the year, those gaps generally closed. Some busi- nesses did better than they had been asked to do, and almost all did better than they had thought they would in the early days of the year. Every month's operational review was like an ornithological confer- ence as business unit leaders took turns describing "bluebirds" (un- foreseen windfalls) and "blackbirds" (unforeseen problems). But by the end of April, when the units filed their latest outlooks, Noski had had enough. In the first quarter, the company's long- distance units had seldom hit the outlook they had filed just one month earlier. Something didn't smell right. Armstrong agreed and told the long-distance people to reexamine their pricing assumptions for the second half of the year until they had a business plan that they could deliver with "80 percent confidence." Since earnings were scheduled to be announced on May 2, Arm- strong wanted to see the new outlooks by Friday, April 28. I remember Tough Calls the date because it happened to be my birthday, and I spent it in a meeting that continued nonstop into the evening and through that weekend in the boardroom at AT&T's Basking Ridge complex. On Friday evening, we listened to a procession of accountants using carefully prepared slides to review the latest business outlook. By Saturday evening, the presentations had become columns of fig- ures scrawled on large easel pads, and everyone seemed to be taking a turn at crossing off numbers and inserting new ones. Hardly anyone could keep up with the changing views, and not everyone agreed. For example, Cicconi expected the access agreement he was forging with the FCC to reduce revenue, but he was surprised to hear that the con- sumer people now expected it to reduce earnings by as much as seven cents per share. After a day and a half of discussion that seemed to periodically circle back on itself, Armstrong was becoming increas- ingly impatient. By 9 P.M., even the usually unflappable Noski was fed up. He told Armstrong that he would have his team reconcile