on signing bonus and 18 per- cent of the equity." Burlingame was impressed. No public corporation could match that. He knew it was similar to Barksdale's package at Netscape, SO it was probably true. This was no negotiating ploy. But coming on the heels of the previous six months' misadventures, Burlingame, who had spent much of his earlier career in public relations, knew that this would be big trouble for his boss and for the company. Tough Calls "Alex," he said, "you know that you can't tell me something like this without my doing something with it." Mandl said he understood, and Burlingame asked his secretary to find Allen. Brain Drain Years after he left AT&T, Allen said that his biggest mistake as CEO was not preparing adequately for his own succession. Considering that he had come to the job after the untimely death of his predeces- sor, this is a curious admission. But like most CEOs, particularly those who have held the role for five to ten years, Bob Allen had a hard time imagining one of the executives who reported to him in his job. There is a hierarchy even among CEOs, and the CEO of AT&T at that time was arguably in its upper reaches. The old Bell System had had farm teams in the form of its twenty-one local telephone companies and Western Electric, each of which had its own CEO and board of direc- tors. Allen was the last AT&T CEO to emerge from that training ground, and he thought it had served the company well. That was one of the reasons he had hired Mandl and Miller, who had both been CEOs at smaller companies. Allen seemed to consider CEOs different in kind, not just in qual- ity, from other senior businesspeople. In a sense, he saw CEOs as the ultimate hyphenates-player-coaches, salesmen-statesmen, servant- leaders, practical-visionaries. He believed that CEOs had to have the gravitas to represent the company to multiple stakeholders, but also had to have the down-to-earth operating skills to produce consistent financial results in changing business environments. Most of all, he believed that