AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson
Randall Stephenson has been working for AT&T for thirty-four years now. If he has his way, the company where he spent half his life, will be a different company in the year 2017. Stephenson is seeking to acquire Time Warner Inc in a $108.7 billion deal and if the move became successful, it would be a milestone in his career. It would transform AT&T into a media powerhouse.
It is clear that Stephenson has yanked his company through dramatic and repeated changes. Some of these changes are about the bottom line, whereas many others combine a focus on profit with the determinations to do the right thing.
He guided AT&T when needed, and has become comfortable making use of his position of influence to push outside of the walls of the company. Stephenson has also become much vocal on the social issues, and has promoted development in the poor communities.
Changes that Stephenson has brought to AT&T are about innovations. Mike Rawlings, who is the Dallas Mayor, describes Stephenson as “being able to play at two levels at the same time.”
A year after Stephenson has took over as the CEO, he changed AT&T headquarters to Dallas from San Antonio. Before two years, he said, “As we get to the end of 2015, we’re going to be talking about a very different business and a very different company.” He was hinting about AT&T’s pickup of DirecTV and some wireless companies.
AT&T Media Powerhouse
If Stephenson makes the Time Warner merger work, high quality and high dollar content creation will be added to AT&T. It will be an all new experience for AT&T and Stephenson as Warner Brothers, HBO, CNN, and other Time Warner operations are completely new territory for AT&T.
Media business analyst Craig Moffett said that there is only a fifty-fifty chance for the AT&T-Time Warner merger to go through. This is not because Moffett has any dispute with Stephenson, but he believes that AT&T CEO has the skills and powers to bring major changes.
“Randall Stephenson is an extraordinary leader, not least because he understands that with an organization as large and complex as AT&T, he can’t possibly manage every detail on his own,” Moffett said. “Randall is setting a grand strategic vision, but it will be up to his lieutenants to execute.”
