The New York Career
Ivan Seidenberg
NYU's Samuel Rudin Memorial Lecture Series
April 9, 2001
Thanks, Jack [Introduction by Jack Rudin.]. I really feel humbled to be kicking off this lecture series named after the Rudin family. Jack and I have a lot in common -- we’re both from the Bronx, we were both in the army, he went to City College and I went to CUNY, and we’ve both made our careers here in the City -- but it’s really Jack who’s had the quintessential "New York career." When I talk to people at Verizon about what it means to be a leader, I say it’s about doing the right things right and building something for the people who come after.
Jack, with your record as a businessman and a philanthropist, I’d say you pretty much fit the bill.
In any event, I’m pleased to be here tonight. But I bet, if this lecture had been held a year ago tonight, I wouldn’t have been your first choice. With the NASDAQ at all-time highs and with visions of IPOs dancing in your heads, you would have thought the C.E.O. of a Fortune 100 company to be too stodgy... too analog... too "20th century" to be of much interest.
In fact, a year ago the whole idea of a forum on the "New York career" would have struck some people as curious. This is the cyberspace era, after all. Aren’t we all supposed to be in Aspen or Tuscany -- or at the very least upstate! -- teleshopping, teleworking, telebanking, tele-everything?
Who needs corporations -- or cities -- anyway?
Well, a lot can change in 12 months. The latest issue of Fortune reports that MBA’s are foregoing dot.com start-ups for more traditional employers. We’ve figured out that 80-hour weeks, Friday beer bashes and get-rich-quick compensation schemes are not the prescription for long-term career satisfaction. And, in the 2000 Census, we even learned that reports of the demise of the great American city were premature, at best: New York City’s population grew 8 percent in the ‘90s, faster than the state and faster than the suburbs.
The real lessons of the Internet era are deeper, and harder, than we thought a year ago. Big cities and big companies may not be going away, but they sure don’t look like they used to. And while there may not be a "new economy" and an "old economy," there sure is an old economy made new by technology and competition and new customer demands. To succeed, we need to adapt -- as people, as organizations, and as individuals.
So with that, let me tell you a little bit about what a kid from the Bronx has learned about life in the big city.
***
As Jack said, I started my career at New York Telephone some 30 years ago, starting out as a cable splicer so I could go to school at night. At first glance, spending three decades at one company might seem hard to relate to in today’s world. But while I may not have changed companies, I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that changed around me.
When I joined the Bell System back in the ‘70s, it was the epitome of what people looked for in a job: stable, secure, good benefits, good people. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to my gold watch. One divestiture, two mergers, and four name changes later, I now work for a Fortune 10 company named Verizon. At $65 B in revenues, it’s almost as big as Ma Bell, but in fact it’s nothing like it, having been completely reshaped as a global, competitive, and much more dynamic organization.
Over the span of my career, my company’s biggest accomplishment has been the transformation of our physical assets -- the wires, switches and cables that comprise the telephone network -- around the mandates of the digital era. In the last decade alone, we’ve reinvented ourselves around two disruptive technologies:
- Wireless (this one we saw right away)
- The Internet (this one took us longer)
Like all network technologies, these two are all about scale -- both are well on their way to having one billion users worldwide in the next two or three years. So, as a network company, our fundamental strategy over the last few years has been to add scale in these new technology platforms, increase the "data-centricity" of our business, and basically get bigger to generate the financial strength to continue to invest and grow.
In the process, we’ve also helped to fuel the economic resurgence of New York City by investing in its networks, its schools, and its cultural institutions. In 2000 alone, we invested nearly $2.4 billion in our New York network -- about 65 percent of that in the metro area.
This investment in a broadband infrastructure has been good for Verizon and good for the city. Statistics from the mayor’s office show the high-tech workforce in New York is growing faster than any other economic segment, including Wall Street. By 2002, the number of New Yorkers employed by the high tech sector is expected to exceed 250,000. Not too long ago, it was practically nil.
But as Jack Rudin knows, great cities need more than bricks and mortar -- or fiber and photons, for that matter. They need strong schools and strong communities. Verizon gave more than $11 million to New York City charitable, civic and educational organizations in 2000. And earlier this year, we launched a new program called "V-Squared," which matches employee contributions dollar for dollar to virtually any charitable organization. With 25,000 employees here in New York City, we expect that $11 million will grow even higher in 2001.
