Greetings from Feckless Leader

I got the sweetest letter in the mail the other day. It was addressed to me personally, and came from John Zeglis, the chairman of ATT Wireless, where I've had my cellular account for about 7 years now. John --- I'm sure it's okay to call him John, since he calls me by my first name in the letter --- is "excited" to tell me personally about the acquisition of ATT wireless by Cingular. He says this is going to lead to all kinds of improvement in my service, with MORE CHOICES, WIDER COVERAGE, and MORE SERVICES.

This would all give me the warm fuzzies if it weren't for the fact that

1. My last name is mis-spelled in the letter, just as it has been on my bill for the last two years (interestingly it was correct before then, so ATT spontaneously lost their ability to get things like a customer's name right, a telling omen).
   
2. I 've heard from multiple friends at ATT wireless that Zeglis is the worst thing to happen to the industry.

Zeglis deserves the major responsibility for turning ATT wireless --- once the market leader in terms of both technology and customer satisfaction --- into the basket case of the cellular world. It was summarized pretty well in a recent article in the Seattle Times

The turning point, observers say, came when John Zeglis, AT&T's general counsel, replaced Hesse as AT&T was preparing to spin off the wireless business as a tracking stock in 2000. He promised employees he would move to Seattle but never did.

Instead, he built a new office in New Jersey and ran the company 3,000 miles from its corporate headquarters.

He replaced executives with AT&T corporate faces. The organization became a molasses-thick bureaucracy. Managers abandoned the company in noticeable numbers.

Its momentum slowed to a plod that came to a halt in December when the stock fell to about $7. Nextel Communications, a company with about half as many subscribers, was valued at $9 billion more than AT&T Wireless.

Of course, the blame can't reside entirely with Zeglis. Some collection of idiots not only gave him the position, they didn't fire him despite massive evidence he was the wrong man for the job and was destroying the company's nimble "can do" culture from the McCaw days. No doubt Zeglis is a smart and talented guy, but who in their right mind would think that a LAWYER from a slow moving industry would make a good leader for a rapidly changing technology company. To have him try to run the place 3 time zones away should have set off a five alarm fire with ATT's board.

In the mid to late 90s, when I first started working in the tech industry, working at ATT wireless was considered a privilege. Most people I knew liked it better than Microsoft. Today it's considered a horrible place to work, with many talented people (myself included) unwilling to even interview for positions there.

So thanks for the note John. Like you I look forward to all Cingular will have to offer, including new leadership.

Addendum: For another example of how low ATT wireless has sunk, read this recent article from CIO about their CRM debacle. Nothing short of stunning.