I referred to the General Grant method, with no explaination. It is not a completely accurate analogy because we are not at war, but I will have to cover Money Ball later.
Oh, and I guess it is on now, I made this a favorite. I must admit I am terrible at analyzing individual companies, but I am familiar with telecom. When I get off topic feel free to invite me to go back to METAR.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant_and_the_Amer…
He overwhelmed the south with more men, not necessarily good men, or good tactics, just lots and lots of men.
From http://www.keirsey.com/4temps/us_grant.asp
"Grant responded to this recognition by becoming a more ruthless and more grimly determined strategic leader. With his remarkable ability to see the larger picture he understood that the war would be won not by a few clever battlefield maneuvers, but by prolonged and bloody pressure on the enemy. The north had many more men than the south and its casualties could be made up fairly readily while those of the Confederacy could not. Grant saw the long term implications of this situation. He took the battle to the Confederates whenever he saw the chance to gain a strategic advantage and fought them stubbornly until they withdrew or surrendered.
It was a heartbreaking strategy and a terrible one for a man who so hated bloodshed that he refused even go game hunting. Rationals, whether directive or nondirective, see neither honor nor glory in bloodshed and find no satisfaction in it. They are never thrilled, as are their utilitarian cousins the Artisans, by skirmishes or warfare. But there was iron behind Grant’s casual and sloppy dress and manner. He insisted on fighting almost every battle to the bitter and bloody end, grinding down the enemy forces until they were helpless or exhausted. It was Ulysses Grant who became famous for having said “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” The statement has become a symbol of grim, unyielding determination, and as such it characterizes Grant extremely well. His usual facial expression fit equally well, for Grant was said to wear an expression on his face which indicated that he was considering driving his head through a brick wall, and that he did not intend to be prevented from doing so."
Google has about 50,000 employees, very good ones, led well, AT&T has 250,000 employees, above average ones, not led so well. The Google employees have better training and more experience with software, the AT&T employees are technical people, trained to solve problems, but with little software training.
There is one difference, the AT&T employees understand, what was is gone. Nobody believes the past matters,either they have a plan to retire or adapt, for them it is a critical battle, to lose is to lose the life that they have built.
AT&T can throw massive amounts of people at a problem, but Google, and Apple can throw massive amounts of money at a problem. In fact Apple could buy AT&T cash.
For AT&T the game is big data. AT&T has the advantage of holding huge lakes of data that no one else has, and has the network to move it. What AT &T does not have is the programming talent to mine it. I am sure the executives lay awake at night worrying about it because this and the NPS (Net Promoter Scores) are what keep AT&T under valued. From the inside, I can tell you that the software systems within AT&T are horrible, and they are the cause of many ills. This is not lost on the executive leadership and they are moving to correct it. However, they cannot go into a bidding war for talent with Apple, Google, and Amazon, they must use the troops they have.