and somehow the public is moving in in strange ways. it used to be said that books were written for the general reader. now they're written by the general reader. [laughter] >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> on route 66, you know, people or were traveling, either traveling for fun or traveling looking for a job, maybe they were on their way to the grand canyon, maybe they were on their way to work in the agricultural fields in california. so at first route 66 was just a way to get somewhere. you know, i mean, your destination was out in california. but later on after all these snake pits started blossoming up and all these tourist traps and attractions and the cafés and the motels and the trading posts with the indian trading posts, when those things started springing up, it almost became like a big amusement park along

route 66, and route 66 became the destination. it was not like, dad, can we go to the beach in california, it was more like, dad, let's go down route 66, because all the fun stuff is there. it's like a big, long amusement park. >> get your kicks on route 66 in albuquerque, new mexico. one of the places you'll see next weekend as booktv, american history tv and c-span's local content vehicles look behind the scenes at the history and literary life in albuquerque march 2nd and 3rd on c-span2 and 3. >> up next on booktv, "after words" with this week's guest host, stephanie mehta of fortune magazine. this week former ceo of at&t ed whitacre discusses his book, "american turn around." in the book he tells the story of rising through the ranks of business to lead one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies and being called on by president obama to rescue general motors. this program is about an hour.

>> host: ed whitacre has run two iconic american companies, at&t and general motors. he is also the author of a new memoir, "american turn around: reinventing at&t and gm and the way we do business in the usa." it's a candid and unflinching look at american business and at a particularly difficult time in the period that we recently went through. and yet the book is ultimately very optimistic about corporate america and america in general. welcome, ed. >> guest: thank you, stephanie. it's nice to be here. >> host: you became chairman of general motors immediately after the company filed for bankruptcy. you came out of retirement to take the job. why did you do it? >> guest: i became chairman when it came out of bankruptcy, the day it came out of bankruptcy. it's a good question why i took it, because when first asked, i

said, no, i know nothing about the car business. i can drive one, i can start one. and i was retired from at&t, and i was my sort of late 60s. but i kept talking to steve ratner who was the car czar. he kept talking about public service. i kept thinking about how my family had owned general motors all my life. i drove one. what a great part of america general motors was. and i ultimately said, okay, ed, if you can do this, let's go give it a shot. and so i finally said okay. >> host: before you accepted the chairmanship, did you have a point of view about the government's bailout of general motors? >> guest: well, i just knew general motors shouldn't go away. and, frankly, i didn't follow it closely in the news. but i knew in my heart that general motors couldn't go away. it's too important to this country. >> host: how much of your decision was based on something that was more visceral and emotional, the idea that general motors shouldn't go away, and

then the economics of it, the jobs, the suppliers, the entire ecosystem around the auto industry? >> guest: well, i had the emotional feeling that general motors couldn't go away. once you got beyond that feeling, you could think about the impact it would have on jobs, suppliers, all that sort of stuff. so i guess one really followed another. >> host: the bailout also triggered a lot of emotional reaction among the american public. why do you think that people reacted so strongly to the idea of the government stepping in to save general motors? >> guest: well, i think it was a lot of money for a starter. i think, two, is there were a lot of people, pundits that said, you know, that shouldn't happen with taxpayer money, although it had already happened with some other companies. and i think it was just the idea of using taxpayer money to bail out a company. but a lot of people felt just the opposite, too, that it should be saved. so i guess it was a mixed

emotions. >> host: i still hear people criticizing the government for the bailout, and i'm sure you do as well. have you been able to change anybody's mind who was, perhaps, opposed to the bailout and then pop seeing the results felt that in retrospect it was a good idea? >> guest: well, you know, we became known as government motors to a lot of people, and there's no question that hurt gm and continues to hurt it today. but we did pay back the loan to the government, and we've paid back a lot of the equity investment the government made. and, yes, i think people want gm to succeed. the government motors label is still there to some extent, it still effects some people, but i think it's less now. and i think once the indebtedness is totally paid, i think that'll go away. >> host: in the book you talk a lot about what you found when you arrived at general motors. um, a lot of it was not

necessarily apart to the the public -- apparent to the public. the financial results were, but when you found when you started looking underneath the hood, so to speak -- >> guest: right. >> host: sr. -- is revealed for the first time in the book. share with us some of the surprises you as a seasoned executive arrived in detroit. >> guest: i expected certain things, i saw only some of them. the morale was quite low, as you might imagine. but i saw a confused company that i didn't think had clear direction on what it was to do, what its mission in life was be you don't mind me saying that. it was very bureaucratic, it was not well organized, it was matrix management, and i just thought in general it was a real mess. >> host: and what was your approach to untangling the mess? walk us through methodically what the first and second and third things you did were.

