File:Bell telephone magazine (1922) (14569706540).jpg

Identifier: belltelephone7273mag00amerrich (find matches)
Title: Bell telephone magazine
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: American Telephone and Telegraph Company American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Information Dept
Subjects: Telephone
Publisher: (New York, American Telephone and Telegraph Co., etc.)
Contributing Library: Prelinger Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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king down. Our com-munity is big—one million employ-ees. We need communities we canhandle. The two-level one is ideal.This is hard on the white knight.It means he must concentrate hisefforts in a smaller zone. In addition, the white knighthas to stay around for a while to beeffective in the two-level zone.Given the assignments: change theindex, reduce costs, improve em-ployee attitudes—the knight cando the first in a matter of weeks.The second in a year or two. Inthree years he may just be makinga dent in the last. A Bell Systemofficer famous for his charisma atDivision level once said, while look-ing at a printed results book, Dontforget there isnt a number in thatbook that I cant change with a ten-minute meeting. Now lets talkabout how youre going to managethis outfit. He was right, his pointsimple. Anyone can manage fornarrow results. Managing for short-term results is seldom good manage-ment. So the myth of the whiteknight tells us two things aboutemployee communications: con-
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centrate your efforts; stay arounda while. The final myth, the wrong prep-osition, should prove obvious. Foryears Employee Information hasmeant to, not from, the employee.Anyone who has labored for hoursover a single paragraph in an em-ployee publication knows the prob-lem. We have good writers in theBell System. Not one of them canproduce a paragraph on Equal Op-portunity that reads the same in amanhole in Chicago, a computerroom in Denver, an installers rigin Oil Trough, Arkansas, or an op-erators lounge in Brooklyn. It maybe a great statement, but until theboss comes out, sits down, talksabout it, listens to what comes fromthe employees, it has little impact.Efforts to talk to the employeeshould continue. But lets haveequal time and money for from. This may be hard on the profes-sionals. It says a Vice Presidenttalking to a Public Office Managerat an Open House may not be com-munications at all. It says an em-ployee newspaper may interest onlythose mentioned in it. It says aPreside

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