Page 157 - The Resilient Organization

144 Part Three: Step 2. Building Resilience into the Organization

AT&T in 1997 to 1998 in a search of better opportunities. The hostile
faction directed its opprobrium primarily at Greg Blonder, who took
untold arrows on behalf of the group. Eventually, Blonder’s resistance
wore thin. He resigned from the AT&T Labs in November 1997. ODD
would survive for just eight more months without him. Of course, other
factors besides Blonder’s departure contributed to ODD’s demise. For
example, David Isenberg, one of the group’s members, fell victim to an
unscrupulous journalist, who gained access to internal memo he had writ-
ten, “Rise of the Stupid Network,” and published it in Computer
Telephony magazine in August 1997.
The paper was Isenberg’s manifesto. It ruffled a lot of feathers inside
AT&T by suggesting that intelligent networks with stupid devices (such as
telephones) on the periphery would soon be replaced by stupid networks
with intelligent devices (such as computers) on the periphery. This tenet
boded ill for AT&T, whose strategy depended on continuance of the intel-
ligent network. “It was like a glass of cold water in the face,” recalls Tom
Evslin, then president of AT&T’s WorldNet Service.
Opinion varies on whether Isenberg was a marked man. Certainly, his
position in AT&T became uncomfortable, if not untenable, once “The
Stupid Network” had leaked into the public domain. He left the company
shortly thereafter. The group’s position in research also became an issue.
The early days, when the relative obscurity of research had afforded ODD
the advantage of a low profile, had long since passed. By late 1997, ODD
had become, from its opponents’ perspective, all too visible. The end was
nigh. It came in the fall of 1998 when AT&T Labs conducted its annual
organizational review. Groups were assessed by traditional research met-
rics: number of patents filed, number of papers published, and so on.
Corporate impact was rarely a criterion. Of course, ODD was ill placed to
defend itself according to these criteria. After all, the group had been deeply
involved in creating a network of strategists discussing a viable corporate
strategy instead. But such a claim was viewed with disdain, given that
strategy creation surely was the job the CEO and the top management were
supposed to be doing. The combination of executive changes, lost support-
ers, and an inability to “prove” their worth in their home organization,
took its toll. By July 1998, the group disbanded.