An 'ODD' Reaction to Strategy Failure in America's (Once) Largest Telco

This is a real story about how a group of highly innovative and highly committed employees sought to rescue a failing telecom giant while they thought AT&T still had its chance. The signs of radical change in the telecom industry were in the air. The management did not seem to be able to come to terms with industry deregulation, the Internet, or the declining revenues from long-distance telephony. The group's reaction to emerging strategy failure, described in detail in this article, was more than an effort to create new strategy: it was motivated by the need to find meaning beyond the often irrational corporate realities they were faced with. It was an effort to stay sane in strategically mad(dening) times. Why bother with this story? AT&T is still not failure-proof and the group, called ODD, has long been dismantled. We bother because this is a rarely documented incidence of corporate activism surging to rescue a legendary company from persistent strategy failure. It is an incidence of rare spirit and courage of the kind that could make companies much more resilient in their strategy creation. The story gives you hope that there are large untapped reserves in your company as there were in AT&T -- reserves you could harness for strategy making. The lesson is simple: strategy is far too important to leave to the usual suspects, the people with titles and long corporate histories of predictable behaviour. Look for and engage the people who have something to say beyond the annual planning routines. For a corporate activist, this is a manual in corporate revolution. Perhaps you can learn from the activists within AT&T so that you will outlive them in the corporate struggle for survival. This is thus a how-to-do about the tricks of trade in activism but it is also a document of pitfalls in claiming strategy as everyone's right and responsibility.