s the Spanish poet and philosopher George Santayana suggested, one reason is to avoid repeating its mistakes. Another is because the past is always with us. "The past is not dead," William Faulkner once wrote. "The past is not even past." AT&T's past stretches back more than one hundred years. It can be ignored, denied, and belittled, but it cannot be escaped. In the calm following the storms of my last six years at AT&T, I've played an endless game of "what if," replaying major events in my mind, rethinking choices, and anticipating the consequences of each with the crystal clarity of hindsight. In the process, I relearned some old lessons and discovered new ones. Running through them are three principles that appear to have universal application. They con- cern the exercise of power, not in the financial, political, or technologi- cal realms, but in a moral sense. Following the corporate scandals of recent years, talk of moral decisions naturally implies choosing be- tween right and wrong, good and bad. But that's a minimum bet. Real moral power taps three interrelated resources deep within a com- pany's soul. The Power of Common Purpose At the end of his masterful history of the Bell System's last days, Heri- tage and Destiny, Alvin von Auw makes a case for the importance of Tough Calls words. That may not be surprising coming from someone who spent much of his forty-two-year career writing speeches for AT&T execu- tives, the last twelve for three successive chairmen and CEOs. But he had more than rhetoric in mind. "For it is words that embody an institution's idea of itself," he wrote. "It is words, even more than numbers, that provide the motive power of business." Great compa- nies, like countries, need a "sustaining myth" that binds their people together in a worthwhile undertaking. That sustaining myth may be expressed in anecdotes, iconic symbols, or heroic tales, but it always expresses the higher purpose to which the company was dedicated. This is not simply an exercise in corporate poetry. While a mis