>> guest: okay. well, to shorten that, i'll do my best, but the first thing is you had to determine what you were in business for, what your objective was, what your aim is, what you're trying to accomplish. and over a short period of time -- and nobody could tell me that, incidentally. i found that very interesting. with the senior management in the room, i asked the question what do we do at this company? and we hashed that out and finally decided, it didn't take long, that we would design, build and sell the world's best vehicles. pretty simple. that's our only mission. that's what we set out to do. so we defined our mission, what we wanted to do. anything that didn't pertain to that was sort of superfluous. so we defined our mission. and then we cleaned up the organization. gm had a matrix management group which meant a person or

individual had several bosses. we fixed that because when you have several bosses, you really don't have a boss at all. so we sort of streamlined the management. and made it more direct line reporting. that was very important. we organized, had an organization chart one could understand. we streamlined, we preached design, build and sell to everybody in that company from the very start. we spent a lot of time on the assembly plants, i did, the senior management did, and i think the most important thing is we made people responsible for the job. and we gave them the authority to do it, and we held 'em accountable. and only then did we start to make real progress, but that didn't take long. that was really key. >> host: based on your experiences there and talking to the employees and to the management team how was it that gm came to lose its way?

not just on the financial and the product side, but in terms of its sense of mission, in terms of its, um, belief in the company? how did can, how did they get from where they were to what you found when you arrived in 19 -- in 2009? >> guest: you know, i've heard a lot, and i saw some of this. i asked several top-level people when i got there, i said how did we get in this mess? what went wrong here? and i got the answer from some that we didn't do anything wrong, the economy got us. which begs the question, well, why didn't it get the other automakers? and so really that was not a very good answer. but i think they got that way, and i think there was an attitude. i've heard this from others also, i guess more than i saw it, is this is general motors. this is the way we do it. take it or leave it. you know? this is what we do.

and i think holding to that attitude over a long period of time probably got them in some trouble. >> host: it's certainly a common affliction among very big organizations, and i want to spend a little time talking about the other very big organization you ran which is at&t. but more generally, why do you think it's so hard for large organizations to adapt when we've seen time and time again that the writing is on the wall, disruption is coming, the companies see the disrupters and yet they can't make the change? what are your thoughts on why it's so hard for companies to adapt? >> well, i think that all has to come back to management. but i think one of the problems is that maybe you get to thinking you're better than you are. you're unwilling to change. bureaucracy certainly plays a role in that and, you know, bureaucracy is built up by people not having enough to do and not feeling important, so

they set out to implement new rules or put in new guidelines so that they can feel like they're part of the business, is my opinion. and so you build this these bureaucracies of checks and balances, and once you get a very bureaucratic organization, it's very difficult to be flexible, it's hard to sweep that away. so you'd have to say it goes back to management, but that bureaucracy gets built up, and people just can't react. >> host: but it's a real challenge to be able to be both big and nimble. >> guest: it really is. >> host: to be both big and flexible. >> guest: yes, it it is. >> host: talk a little bit about your experiences at a -- at&t which started out the predecessor company to today's at&t one of them is southwestern bell -- >> >> guest: right. >> host: the company you became ceo of in was it 19901234. >> guest: 1990. >> host: and originally bell operating company to a major wireless player to a global data

company. how did you try to keep at&t flexible even as it was growing in some cases, you know, doubling in size with acquisitions? >> guest: well, i've thought about that question a lot, and i certainly didn't do things perfectly, and i don't know that i deserve all the credit for that. but one thing was to keep active, and i guess that goes back to we were head quartered in st. louis. we'd been there a long time. people were sort of set in their ways. how could you deal with that in well, in my case i thought a move to san antonio, roughly a thousand miles, might shake things up a little bit and send the message this isn't the same company. there were other reasons, but we did that. i thought to keep on the move, to put new challenges in front of our people, management and nonmanagement, is a good way to stay flexible by, you know, we

