|
 |
Going the
Distance
|
By Pam Droog
Southwestern Bell–Missouri President Jan Newton never even knew
any businesswomen in west Texas where she grew up. She joined Southwestern
Bell in 1976 looking for a job, not a career. As she climbed the
corporate ladder, she survived moves, mergers, motherhood as a single
parent, even a commuter marriage. And she took it all in stride,
thanks to personal philosophies she’s developed over 25 years at
“the phone company.”
Newton Philosophy number one: “Grab opportunities, weigh
them against what’s best for you, then make a decision and never
look back.”
Newton’s cotton-fields-to-corporate-suite story is indeed a series
of opportunities grabbed and made good. She grew up on a cotton
farm in Brownfield, Texas, and started Texas Tech University in
Lubbock “not knowing exactly what I wanted to do,” she says. She
earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration, got married
and needed a job. She accepted a temporary clerical position in
the accounting department at Southwestern Bell.
From that humble beginning, Newton held positions in finance, sales,
marketing and regulatory affairs, including executive director of
wholesale policy and resale marketing, small and medium business
sales, large business sales support, systems support and competitive
analysis for the St. Louis market, and forecasting. She also provided
company support on technical issues before the Federal Communications
Commission, and, as director-regulatory affairs for Southwestern
Bell–Missouri, she managed the company’s regulatory activities and
developed cases and handled hearing activities before the Missouri
Public Service Commission.
Prior to being appointed in June 1999 as Missouri president, in
which she is responsible for the company’s regulatory, legislative,
governmental and external affairs and community and industry relations
throughout the state, Newton served as executive director in the
office of SBC Communications chairman and chief executive officer
Edward E. Whitacre Jr.
Sometimes, an opportunity for advancement came loaded with tough
choices. For example, just before being transferred to St. Louis
in the early 1980s, Newton was divorced. Her daughter had just turned
5 years old. “But I decided to move to St. Louis,” she says. “I
was a single mom for 16 years as I was coming up the corporate ladder.”
After her daughter left for college, Newton met her husband, Frank—and
faced another hard decision. Just as the couple was making wedding
plans, Newton’s job was transferred to Dallas. “My husband’s career,
however, needed him to stay in St. Louis,” she says. “So for the
first 18 months of our marriage we commuted every weekend.”
Job moves frequently meant relocations, from Lubbock to San Antonio,
St. Louis to Dallas and back to San Antonio, SBC Communications’
headquarters. “I’ve actually spent 18 of my 25 years with the company
in St. Louis,” Newton says. Does she still consider herself a Texan?
“Only by accent,” she replies. “But I guess inside all of us there’s
a piece of wherever we came from.”
|
Southwestern
Bell Telephone Co. Fast Facts
|
- Southwestern
Bell provides basic and leading-edge telephone services
and products to more than 15 million business and residential
customers in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas.
- Southwestern
Bell is a company of SBC Communications, a global communications
leader. Through its subsidiaries’ brands—Southwestern
Bell, Ameritech, Pacific Bell, Nevada Bell, SNET and Sterling
Commerce—and worldclass network, SBC and affiliates provide
a full range of voice, data, networking and e-business
services, including local and long-distance voice, high-speed
Internet access and data transport, voice and data network
integration, software and process integration, Web site
and application hosting, e-marketplace development, paging
and messaging, as well as cable and satellite television,
and directory advertising and publishing.
- SBC
Communications has more than 61.3 million access lines,
including Southwestern Bell’s 17 million access lines.
- SBC
Communications has a 60 percent equity interest in Cingular
Wireless, a joint venture with BellSouth, serving more
than 20 million wireless customers.
- SBC
Communications has telecommunications investments in 28
countries worldwide.
- In
the St. Louis area, Southwestern Bell’s DSL service is
available to approximately 525,000 potential households
and approximately 1 million potential households statewide.
- In
a recent survey, Southwestern Bell found that 66 percent
of Southwestern Bell DSL subscribers would rather sacrifice
their morning coffee
than their broadband connection and 98 percent of survey
respondents consider their DSL connections an important
household technology.
|
Newton Philosophy number two: “Don’t be afraid of change.
