have been joking. And I sometimes wonder whether my rejoinder was more clever than accurate. Of course, we'll never know, just as we'll never know whether Armstrong's strategy would have worked had he not been competing with a company that was perpetrating the most extensive fraud in business history. But at the end of a thirty-two-year career, let alone in a book that purports to draw lessons from that career, it's natural to ask, "How did I do?" An editor who covered AT&T during the Allen and Armstrong years tried to give me safe passage by that question in an e-mail after I retired from the company: "att's press wasn't bad because the media Tough Calls are bad--it was bad cuz the company was in terrible shape. nothing you or bob allen or c.michael armstrong cud have done would have changed that. in other words: it wasn't your fault." While I appreciate the consideration behind the note (from a man not known for idle sentiment), I think it gives the media too much credit and us too little. We were sometimes our own worst enemy, not only in what we said, but in what we did. Whether anyone else would have fared better is one of those unanswerable questions that business cases are built around. And I can't grade myself separately from the CEO I worked for. To say that I succeeded while he did not is like saying that the operation was a success but the patient died. In terms of AT&T's trading value, the jury is still out. Before Arm- strong arrived, an AT&T investor owned shares in a company that essentially provided a single service (long-distance) that was soon to be made obsolete by changing technology and regulation. Armstrong used the company's strong balance sheet and the cash thrown off by its consumer long-distance business to upgrade its data networks, ex- pand its wireless footprint, and buy cable television companies. When he left, AT&T investors owned shares in the original long-distance company, the largest independent wireless services company, and the largest broadband services company. In October 19