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Case Study: Imaginative Thinking in Action 137

whether such growth was sustainable with AT&T’s current technology
position. Unfortunately, addressing even the most imminent uncertainties
had no place in the AT&T strategy.
Part of this tunnel vision was attributable to the fact that strategy was
the responsibility of the top executives alone. The senior management
focused predominantly on regulatory issues and ignored the technology and
consumer changes swirling around them. There was little strategy discus-
sion among the lower ranks because strategy—as practiced at AT&T—
seemed largely irrelevant. At the same time, the senior managers tried to
convince themselves that other incumbent telcos imitating AT&T was the
best compliment, and they sought comfort in strategy convergence.
Unfortunately, in the world of strategy, such convergence spells bad news
(or at least low profit margins).

AT&T’s strategy is sound. We know that because of the many other
players in the marketplace with the same strategy.
—Rick Miller, CFO, September 25, 1996

The ODDsters saw “that business as usual” wasn’t likely to cut it in the
mid-1990s. Internally, as well as externally, things were starting to get
tense for AT&T: AT&T had three CEOs during the short period of 1996
to 1997 (Bob Allen, John Walter, and Mike Armstrong); there was the new
Telecom Act of 1996; the Internet was growing in popularity; and there
were a lot of new competitors fighting for the communications business.
Time was short: The ODDsters would accelerate the corporate recognition
and understanding of discontinuities—regulatory, societal, and competi-
tive as well as technological. They would take personal risks in demon-
strating to their superiors a selection of scenarios or alternative futures,
some of which would be decidedly inimical to AT&T if they were to tran-
spire. The ODDsters would refocus strategy, break orthodoxies, mobilize
resources, and convert key decision makers. In so doing, like true heretics,
they would remain loyal to both the corporation and their cause. ODD
was a crusade and not a corporate assignment. The ODDsters could see
the incredible new threats and opportunities swirling around AT&T.
Could they convince some executives to see the same (and cure AT&T’s
opportunity deficit disorder)?