We wouldn't be in this situation if Ralph were in charge of everything. Best thing Stephenson could do is hand the reins over.
12 replies (most recent on top)
Started with bellsouth mobility in 1991. I've since left as the vpgm ignored blatant acts of code of conduct violations by one of the sales directors. I've been through this process many times. Bottom line is they will look for sales directors and arsm's who are "older" and at the top of the pay band and cut them loose. Then the vpgm will carve out a few slots for their "favorites " regardless of their performance or employee feedback.
Remember the saying, "how you treat people on your climb up the corp ladder, is how you will be treated when you fall". I'm truly sorry for the hundreds maybe thousands of lifers who were loyal and hardworking that built the wireless and consumer business and now will be cast aside based on subjective RIF scoring.
Ralph is getting his golden parachute lined up over at Amex board of directors as of a couple of weeks ago.
Stan was a good CEO. He is missed by those of us from Cingular.
Cingular was not run by Ralph it was ran by Stan Sigman and he kept the stupidity under control. What was good about Stan was that he stared by sweeping floors in a MTSO and moved up from there to CEO.
It may very well be that AT&T can unlock shareholder value by splitting the business into two or three or four parts: 1. Mobility 2. Entertainment/content and/or 3. Wireline IP Transport
The easy spinoff is DTV + U-verse TV.
U-verse TV can readily be network agnostic.
Business Application Services is already pretty much spun-off.
Managed services could be divided up to the units having the most affinity or piecemeal sold-off.
Less need for datacenter footprint to support the internal apps would make more datacenter and hosting spin-offs more attractive.
It's an evolution that could make the parts operate so much more efficiently and with more focus and agility than as parts of an unwieldy conglomerate.
Let's not forget @1umk, Randall is a great talker evident in the Lwds and fireside chats, he's the consummate salesman. After most of his talks, I would be like "I wanna work for THAT ATT he's selling"...
Now it could be that Dallas culture is nirvana and what he's selling exists only there. But I know people who work in his building, so it's all bells and whistles.
I do believe Randall's tenure is on life support, but the titanic is already sinking - it will take a few years for anyone with talent to undo what he's done. The cultural stuff will probably take even longer to fix. It won't be fair but his successor may in fact deserve 20 million a year, just for the heartache.
Randall's days are limited. I hope the board of directors is making him sweat. I can't believe they're letting him do this bullshit after the T-Mobile blunder. He should've been fired then!
Ralph would be no better. Did he look out for his cingular/bellsouth buddies? Umm no!
Ralphie is just as much a stooge as Randy. All you have to do is listen to him during one of those patronizing townhall broadcasts. He doesn't say anything other than burp up a bunch of marketing propaganda.
Trading Randy for Ralphie is like trading Syphilis for Gonorrhea.
Ralph was reall good leading Cingular, he's too much apart of the establishment to move forward.
No responses? I'm genuinely shocked. It's like the words De La Vega are off limits to use here.