John T. Stankey

And then add back the ones that actually are useful or that people like.

Uh, for this book, I interviewed, uh, John Stankey, who's the CEO of AT&T.

AT&T, 140 years old, goes back to Ma Bell, goes back to Alexander Graham, um, and 140,000 people around the world, the ultimate legacy organization.

John Stankey calls the bureaucracy the Borg, and we all have a Borg in our life or, or in our workplace.

And he taught me a phrase that will be very useful to your audience.

He said, "Stop till they squawk." Cut out that report.

You know, it stayed as a rule or operating procedure even if it wasn't useful anymore.

Yeah, the guy's name's, uh, John Stankey, CEO of AT&T, one of the oldest companies, Ma Bell, in the US, a workforce that's well over 100,000 people.

And he came in, and he's become a, a simplify zealot, and he realized they have 8,000, 8,000 different policy declarations that are, like, official to the company.

He said he couldn't name 10 of them, and he became militant about, like, "I wanna kill all of these," and he's got it down to 400, and he's trying to get it down to single digits.

they knew they shouldn't be doing or didn't want to do, and they started doing the things that they're actually good at and add value for them and add value for the company.

A good example in the book is, uh, John Stankey from AT&T was talking about when he took over, he looked at AT&T and realized they had thousands of policy proclamations, and he's like, "What the hell? Like, we should have, like, 10." And so little by little he whittled it down to 400, and he's trying to make his way down, uh, to double digits.

But that one little example, that's a thousand of those inside every company, and no one gets complex because they're dumb or lazy.

They just do it because, "Oh, that's how we always did it," right? And that's why you end up spending all this time, often 25 to 35% of your week, doing things you shouldn't do or that you don't want to do.

Those guys are all in some big, uh, you know, a dog fight.

David, you have John Stankey, if I am correct.

I mean, maybe John Stankey is the man-

I do

... that can tell me how much, what the price should be.