I like winning, but I enjoy it even more when I’m making someone else lose. I grew up as a competitive runner, and I thrive on rivalry-it’s just part of who I am. If he wanted to change things, it needed to begin fighting hard-and that included aggressively taking on the industry leaders, Verizon and AT&T.Īt most large companies, CEOs are overly diplomatic: They never say anything negative about anyone publicly, and many even avoid speaking a competitor’s name. I said that I saw six or seven obvious strategic things to do, but if he wanted T-Mobile to fail, the company should keep doing what it was doing. From where I sat, T-Mobile had great brand awareness and some clear steps it could take to turn things around. During that initial meeting I wound up giving the DT CEO a bit of a pep talk, telling him the situation wasn’t as bad as he thought-a strange dynamic for a job interview, but not atypical for that CEO, who was both open and interested in all kinds of ideas and options. DT and T-Mobile’s employees were left adrift. AT&T had tried to acquire T-Mobile, but the deal fell apart owing to opposition from the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission. When a headhunter asked me to interview for the top job at T-Mobile, I did some checking and decided to take the meeting.Īt the time, T-Mobile wasn’t publicly traded it was owned and controlled by Deutsche Telekom (DT). ![]() I quickly realized that I sucked at not working. I spent some time sitting around, reading The Power of Now, and self-actualizing. It was a very different stage in my life. ![]() It was the first time in my adult life that I wasn’t working full time, and I ended up getting divorced the same month. ![]() In 2011, after 10 years as CEO of Global Crossing, I sold the company and left the job.
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