sion is necessarily articulated in words, even stirring words, that can be printed on cards with laminations thick enough to read in the shower, its real communication depends on taking actions to realize it. To von Auw, it mattered deeply whether the leaders of an enter- prise saw themselves as stewards of a public trust or simply as "the managers of a portfolio whose first responsibility is to position the business in whatever markets will profit it most."IO In reviewing my calendars, I was surprised to see that the most significant announcements during the Armstrong years were made at, and sometimes for, a meeting with financial analysts. Wall Street was ever on our minds. With 20/20 hindsight, I now see that this skewed not only the form, but the substance of our messages. We were posi- tioning AT&T as the answer to the question, "How do I make quick money in the stock market?" as if that were our mission. But AT&T's heritage-and the "future" that Armstrong had prom- ised its board of directors-demanded much more. Von Auw had fore- seen the day when future leaders of AT&T would have to decide whether they were stewards of a "business" or of an "enterprise of historical significance." The choice they made would spring from a sense of their own heritage, obliging them to seek what von Auw called the company's "highest and best use." Some argue that AT&T essentially accomplished its original mis- sion-making affordable phone service universally available-in the 1960s, and that its history since then has been a chaotic flailing about for a new mission. That may be. What seems certain to me is that in recent years, through happenstance and errors of judgment, AT&T lost any meaningful link to its heritage, despite moving Golden Boy across the Hudson River and up and down New Jersey highways, as the company's chairman moved his office. Practice Ambidextrous Leadership 265 We belittled the era of the "Bellheads," appropriately discarding the vestiges of their rigidly hierarchical culture. But we failed to articulate 