bought pacific, we bought at&t wireless, we bought ameritech. just when people wanted to settle down and start building the bureaucracy again, i thought it was always timely to do something else big to give people something else to focus on. and i think that helped us, you knowsome not that we were -- you know? not that we were totally free of bureaucracy, we weren't. but i think you keep people interested in to do the best for our stockholders and to keep maneuvering. i think that had a huge effect on making us successful. >> host: you also did a number of smaller deals, joint ventures, alliances often with technology companies or companies that were innovators. can you talk a little bit about the potential importance of organizations bringing in outside thinking in the form of entrepreneurs and innovators? >> guest: sure. and we failed on some of those, incidentally.

they weren't all successful. but i'll give you an example, i think. we had a large yellow pages company, and we formed a partnership with a company called amdocs. and they had the ability -- which we didn't have the resources to do -- to write software for yellow page sales, and that greatly helped us in our yellow page business. well, they had the talent and the ability to do that. we didn't. we made a financial investment in amdocs. they did us a great job. i think we were a great partner to them. we did that several times. but i think that's a good example of we didn't have the capabilities to do that. i didn't want us to get into things where we had no business like writing software. and so we formed an alliance or a partnership. and that worked out great for both companies. that's very important, i think. some companies want to pursue

everything themselves. that's not necessary, it can't be done, it's costly, you sort of lose your way. you're much better off in some cases to form an alliance with somebody else to get it done. >> host: so what are some of the examples that didn't work out so well? >> guest: we made several acquisitions. do i have to talk about that, stephanie? [laughter] no, we -- >> host: only in the category of lessons learned. >> guest: we had several. we made a venture or two down in south america that didn't work well, one in long distance, one in cable television. they didn't work. we had many more successes than failures, but we blew a few too. >> host: but there was a time, um, when it seemed that a lot of the telecommunications companies were moving in a lot of different directions. you had some companies investing heavily in cable, you had other companies potentially investing in movie, in hollywood and even the bell operating companies joined together to try to do

some content parts of the business. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: southwestern bell, later sbc and then at&t, was remarkably disciplined relative to some of the other companies in terms of its mission. um, tell me a little bit about where that discipline comes from as a manager and how you keep your team focused while still looking for the opportunities that are, you know, potential blockbusters. >> guest: well, i think that was mostly to me and the management team common sense. i mean, we knew how to run a telephone company. we knew how to do that very well. we'd done that for a number of years. most of us had grown up in that business. we could see changes coming, but they were telephony type changes. but we had no business offering computers. we didn't know anything about it. or real estate or whatever. and all i could see was, boy, if we went down that track, we're going to lose a lot of money and a lot of time, and it's going to divert our attention.

so early on we decided we'd stay focused on what we knew how to doment that -- do. that paid good dividends for us, i think. it was tempting occasionally to try something else, but we never did. >> host: how much of management is common sense? that seems to be a theme that runs through the book and, certainly, your comments subsequent to the book. do you think that a lot of the way you became a manager was by exercising good common sense? >> guest: well, that's the term i apply to it. i think it's mostly common sense. i think it's mostly common sense, that's the term i use. i mean, if it looks logical and makes sense, it'll excite people, you can get people involved, seems to fit in. it's not rocket science. i think it's mostly common commn sense. >> host: in the book you talk a lot about the different, um, managers who helped you along in your career, the different people that you encount can ored as you were come -- encountered

as you were coming up the ranks in the old southwestern bell. did you learn mostly from good managers, or did you learn as much from the supervisors and managers who weren't cutting it? >> guest: you know, i'm not sure i've ever been asked that e question, but since you've asked it, i think you learn about as much from the good ones as you do from the bad ones. you learn what to do and maybe what not to do. and what to do, you can't duplicate somebody else. you have to be yourself, but you can sort of get a general idea of how to act and how not to act and what to do and what not to do. but i think you get some from both. >> host: and how did you deal throughout your career both at at&t and then subsequently at general motors with bad managers? in the role of ceo? when you saw people who weren't, um, adhering to either the values of the company or simply not getting the job done, what

