CEO John Stankey said he made some missteps in addressing company culture at AT&T — and shed some new light on his internal memo that went viral.
The lengthy memo, which was first reported by Business Insider in August, described how the company was moving to a “more market-based culture,” setting off discourse about the state of workplace loyalty.
Stankey gave some insight into the goal behind the memo during a conversation at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit on Tuesday.
When asked to name a mistake he’s made, Stankey said he was too slow to tackle the “culture evolution” that was needed. He said he put it among several areas of focus for the company and that instead he should’ve put it at the forefront and forced specific actions to make it happen.
Alan Murray, president of the WSJ Leadership Institute, suggested that was why Stanley sent that memo this year, rather than sooner.
“The memo shouldn’t be over-rotated on. It’s one of a series of steps in trying to put a framework out there and remove excuses for leaders to lead,” Stankey said, adding the memo gave context on the framework he was building for the business.
“That memo outlined my point of view on it, and it gives leaders that want to lead all the air cover in the world they need to go and execute around that framework,” he said.
AT&T has undergone a number of changes as a company in the past year, including a return-to-office mandate of five days a week.
In the memo to employees, Stankey effectively said they should get on board with changes to the company culture, or get out.
“We run a dynamic, customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives,” Stankey said in the memo. “If the requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs.”
At the event on Tuesday, Stankey also outlined how AT&T is pushing employees to adopt AI. He said the company has tutorials and other educational tools for employees to upskill with AI, and that he’s paying attention to who is using them.
“I want to see who’s building their skill set, where they’re building, and this is just the next set of skills that people are going to have to have,” he said.
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