AT&T CEO Says Viral Memo Has Spurred ‘the Right Kind of Dialogue’

John Stankey had a hunch his now-legendary memo on AT&T’s corporate culture might eventually become part of the public domain, but the scale of the reaction still surprised him.

The telecom giant’s CEO made his first comment on the reaction to his words on Tuesday morning on CNBC, several weeks after Business Insider exclusively obtained and published the document.

“You got a copy of that?” Stankey asked CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Stankey said he wrote the memo expecting it could end up in the public eye and that he seeks to be transparent in his approach to running the business. Still, he said he wasn’t sure why his comments attracted so much attention.

“The fact that people spent as much time on it for as many days as they did was probably a little bit of a surprise to me,” he said. “I don’t know why that is — I’m not an industrial psychologist.”

Read more about Stankey’s memo.

In the memo sent August 1, Stankey said that the 140-year-old company is facing a historic transition that requires it to “disrupt itself” in order to remain relevant.

Part of this transition involves a shift away from the loyalty- and tenure-based approach to employee relations in favor of a “market-based culture” that emphasizes performance.

“Maybe I struck a chord in some regards,” Stankey told CNBC. “But most importantly for me, I think the memo was very well understood within the business, there’s been the right kind of dialogue around it.”

Related stories

Internally, he said the reaction has been mixed.

“I can’t say everybody’s happy about it, but I think the vast majority of AT&T employees understand the direction we’re headed, and that’s a really good thing,” he said.

The memo sparked considerable discussion among Business Insider readers, with around 1,490 responding between August 4 and August 26 to a survey that asked whether the memo was an effective way to communicate with employees.

Roughly 40% of those respondents said that it was an effective message, while 60% said the opposite.

Correction: August 26. 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the CNBC host. It is Andrew Ross Sorkin, not Aaron Sorkin.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter at dreuter@businessinsider.com or Signal at 646.768.4750. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.