was your strategy with dealing with a failing player? >> guest: well, i think you have to sort of get a feeling of why. maybe it's they just don't know. maybe they don't understand. maybe they're good people. but i think in the final analysis if they're impeding your objective of designing, building and selling the world's best vehicles or becoming the best telecom company in the world, you get rid of them. you know? and that's not a heartless thing. if you don't do that sort of thing, you really hurt everybody else too. you're impeding everybody else. so it's not as heartless as i make it sound. and sometimes there are other jobs these people can do, and can you find that, and they can do it well. but you can't let those roadblocks stay in the way of everybody else being successful. so you just have to move in and make some changes. >> host: at the outset of the

conversation, you said that one of your, one of the reasons you were reluctant to take the job at general motors is because you didn't have a background in automotive. >> guest: right. >> host: what was the -- what were the commonalities that you saw from your experiences running at&t and general motors? what were the things that you felt were common ground? >> guest: well, they were a lot, there were a lot of people in at&t, a lot of people in gm. there were organizations, there were union forces to consider. there were a lot of similarities, you know? organization, people, objectives to do. a lot of commonalities. was there a big cultural difference? no, i don't think so. i've never noticed cultural differences really between companies. and everybody talks about the culture here, the culture there. and i've always found that

people are people, and they have the same objectives and ideals. >> host: what were some of the things that you did to get up to speed on manufacturing and specifically auto manufacturing? >> guest: well, i knew nothing. so i was really on a steep learning curve. and these people are all smarter than me, for example. i mean, this car is incredibly complex. you can't believe it. i couldn't believe. there were thousands of parts in one. but i grabbed engineers, i grabbed designers, spent a lot of time with them, i spent a lot of time in the assembly plants looking at these things to go together, and it was just astounding to me that what started out turned out to be a car, you know, not many minutes later. but i guess you learn by observing, watching, canning a lot of questions, and -- asking a lot of questions, and that's

the only way i went at it. i didn't do a lot of reading or anything. >> host: and then in terms of the turnaround portion of the business, were there other executives who had been through a similar turnaround or had attempted turnarounds of of this nature that you called on? was there anybody that you had sought advice from? >> guest: not really. that doesn't mean i wouldn't, but i didn't know who to call, didn't know what to do. inside gm, of course, everybody was kind of t.a.r.p.ed or under t.a.r.p., but we had some very talented people at gm, still do. so i guess i kind of set off with the internal gm team that i had with a few changes and just kept going, you know? there aren't that many automobile ceos out there that can tell you, and, you know, some of them are new.

so, no, i just kind of went it alone with the gm people. >> and talk about your relationship with the board of directors. because you started out as chairman and ultimately became interim ceo and ceo. and at every step of the way you needed the board's support. how did you forge relationships with the board? and what was that dynamic like at the beginning and how did it evolvesome. >> guest: well, there were a few holdoversment some of the board members left during the gm bankruptcy, but there were a small number of holdovers of. and then we appointed more to get to a normal sized board. some i knew beforehand, some i didn't. the government made recommendations. we asked them to be on the board. a couple of three i knew, they came on the board. but in the very start -- from the very start we told the board that the approach we were going to take, which was pretty straightforward. and, remember, we were sent will to sort of fix gm, the board and

i. that was the mission is go make this thing a viable company again. so we were all focused, and i brought the message we're going to design, build and sell the world's best vehicles, we're going to move quickly. we need your support. and we need your input. and be so we changed a few things about a board meeting. we shortened them considerably. we stayed away from the details or didn't get in the weeds on how you build a car, but the bigger questions of financing, morale, positioning, marketing, that sort of thing. the board was very supportive of that. and we kept them informed, and, you know, we just took off. >> host: talk a little bit about the urgency in your mind for getting out from underneath t.a.r.p.. you sort of alluded to people being under the umbrella of t.a.r.p -- >> guest: right.

