RANDALL STEPHENSON TOOK AT&T INTO THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL REVOLUTION
Learning from the greatest business leaders of the world – Part 68
Randall Lynn Stephenson (born April 22, 1960) is an American telecommunications executive. He is the current chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of AT&T Inc. since May 9, 2007. He served as National Chair of the Boy Scouts of America from 2016 to 2018.
For a chief executive tasked with leading the transformation of one of America’s largest companies, Stephenson is one hard man to track down. The elusive Stephenson often foregoes media interviews and event appearances to tend to his business.
Those close to him, however, know a different Stephenson: a mild-mannered, deep-thinking Oklahoma native with a penchant for golf, an ipad always within easy reach, and a passion for University of Oklahoma football. A man who can poke fun at himself just as easily as he can at others, making Stephenson a regular target ofwisecracks among friends.
Yei, in company matters, Stephenson means business. Big business. At the forefront of Dallasbased AT&T, Stephenson is not only defining a company- he’s aiming to shape the landscape it competes in. “He’s rushing ahead, transforming industry after industry,” says Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications analyst who’s covered the space for three decades. He is “not just competing with existing industries, but he’s changing the playing field.” For this reason, Stephenson has been named Dallas-fort Worth’s CEO of the Year for 2016.
Stephenson earned an MA from the University of Oklahoma, then began his career in 1982 with Southwestern Bell Telephone in the informationtechnology organization in Oklahoma. Late in the 1980s through 1990s, he progressed through a series of leadership positions in finance, including an international assignment in Mexico City overseeing SBT’S investment in Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex).
In July 2001, Stephenson was appointed chief financial officer for SBC, helping the company reduce its net debt from US$30 billion to near zero by early 2004. From 2003 to 2004, Stephenson served as chairman of the board of directors for Cingular Wireless. In 2004, he was named chief operating officer of SBC and also appointed by President Bush as National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.
Stephenson continued as COO following SBC’S acquisition of AT&T in 2005, responsible for all wireless and wireline operations at AT&T. In April 2007, AT&T announced Stephenson would succeed retiring Edward Whitacre as CEO. Stephenson served as chairman of the Business Roundtable from 2014 to 2016.
Under Stephenson, the emphasis has been on adapting to the marketplace, where the keywords are ‘instantaneous connectivity’, ‘virtualization’ and ‘cloud computing’. This push extends to employees, who are encouraged to take skills improvement classes on their own time or risk on-the-job obsolescence.
As early as 2012, Stephenson realized that to be a premier integrated-communications company, its workforce of 280,000 had to improve its skills. Vision 2020, Stephenson’s signature program, combined classroom-based and online classes in areas like data science and digital networking to elevate people’s technology skills.
In September 2016, Stephenson gave a speech regarding race relations at AT&T’S annual Employee Resource Group conference in Dallas. An employee posted a video of the speech to Youtube, in which Stephenson asked attendees to make a greater effort to understand each other and communicate better.
During his tenure as CEO, AT&T acquired
Directv for US$ 49 billion in July 2015 and Time Warner for US$ 85 billion in June 2018. According to Drew Fitzgerald of The Wall Street Journal, Stephenson has “transformed the phone company he inherited into one of the world’s biggest entertainment companies.”
It’s safe to say that the AT&T of today barely resembles the Ma Bell of yesterday. The US$147 billion Dallas-based company has invested aggressively in mobile, fast and secure connectivity to 355 million people in the U.S. and Mexico—a seamless cross-border network that’s unique in the marketplace. This includes highspeed fiber connections to more than 1 billion U.S. locations, as well as global IP network services that connect businesses on six continents representing 3.5 million businesses or 99 percent of the world’s economy.
In addition, AT&T has invested US$1.3 billion in a high-quality wireless spectrum to get a jump on demand for mobile Internet services—particularly video entertainment, thanks in part to its 2014 acquisition of Cricket and a US$ 18.2 billion acquisition of a nearnationwide block of high-quality spectrum in a 2015 government auction. Switching to a software-defined network (SDN) by replacing hardware with software is enabling AT&T to move more data at a lower cost-per-bit. The goal is to have the lowest cost structure in the industry—in effect beating Moore’s Law in network performance.
The company is partnering with Ericsson and Intel to develop its 5G network, which it expects to deliver broadband speeds 10 to 100 times faster than existing LTE network connections. Customers will likely see speeds in the range of gigabits per second instead of megabits. (Verizon is working with Alcatellucent, Ericsson, Cisco, Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung to test 5G also.)
AT&T, which employs more than 270,000 people worldwide, also has been rolling out internet speeds of 1 gigabit per second with its fibre network, experimenting with the upcoming 5G network, and trying to capitalize on the growing market for connected devices, known as the Internet of Things. It’s also leveraging its AT&T Foundries to infuse innovative thinking and technology across sectors.
And, the ball just keeps rolling. The technology giant, which generated US$ 146.8 billion in revenue in 2015, is reportedly seeking other acquisitions in media and entertainment, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, it continues to debut developments spurring from its Directv acquisition and to brainstorm future products with Time Warner.
Stephenson maintains a private life maintaining homes in Preston Hollow, Dallas and Olmos Park, San Antonio, Texas.
What lessons can we learn from Randall Lynn Stephenson?
Take stock of where you are.
Ask trusted colleagues (and even those colleagues on the fringe of your people comfort zone) what they think you’re good at. What do they think your growth opportunities are? Where do they see you fitting in the organization? In the work landscape in general? Accept the input, good and bad. Inventory your skills and experiences. Identify the gaps and the holes.
Commit to yourself that you will let go of the ‘OLD’ professional you and open yourself up to the “NEW.” You need to find the mental resolve to move forward and embrace change in your professional life. This is the first step in the journey.
Make your immediate superior you rally.
Have a frank discussion about your long term career goals. Ask your manager’s help in reaching your goals – even if it means a shift to a new department, or extra assignments you feel less than equipped to handle, or taking some of the drudge out of your manager’s day to day, or even taking time off to allow yourself some mental and emotional space.
Proactively set out to build your skill set.
Your goal is to strategically fill in skills gaps. Have management skills? Check! Have product expertise? Check! Have P&L responsibility? Check! Have international experience? No…. then go get it – whatever “IT” is. And if you can’t get “IT” from your job, then seek to do it outside of the workplace through classes, volunteer work, study-cations.
Be open to opportunities.
Don’t let that inside voice tell you “you can’t” or “it won’t work.” First and foremost, you need to be a believer in yourself and your capacity to evolve and stay in the game in one way or another. For the naysayers? Ignore them. They are not worth your time or mental energy.