Page 54 - How We Lead Matters

It’s Time

Throughout the ages, the words of the great Talmudic sage Hillel have been
echoed by many. We recall Robert F. Kennedy’s exhortation: “If not now,
when? If not us, who?”
How well I remember my own encounter with this age-old truth that
right now is always the right time to do the right thing. It was years ago, at a
time when I was serving on the board of Northwestern Bell.
This was during the breakup of AT&T into the “Baby Bells.” Jack
MacAllister was Northwestern Bell’s CEO, and like most of his counterparts
across the system, he was negotiating with AT&T about how his company
should spin off and how resources and assets would be divided. It was a tense
time.
In the middle of that ordeal, Jack came to a board meeting and said,
“We’ve got a problem.” He described how our women and minority man-
agers—people we had trained, developed, and promoted—weren’t being
allowed to join the Rotary and Lion’s Clubs in their communities. At the
time, those clubs, where important networking took place and business was
done, didn’t accept women or minorities.
Jack informed the board that he was going to pull financial support
from all those civic organizations throughout our service area. It would be
wrong, he said, to support such discriminatory actions, especially against our
own employees. Some board members cautioned him not to take this on at a
time when the company was fighting through the breakup with AT&T.
This tall man with a quiet voice, angular face, and big hands—some-
what Lincoln-like, as I remember—simply looked at us and asked, “Oh?
When is the time?”

Marilyn Carlson Nelson 37