>> host: -- and the impact that that had on employees and on morale. why did you feel it was so important to move quickly to get out from underneath the government program? >> guest: well, as i said, i thought the employee morale was not the best it could be, as you can imagine. i think some were shunned by their neighbors. i think some felt defeated, beaten down, worth not much. the -- >> host: detroit's a little bit of a small town, right? >> guest: it is. >> host: i mean, your neighbor works for ford -- >> guest: right, right. you go home and maybe it's ford on one side and chrysler on the other side. so that was a big factor. the other factor was we were labeled a government motors. that was hurting us. the dealers told us that, the potential customers i talked to told us that. that label, we had to get rid of that label. i also found some other things. we weren't selling in the lower

end of the credits, and we found out quickly that people were more likely to make their car payment than their house payment. and we theorized you could live in your car, but you couldn't drive your house. but we didn't participate in that market. and everybody else was. and that was a huge number of sales. the soonerrer we could shed -- the sooner we could shed the label of government motors and start talking about what a great car we were building and put our money where our mouth was and where the employees could see some success and pay back some of these indebtedness to the government, the morale would improve. and it did drastically. so we set out op a mission to pay loans -- out on a mission to pay loans back quickly and to give the government back the equity interest and pay that off and make the employees feel better. because people are the most important part of any company. and if they're not good and they don't feel good and they're not involved and excited and responsible, you know, you just don't make it. and so we set out to do that.

quickly. >> host: and critical to that was the ipo. >> guest: yes. >> host: you had never been ceo of a company that did an ipo, correct? >> guest: no. >> host: so what was that experience like? and then i want to talk a little bit about, um, what surprised me in the book was the, um, the difficulty that you had convincing the government that you should go ipo so quickly. but first talk a little bit about an ipo which i think many people associate with a young company, a new company, some company that's going to be, you know, hot out of the gate. what was it like for gm to go public? >> guest: well, we had four stockholders, the government, the canadian government, some of the bondholders and then the union portion. so we only had four stockholders. an ipo, initial public offering, go public is something you do normally as a young company you said. but we were determined to do

that. that was the only way we could pay back the equity, get rid of the label "government motors." because as long as they were a shareholder, we were going to have that label. but, of course, the ability to go ipo depends on how you're viewed. are you going to be successful in the future? are you making money? can you pay back debts if you owe it? do you have a future? can you change with the future? and so we weren't making any money after bankruptcy, of course. we didn't have any of the factors in place that would allow you to go as an ipo. you wouldn't make an investment in us because you thought it was hopeless. you'd never get your money back or make a return on it. so we knew that profitability was really key to the ipo. early predictions were it would take two or three years. but that moved to be false because we started making money very quickly, like in january or february.

and we made iewf money to -- enough of money to pay the loan back very quickly. so we paid back the loan, we still l had the equity. but every quarter, every month we were selling more cars. people had, you know, you could see some renewed faith many gm. they were building a good product. we were building the best vehicles. and so we started talking to the government about, hey, let's -- maybe we want to do this ipo sooner than we thought. maybe a lot sooner than we thought. shed that label. as it turned out, we were profitable enough and going strong enough and our volumes were good, our business picked up that we did it quite a few months before we had originally planned to do it. it was done in november of 2010. so it worked out good. based on growth factors. >> host: but to get there there was a little bit of a struggle. you write in the book that, um, my growing interim concern, to be perfectly honest, was that the government was getting a

little too comfortable having a grip on gm. what did you mean by that in. >> guest: i don't know what i meant by that. [laughter] but i must have meant something. the government let us run gm. we didn't get any day-to-day oversight. you know, we had a very cordial relationship, and they let us do it. ..

the taxpayers and all of us. but we are getting their. i think the government -- t.a.r.p. was difficult because it established salary levels, compensation and a lot of other things are not the business. well you can live with that short term. that's okay. everybody can understand that but over a period of time, you obviously had to be able to pay the same salary as everybody else. you had to be competitive in the marketplace and of the sooner we could do that the better said it was important from that standpoint that we get out quicker. >> you mentioned they give you a lot of latitude. the government wasn't in your business everyday. at the same time it sounds like in the book you were a little bit surprised that, i do know, they didn't extend an invitation for you to come down to washington despite your offer offer to come and talk to you if they ever wanted to.

