Verizon Untethered: An Insider’s Story of Innovation and Disruption
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A history of the transformation of Verizon and the telecommunications industry told through the eyes of founding CEO Ivan Seidenberg and his leadership team, with highlights and commentary from bestselling global leadership guru Ram Charan
The Verizon leadership team stands apart from most leadership teams today in their willingness repeatedly to put the enterprise before the individual. At first blush, this might look like a hopelessly old-fashioned notion in the age of the selfie. Yet I would argue this is a trait that future leaders and boards of directors across industries would do well to understand and embrace.
Seidenberg not once but twice in the service of company shareholders and employees subordinated himself and put off taking sole leadership of the company to advance the enterprise's odds of success. And many others in this story exhibited the same trait to help build this industry-leading enterprise.
They understood that the risk of not acting and thereby destroying value during a period of accelerating technological change and industry consolidation—a situation faced by leadership teams around the world today—was much greater than the risk of stepping in as number two or co-CEO. In my fifty years of experience, it is a rare leadership team that will subordinate itself for the benefit of the industry, customers, and the company. That principle—that the company comes first, the individual second—is what will define successful leadership teams of the future.
Multiple leadership principles—some new, some timeless—emerge from this narrative and will be of great use to the next generation of leaders across industries and around the world. By taking a look at a company that successfully executed exponential transformation, we can take the strategies of Verizon leaders and apply them to our own experiences.
—Ram Charan
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Ivan Seidenberg is the former chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications. He was a key part of the leadership team that transformed Verizon into a premier global network. Seidenberg currently serves as a director for a number of organizations, including BlackRock and New York–Presbyterian Hospital. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the City University of New York’s Lehman College and a master’s from Pace University.
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Scott McMurray is vice president-editorial at the History Factory. He has conducted hundreds of oral histories with CEOs and other corporate, nonprofit, and government leaders and is an award-winning author of corporate history publications. McMurray has written for the Wall Street Journal, US News & World Report, and Institutional Investor.
Ram Charan is a world-renowned business adviser, author, teacher, and speaker who has spent the past forty years working with the CEOs, boards, and executives of the world's top companies. He is the author or coauthor of more than thirty books that together have sold over four million copies, including Boards That Lead and Talent Wins (both coauthored with Dennis Carey). In addition to advising and coaching leaders, Charan serves on several boards in the United States, Turkey, China, India, and Brazil. In his work as an adviser, he has helped boards and senior leaders rethink and redesign their governance practices.
Traber Burns worked for thirty-five years in regional theater, including the New York, Oregon, and Alabama Shakespeare festivals. He also spent five years in Los Angeles appearing in many television productions and commercials, including Lost, Close to Home, Without a Trace, Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomy, Cold Case, Gilmore Girls, and others.
