attention to himself. He'll sit through long meetings, resting his chin on one hand while scribbling with the other. Then, when there's a pause in the discussion, he'll cough and ask if he can say something. Inevitably, he'll not only summarize the situation with insight and precision, but also tick off steps we "might consider" to address it. Boiled down, Bell's recommendation was concise: Change the sub- ject. He reasoned that we were suffering from a "gang mentality" among the media, who were portraying the company as uncaring, un- focused, and poorly managed. AT&T and its chairman had become symbols of irresponsible downsizing. Attacking those issues head-on was a suicide mission that would only cement our position as the principal villain in the national soap opera. As it was, we had been forced onto "the slippery slope of reactive communications." The only way off that slope was through "extreme message focus," using the "new AT&T" as our platform. What had been lost in the blizzard of Understand the Power of Symbols 49 negative press was the concept that we were indeed building a new company. "Changing these perceptions needs to be founded in reality," Bell said. "Allen needs to take charge of this-not the PR department- and he needs to create a sense of urgency by doing things that are different. Call a weekend session; cancel a trip; whatever it takes to bring 'command focus' to the task of defining and shaping percep- tions of the new AT&T." Bell wasn't talking about a PR campaign as popularly understood; he was talking about redefining the company-its mission, its goals, and the criteria by which it should be judged. Unfortunately, while Allen was willing to do whatever "PR stuff" we asked of him, as far as he was concerned, the Trivestiture planning was on a separate track. The PR Plan Our PR plan came down to a three-part strategy: Change the debate from defending the need to downsize to demonstrating the responsi- ble way to do it, restore employees' badly shaken confidence, and re- build the compan