were you surprised by the dynamic between the company and the government was it not quite what you expected when you went in to it? >> guest: it was sent but when i went back to it there were other t.a.r.p. companies, too. there were other things going on in the world to you there were several things baled out and we were among the smallest. so i guess we got our share of attention. we didn't want a whole lot of attention on our operating and bringing it back to the did didn't seem to be the top priority to get us out from under t.a.r.p. and we needed to do that in a reasonable period of time. >> host: when i reflect back on that period in american business, i am struck by how low the confidence levels and the trust levels between the american public and business has become a lot of it in the cannes

jury distrustful of corporate america. what do you think the companies can do to rebuild that trust and do they have an obligation to restore the pride in american business? >> guest: take gm as an example was the largest manufacturer in the u.s. its quality and product citing a corporation has to be trusted by its customers and to do that you have to sell a good product at a fair price. you have to stand behind it and be involved in the communities. there's a lot of things to do. once you lose your reputation in business, it's tough to get it back. it doesn't happen overnight. you have to work at it and it's just what i said to produce great products at a fair price.

you have employees that are engaged, you are receptive to certain things, but it doesn't come overnight. if you have to stay with that. that's the way you get it back. >> host: this book is very optimistic about the business. where does your optimism come from. what are the moments in your upbringing and business career to george generally positive outlook and the business and the country? >> guest: remember i'm from at&t and gm and i saw the power of people and what they can do when they are responsible and have authority and you let them go. that is such a great resource that we forget about. look at with at&t did.

there's iphone, wireless, 3 million, 4 million customers in 1990 and now there are hundreds of millions. look what our industry did. we forget that people did that. people have an amazing capacity to do great things when they are empowered. how can you not be optimistic in that from bankruptcy to a very successful company doing great now with good employees, focus employees, new models, great vehicles how could you not be optimistic? fun applies to every sector of business. it's only two examples i've dealt with but look what happened to the it's terrific. >> host: the there's also the long standing tradition of innovation contributions.

>> guest: people do that though, stephanie. people do that in power to do those sorts of things they can do it. it's a huge resources. >> host: you write in the book quite a bit about your childhood growing up in texas. you come from a very modest background by had to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. i have met people who come from a tough upbringing who aren't optimistic. they tend to be a little bit rough around the edges. they don't quite in fight the upper to india had of them. you're quite the opposite. do you come to you that your family? >> guest: i think my family had a lot to do with that and my mother was of the most optimistic person in the world, but she said you just keep going

and keep trying and good things will happen over time. and i believe that's right. you know, i'm not optimistic all the time, i'm not pessimistic all the time but i do think there's a great opportunity. i think persistence is one of the main keys to success. if you keep going and have an objective in mind i say if i can make anybody can meet. i don't know how it all happened to me but i've seen the power of people and what can happen and it doesn't happen to everybody. everybody doesn't want that. everybody is different. but it can happen and i'm optimistic about the future of this country and business. >> host: you received quite a bit of encouragement. in your mother you write in the book -- >> guest: she made me go to college. i said one night i think i will

go to work for the railroad in a dinnertime conversation. she looked me in the eye and she said no, you're going to go to college. i was taken aback by that and said what do you mean cracks but i did. things happen along the way. has it been easy? >> host: she dropped out of college? >> guest: she did. she was there during the depression and her father was in a depression. he had a business but lost eight. she went back home to work. >> host: she became a schoolteacher to >> guest: she did. >> host: did she remained an educator? >> guest: she only called for a short relative time for a couple of years but she didn't stay in education. she was a smart woman >> host: and valued in education. >> guest: very much so, yes. >> host: while you were in college you got a summer job

working for southwestern bell and the rest is history? >> guest: the rest is history. that is an interesting story, too. that is to show you how things turn. i was at texas tech that in my junior and senior year and i needed the job. i had worked through college because as you said, we were a modest to the and i can draw clean clothes. i learned how to do that as a part-time job, but i needed a job and i went to the mn climate office in dallas, and i told him i really needed a summer job. he said we don't have any we are full. i said you don't understand. i have to have a job. he said we just don't have any. i said but, you know, i need this job. i will do a great job. i will essentially work for very little and would never it takes.

