pportive op-eds. Even Ed Koch, ex-mayor turned colum- nist for the New York Post, weighed in with a surprisingly nuanced survey think tanks. 20 The National Association of Manufacturers placed an op-ed in the Washington Post, rebutting "corporate bashing" and declaring, "We aren't 'corporate killers'; we're the envy of every country."2 The chairman of Chrysler Corporation, on whose board Bob Allen served, gave a high-profile speech at the Detroit Economic Club, promising in the opening line "to complain about the ongoing Tough Calls demonization of corporate America by some of our prominent politi- cians and news organization[s]."2 While welcome, all the to-and-fro of supportive stories and rebut- tals in the letters to the editor columns tended to reinforce AT&T's symbolic role in the downsizing story. And not all of the "help" was an unalloyed delight. After lighting into critics who were demonizing American business, Business Week offered a suggestion: "Fire the CEOs whose strategic backfires lead to layoffs, as was the case at AT&T."23 Don't Miss the Symbolism in the Facts The hardest part of counseling CEOs is getting them to look beyond rational arguments to stakeholders' emotional concerns. This isn't touchy-feely New Age mumbo jumbo. Walter Lippmann pinpointed its importance in the I920S. "Opinions," he wrote, "are not in contin- ual and pungent contact with the facts they profess to treat. But the feelings attached to those opinions can be even more intense than the original ideas that provoked them."24 Over time, people come to know what they feel without being entirely certain why they feel it. And those feelings can be provoked by stimuli far removed from the ideas that aroused them in the first place. No one at AT&T's executive table understood the full emotional impact of our downsizing announcement on people beyond those who were directly affected. Incredibly, in hindsight, none of us had con- nected the downsizing announcement to Allen's compensation, which had been largely decided months earlier.