with employees.
Roughly 40% of those respondents said that it was an effective message, while 60% said the opposite.
Correction: August 26. 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the CNBC host. It is Andrew Ross Sorkin, not Aaron Sorkin.
Pay-walled. Anyone have the full text?
The article would better if he was sitting on a rainbow cr--ker barrel chair.
“What Stankey does with your re---m is your business”
LOL! And his yapper. 😄
@aq please try betterhelp.com
😆 Friday’s EGC webcast should be shared externally so that people can see what he’s saying now. 😆
We should copy Target 🤣
McDonald’s is regimented 🤐
Don’t be a Yugo🤣. Or Is it You Go😆
If someone wants to feed you Applesauce, RUN! It’s your last meal 😆
Be A Square, don’t be a Hipster 🫣😆
"Stank nailed it"
What Stankey does with your re---m is your business
He was surprised because he’s helplessly out of touch.
How he could think this wouldn’t get out or get the reaction it did is beyond belief. The only people who agreed with this cr_p are the L4+ lackeys who are just lemmings or the Jackson Hole set who loathe the people who make them all their money.
" he was taken to the wood shed by his own employees."
How? If anything he will be the one taking people to the woodshed after the next round of cuts
Translation: The Stink is embarrassed that he was taken to the wood shed by his own employees. We all “understand” the direction, but nobody agrees with it. Just because he’s the CEO, doesn’t make his decisions correct or valid. He’s the commander of a fortune 100 tu-d, and we call him captain stinky. What else is there to say? Just another Cr--ker Barrel.
Stank nailed it
AT&T workers have never been measured by performance. Why start now?
Even AI wants to fire Stankey. Maybe he should not be pushing it so hard.
Had ChatGPT assess T's Market Based Culture.
Key Takeaway for AT&T
Co-location alone doesn’t change culture. It may speed communication, but it doesn’t alter risk appetite, decision rights, or accountability.
Culture shifted only when leadership changed (GM, IBM to a degree) or when incentives and accountability were reset.
Relocation without deeper reform risks backfire (Boeing is the cautionary tale: moving execs around masked deeper problems).
Answer for AT&T: If the same officers, VPs, and GMs stay in place, putting them all in Dallas is mostly symbolic. It concentrates existing bureaucracy rather than rewiring it. To truly reset culture, co-location has to be paired with turnover at the top, incentive restructuring, and ruthless simplification of process.