i guess he took pity on me. she called me the next day and said we have a job for you, and the rest is history. >> host: at some point in the book you write about being somewhat bashful. how did you overcome your shyness to be able to march into an unemployment office and really fight for a job and that of course later in life faster communicate with a lot of people. were you trying to overcome it or was it tied to something else like lack of confidence? >> i think it was somewhat lack of confidence and i still shy. my heart beats faster in some situations like if i have to talk to what people so i think i'm still shy but if you really need something it helps to overcome shyness and when you really need something you sort

of can overcome it temporarily i enjoy people lot of the i still have my shining moments when the heart beat faster. you just deal with it and get better with age. >> host: you became the ceo of southwestern bell in 1990. do you think that guy could have stepped into general motors in 2009 and do what you did a few years ago? >> guest: i don't think so. i think all of those years 17 as chairman helped prepare me better for that. i learned a lot in those 17

years i think we get wiser with age and more wisdom but i think you do learn some things and general motors you have the relationship as well. what are your feelings about the united states? are you as optimistic about the ability of our government to continue to be a beacon of the democracy and sort of inspired our citizenry in the same way that you feel corporate america

can restore? >> guest: i think the answer to that is complicated, but the short answer is yes because i am an optimist. i think a lot of things going on in government these days it seems to be more partisan. it seems that common sense has gone out the window. it seems that there is in that much agreement. it seems like there is no willing to compromise. but i hope that what goes around comes around. and i hope some of the uncertainty goes around with time. i would have to say yes i am optimistic to get surely there are some there that understand the american people and can make that happen to get >> host: it's interesting the number of people that you mention in the book that you dealt with who came from the world of business, people like steve ratner and ron bloom, a number of these individuals like you in business for a number of

years and what ever reason felt a sense of public duty to help the government or the government related institutions at times of difficulties. do you think that will continue, do you think the government is a hospitable place for the business experience to come in and potentially mckennon pact? >> guest: yes i do. people will still continue to do public service like steve and ron glioma and many others. i think is kind if viewed as look, i've been fortunate, i've seen things work, i want to do my part to keep the country brave ha or do this or that. anybody would do that. >> host: perhaps there's an ambassadorship in the future.

there's been a longstanding effort to push consumers into new products and services going back to its earliest days when i was part of the at&t family coming and you talk a lot in your book about the iphone and the impact that's had its not even the wireless world but the entire media and consumer electronics. what inspired you to agree to pull the trigger on that? >> guest: as i said earlier, management, duty, the first duty is to do well for the stockholders. the only way is to continue to make their investment better

come in and i do that through dividends or gross for increased stock price but you can't stand still, you can never stand still. if you do you are not going to make it and so here comes this great idea with the iphone risky as it can be and steve jobs wanted a lot of money for these things and was an unproven technology that i knew we had the network this had to have a network to run and he had the device with the capability. so you look at it and maybe it comes back to that common sense again that you have a feeling this personal communication is going to be important. is it worth taking a risk for cracks it isn't something you agonize over a long period of time you don't get consultants and to think about it because you already know the answer this is risky. this might work. we are not betting the company.

this is worth taking. this is a risk worth taking. let's put our chips out on the table and see what happens with this and that's what we did. we got lucky on that when the rest was history at work. >> host: were there any issues in the negotiation process, and i realize that we had delegated a lot of the day-to-day around the issues of control. for a very long time have they really wanted to control the consumer experience, as much as the consumer experience as it could and that is why the phone company was the one that could provide you with caller id and call waiting and was a whole bundled package that you got from the provider >> guest: worked pretty good, too.

>> host: along comes steve jobs he wants to be the front and center person in that relationship. i realize there wasn't much discussion and especially to a third party. >> guest: there was a lot of discussion to that as you might imagine. we were just as convinced we were going to control the network base as he was convinced that there was a lot of back-and-forth more than you can imagine. >> host: i can't imagine a lot. >> guest: there was a great deal. we will never do that or this and this can't be done this way. at the end we all agreed to gannet work and it took a device and we had to give a little, and

by giving we put a great product up there with a network and a device that worked but there were a lot of discussions that there was a lot. >> host: ultimately i think it did unleash not just at at&t but all the carriers in the mentality around as you said at the outset of the conversation you didn't have to build all the software. you didn't have to build the person or provided the weather for every consumer so it seems to be a much richer experience for the consumer and the use the network a lot more, don't they? >> guest: they do. and we like the network being used. >> host: did you whether imagine a world like this when you are coming up in southwestern bell, obviously all kinds of road maps in the future and all kinds of very futuristic

visions for what the consumer will experience when we hit the year 2000 did you ever envision a world that is always on as the consumer experience is today? >> guest: malae didn't. i guess i left that up to them and just kept saying let's take the next step and see where it leads us and it's where we are now. it's going to continue to lead us to more but as far as the future i know things are going to happen. if you ask me to tell you that that is, there would be difficult for me. i probably couldn't do that. >> host: but surely the to the business world's colliding becomes much more like a smartphone a few well. the dashboard of the car is already becoming very sophisticated.

