AT - American turnaround: reinventing AT & T and GM and the way we do business in the USA

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Copyright 2013 by Edward E. Whitacre, Jr.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

Business Plus

Hachette Book Group

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First e-book edition: February 2013

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ISBN 978-1-4555-1300-0

This straight-talking Texan and former CEO of two of Americas best-known corporations provides a candid, insiders view of how a committed business leader can make a difference. More importantly, Eds book offers a prescription for the kind of leadership that can turn America around and get the country moving again.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison

To me, Ed has always been a strong leader with real intelligence and a big heart, blessed with common sense and without fear. He thinks with a clear mind, and he always carries a long-term vision and mission. Best of all, he is an exceptional human being who is always concerned about people.

Carlos Slim Hel, industrialist and philanthropist

Among CEOs, Ed is one of a kind. Not only did he successfully run AT&T and fix GM, but he is also a classic Texancomplete with a straight-speaking manner and common touch that truly set him apart. Here is his uniquely American story. Everyone who starts this book will finish it.

Roger Altman, founder and chairman, Evercore Partners; former deputy Treasury secretary

Very inspiring, down-to-earth leadership lessonsand all very consistent with our experiences with Ed during his time at GM.

Bob King, UAW President

To my wife and daughters,
Linda, Jessica, and Jennifer

If youd asked me when I was a high school senior what was in my future, heres what I would have told you: I planned to go to work for the railroad and stay there until I retired. Growing up, I just assumed that was how my life would go.

I come from a long line of railroad people: My daddyhis name was Edward Earl Whitacre, thats whom Im named afterdropped out of high school to take a job with the railroad and worked there fifty years. His daddy did the same thing. So did the other men in my family. There are no silver spoons in my background. We had farmers, a part-time rancher, an Air Force navigator, a high school football coach, and a town blacksmith in our family. But the railroad, well, that was almost a calling. Being a part of Americas railroad tradition was a real point of pride in our family. And it always will be.

But as it turned out, I did not go to work for the railroad. Instead, and much to my own surprise, I wound up becoming the chairman and CEO of two of the biggest companies in the world, AT&T and General Motors. I spent forty-four years with AT&TI worked my way up from student engineer. And GMI wound up there at the request of the White House in 2009, right after the company got out of bankruptcy. I had just retired from AT&T, and like everybody else in America I was saddened and somewhat mystified by GMs collapse: How could GM management allow this to happen? Thats the question I kept asking myself walking in the door at GM, and I kept asking that questionand lots of others, especially of senior managementthe entire time I was there. I am a private man by nature, which is one reason Ive never said much publiclyin fact, I spent most of my career avoiding microphones and interviews, and for the most part was successful. Im also not the kind to talk about myself. That sort of thing has always embarrassed me, to be perfectly honest. And it still does. So I will admit to you up front that I approached this entire book-writing idea with a littlemaybe a lot oftrepidation.

But after much thought and reflection, I decided that a book would be a good way, maybe the only way, for me to thank and publicly acknowledge a lot of people who have helped me along the way. And since I just recently turned seventy, I figured I should probably do that sooner rather than later. These people didnt just help me personally; they also helped build and contributed to the success of businesses that positively affect lives and the whole of America. Im very proud of what we accomplished together, sometimes under the roughest of circumstancesGM jumps to mind. My experiences at AT&T and GM reminded me every single day, in big and small ways, just how good American workers are, and why theyre so important to the long-term success of this country.

And so I finally decided to write this book. Theres a lot in here about me, because, well, this is my life and these are my experiences. I did my best to tell the story straightpulling punches and tap-dancing around tough subjects just arent my way. But Im also going to talk a lot about other people, as I just mentioned, and about the management principles that have guided me and shaped me for more than four decades now.

And Ive written about some other things, too, like the idea of destiny, which is directly tied to a cherished and time-honored notion in this country: the American Dream. The railroad business is still in my bloodits a part of who I am, and where I come from, and Im very proud of that legacy. But life took a very different turn, and as a result I experienced things, and learned things, that would have seemed almost impossible to me when I was growing up. Who would have ever predicted that I would become the chief executive of anything? Not me, certainly. But thats how it is in America: If you can dream it, or even be open to the possibilities, you really can live it.

So how does a guy make the leap from a railroad family in Ennis, Texas, to become the CEO of not just one but two iconic American businesses? I have no idea, to be honestsome days I still cant believe all this stuff happened to me. But it did, and this is my story.

Ed Whitacre

Fall 2012

B olt holes.

That was the main concern, the only concern, really, of one senior executive at General Motors right after the company emerged from bankruptcy. The White House had just appointed me chairman, so I was asking senior management to talk to me about their concerns, as well as their future hopes for the company. That was this managers response to my query: that he only cared about one thing, making sure all the holes are in the right places.