From: John P. Dearing Subject: The Bell Atlantic Way? Date: 9 Aug 1995 01:08:48 GMT Organization: Philadelphia's Complete Internet Connection Found this today, thought you would find it amusing.... THE BELL ATLANTIC WAY Bell Atlantic and the Competition decided to engage in a competitive boat race. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they both felt ready. The competition won by a mile! Afterward, the Bell Atlantic team was discouraged by the loss. Morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat HAD to be found, so a consulting firm was hired to investigate the problem and recommend corrective action. The Consultant's findings: The competition team had eight people rowing and one preson steering; the Bell Atlantic team had one person rowing and eight people steering. A year of study, and millions spent on analyzing the problem, the consulting firm concluded that too many people were steering and not enough were rowing on the Bell Atlantic team. So, as race day neared again the following year, the Bell Atlantic team's management structure was completely reorganized. The new structure: four steering managers, three area steering managers, one staff manager and a new performance review system for the one person rowing the boat to provide incentives. That year the competition won by *TWO* miles!! Humiliated, the Bell Atlantic corporation laid off the lone rower for poor performance and gave the managers all bonuses for discovering the problem. Disclaimer -- Speaking as a member of, but not *for* CWA Local 13000 John Dearing jdearing@netaxs.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, what you are saying is very true! Finally, a dozen years into divestiture, the Bells are beginning to learn how things are done in the real world. Do you remember the first year or so following divestiture how embarassing -- utterly embarassing -- it could be at times talking to an AT&T 'sales' representative? They had no concepts about anything other than their own red tape. They could not sell air conditioning units in hell ... that's how bad they were at it. After all, for eighty years, they did not have to sell; they just wrote tariffs, had thousands of clerks dealing with a huge amount of red tape, and were generally sort of benevolent toward customers who did not give them a hard time. I don't think it ever occurred to them in those days that some of their competition would skin and eat them alive. Even MCI was treated like a big joke back in the early 1970's; ask any of the old-timers in marketing and traffic if you don't believe me. And even though MCI and Sprint combined are not even half as good at overall customer service and satisfaction as AT&T -- and never will be in my own opinion -- those two still have managed to erode AT&T's customer base to the point where Mother now has just a little over half of the business; down from something like 85 percent of the business a few years ago. Unfortunatly, some of the upper management in the RBOCs still haven't completely grasped the Good News for Modern Man: there are people out there who know just as much about telephony as they, and I dare say have more respect for Ted Vail and his 'marketing techniques' (hee hee hee, big grin) than they. Vail, the chairman of AT&T at the start of the 1900's made Mother into what she was for most of this century. Imagine someone of that caliber at the head of what we used to call the 'Other Common Carriers' -- at least that's what AT&T taught us to call the upstarts. Just imagine if Ted Vail was running MCI -- which is not to put down Bill McGowan; while he was alive he made MCI what it is now -- but suppose a Ted Vail came on the scene now. Ruthless? You bet! PAT]