what were your thoughts about the level of information technology advancement in the although world when you got there? because i think my perception is the luxury auto maker has been focused on information technology and that is starting to proliferate the mainstream of the manufacturers. >> guest: there was a lot of thought being put into the technology of the car and the car being a hot spot if you would and one that you do not pull away from the stays with you a long time. a lot of other things to do. you cannot do wireless and drive at the same time that there are advances and a lot of thoughts that are being put into that.

we are going to see some drastic or radical interesting changes. there's a lot of technology work going on. all of this comes together at some point or another. i'm not a future list as i said but there will be interesting. >> host: what are the most exciting things use of either on the physical side or the technology side in your final days of general motors? >> guest: on the technology side we talked about it but in my days whether there were spark plugs or carburetors or things that's pretty gone and the cars run by a computer maybe most people don't know that. i certainly didn't but that's exciting how that works and the possibility of more advances and different propulsion systems i thought was interesting and general motors are doing things like we have the chevy fault.

we collected 300 miles in the car to have a responsibility defendant in the environment that sort of thing so i think there could be interesting developments their overtime so that's exciting. new designs i think are exciting. better gas mileage, that's exciting and the ways you can do that. people talk about -- this sounds silly but thai years with less friction. if you have less friction you will get more miles to the gallon but if you have no friction you can't stop so there are real world things to talk about but it's exciting going forward. i think the same thing is true of at&t. look at the data explosion and what's happening. we may be limited by spectrum and so when sure there will be

more technologies to overcome that. >> host: how do the ceos in particular with the very real database pressures of owning stock price and the pressures surely you have to deal with that at both of the company's triet >> guest: i thought the number one duty was to perpetuate the company. and i think if you take the viewpoint that we have to perpetuate the company maybe you have to be prepared for the up and down earnings but you must perpetuate the company for its people and its product and its very survival. i think if you take that and you are willing to spend more on your capital projects and do more in that realm, i think

you'll understand that is necessary to stay in the forefront. i think if you have that mind set, you are probably pretty good. you just sometimes have to take your lips on eps or some of the of their measurements that the analysts want court earlier earnings. they would like to have daily earnings but the quarterly earnings i think i always did, i think we always did kind of look to the future and understand you've just kind of have to take some every now and then to perpetuate the business and that's the most important >> host: you've had an impact and clearly changed at&t and gm. i would like you to take a few minutes to tell me how each of those companies change you. let's start with at&t. how did you leave at&t different than when you first came in? >> guest: i was a little more

tired. i had a lot more gray hair. i think i cannot numbing the power of people and having optimism in the future and turning the company over. i probably have less patience than when i went in. you tend to want things to happen faster and faster and run out of patience but i think i felt comfortable that the company was going to do just fine without ed whiteaker. at gm i think i saw how quickly things can change but never really got to observe that at&t, but how quickly things can change when people get behind something and make it happen. so i cannily knowing that more than i ever knew things can happen quickly when people put their mind to it and i think

that this a reason to be optimistic, too to think more about the power of people, she thinks it isn't quite as bleak as a lot of people think for america. in fact it's not quite as bleak as people think it is for america. he knows the one sure thing has changed, what it is today it will be different in a few months, a few weeks, a few days. he knows people are adoptable if you let them do that. if you can keep the bureaucracy ... things can happen. so he's changed a lot. i know i'm not technically, but i sure know a lot more about him and i notice on the road what kind of fecal of plus to read so from that standpoint, yes. >> host: what are you driving these days?

>> guest: a cadillac, and i love it. >> host: the book is american turnaround reinvented at&t and gm and the way we do business in the usa. it's been a pleasure. >> guest: thank you terrie leche.