So we’re proud to be part of the story of New York’s economic prosperity in the 21st century. The director of the Urban Research Center here at NYU was asked about the Census figures showing the growth of the City over the last decade, and he said, "The real divide in this country is between those places that have been able to adapt to new economic forces and those that are tied to their industrial pasts."
I agree. And I’d take this a step further: If the challenge of the last decade has been the transformation of our physical assets, the job of the next decade will be the transformation of our human and spiritual assets. To sustain ourselves over the long haul, we have to be the kind of company and the kind of community that attract talented people and make them want to hang around.
And that means guys like me have to figure out people like you.
Here are a few of the things we think we know. When I finish, you can tell me if I’m right.
***
The first thing we know is, diversity is cool.
Why do you think the United States bucked the demographic trend of every other industrialized country by growing its population over the last decade? The incredible surge in immigration and ethnic minorities. That’s certainly been the case in New York City. Of the 8 M or so people who live here, 35 percent are white, 24 percent are African American, 27 percent are Hispanic and 10 percent are Asian.
In that kind of a mix, what the heck does "minority" mean, anyway?
Any company that’s not tapped into the multicultural trend is out of touch with its customers and cut off from its future. At Verizon, we’re doing everything we can to infuse our organization with new, more diverse employees, and the new ideas they bring with them.
The second thing we know is, digital is different than analog. And that applies to people as well as technology.
In the book, Growing Up Digital, author Don Tapscott makes the point that the Internet is the first industrial revolution in history to be led by the young. For the first time ever, he writes, children are more comfortable, knowledgeable and literate about a technology central to society than their parents are.
The children of the baby boomers outnumber their parents, 88 million to 85 million. They’ve grown up with buddy lists and Nintendo 64. They don’t know what a "broken record" sounds like. New digital gadgets are as threatening to them as a toaster. They expect intelligent networks to be built into everything they interact with.
And pretty soon they'’ll be our customers and our employees.
This means the generation running America’s corporations had better get with the program, and fast. And that means adapting to new ways of working, collaborating, and creating -- a wave of change that will make what we’ve just been through look like a fire drill.
Lots of think tanks are wasting lots of ink publishing studies about what the "under 30" generation wants from an employer -- but, of course, you know this already. You don’t fear change -- you welcome it. You don’t see inexperience as a liability but as an opportunity to learn. You want to think for yourselves and be acknowledged for your ideas. You have different assumptions about communication, hierarchy, and power than have prevailed in traditional corporations.
And most of all, you want the chance to do something meaningful and be part of something larger than yourselves.
Of course, this is a lesson that the truly great companies have known all along.
The real contribution of the dot.com boom has been to make traditional employers more responsive to the needs of the new generation of employees. Corporations today need to provide quicker paths to learning and responsibility and be more flexible about accommodating diversity -- or lose you to companies that will.
But dot.coms have something to learn from graybeard "old economy types" as well: It’s that, to stay engaged over the long haul, you need to feel connected to some higher purpose that’s worthy of your time, talent and energy.
This is something that, for all its faults, the Bell System always had figured out -- everyone I’ve known over my 30 years who made a career in the communications industry always believed she or he was doing something important for society. At Verizon, we still believe it, and are building our culture around the idea of bringing the benefits of communications to everybody.
Long-term institutional loyalty isn’t built on stock options and perks. It’s based on relationships, values, and a shared sense of purpose. Great places to work bring talented people together, give them a common goal, and create a result that’s greater than the sum of the parts.
***
Come to think of it, great cities are like that, too. They attract talent. They set off sparks. They have more synapses, more connections -- and therefore, more ideas -- than anyplace else on the planet. And they give you the unmistakable sense that you’re part of something big and important and exciting.
Even in the Internet age, real community beats "virtual" community any day of the week.
I’ve had the good fortune to be part of two real communities -- my company and my hometown -- for thirty years.
I haven’t been bored yet.
And as people of your generation add your energy and passion to the mix, I expect New York City -- and Verizon -- will change in ways I can’t begin to predict.
At least that’s what I’m counting on.
Thanks for the chance to be here today. Now I’d be glad to take some questions.
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