Accept it and go forward, and when you get down that road and turn
around and look back, you’ll see you’ve grown and developed even
stronger skills.”
Newton considers her Southwestern Bell career a 25-year education.
“Not only have I had the opportunity to move from department to
department,” she says, “but I’ve also seen the company completely
transform itself,” from a traditional telephone company to a voice-data-video
company. In fact, Newton adds, “I really can’t think of an industry
other than telecommunications that’s experienced so much change
so fast.”
There are three reasons for the industry’s dynamic changes, Newton
believes. First, five years ago, Congress passed a telecommunications
act that opened the local telecommunications market to competition.
Second, as in many industries, numerous mergers and acquisitions
occurred. “In the course of four years, we went from a five-state,
50,000-employee company to a 13-state operation with more than 200,000
employees,” Newton says, referring to Southwestern Bell’s acquisitions
of Ameritech, Pacific Bell and SNET. “Integrating the companies
and their cultures and all the operations was a tremendous effort.”
Third, and most significant, is the change in technology. “Voice
will always be a large part of our business,” Newton says. “But
as the Internet has continued to explode, the demand by our customers
for higher speeds continues to grow as well.”
To accommodate those demands, and be an industry leader, SBC’s $6
billion initiative, Project Pronto, will dramatically increase the
availability of the company’s high-speed DSL Internet service in
the next two years. “We routinely spend $300 million a year in Missouri
on just ongoing maintenance and upgrading the network,” Newton explains.
“With Project Pronto, we have upped that investment significantly.
It’s a big financial risk and obligation, but we want to do it based
upon what our customers have told us, that they want these products
and services.”
In addition, the Missouri Public Service Commission recently announced
its support of Southwestern Bell–Missouri’s plan to sell long-distance
service in the state. “My number one objective when I came into
this job was to get Southwestern Bell–Missouri into the long-distance
market,” Newton says. “We had been working on it for a couple of
years prior to my coming. I’m very pleased that on April 4, we filed
our application with the FCC to enter that market. So hopefully
by the first part of July we’ll get approval to do that.”
While the company makes significant changes in its network and the
marketplace, Newton says she did not make major changes when she
became president. “I’ve approached every job by just getting in
and doing the very best I can for the company and for myself and
the people who work for me,” she says.
Newton’s management style is based on two beliefs. First, every
one of Southwestern Bell–Missouri’s 14,500 employees, including
9,000 in St. Louis, is absolutely critical to the company’s success.
“So I really view myself as a manager who tries to leverage the
strengths of the people who work in the organization,” she says.
Wayne Alexander, president-Southwestern Bell, agrees. “Jan is a
marvelous leader and a fine manager. She gets the best out of her
people,” he says. “She’s wonderful at giving credit to others for
their contributions.”
Second, Newton believes in the team approach. “In today’s dynamic
environment, a lone ranger can’t be nearly as effective as a team,”
she says. “When I recruit people, I tell them, if you like to be
a lone ranger, then you probably won’t be successful here because
I will judge success by your ability to work in and among the entire
team for the benefit of the company.”
To keep her team informed and motivated, Newton meets regularly
with her direct report staff. She also has made a point of joining
each of the company’s employee organizations, including the African
American, gay and lesbian, professional women and Hispanic groups.
“When I came back to St. Louis as president, I felt it was important
that employees knew the top of the company personally supports these
groups,” Newton says. She routinely meets with each group individually
and collectively. “It’s a communication tool that isn’t traditionally
available through a large corporate management structure,” she notes,
“ but it has worked very well for me.”
|
(Left
to right): RCGA President & CEO Dick Fleming, Southwestern
Bell President Jan Newton, Donald Danforth Plant
Science Center Chairman William Danforth and Donald
Danforth Plant Science Center President Roger Beachy
assembled at a May 8 press conference to announce
a $1.9 million grant from the Southwestern Bell
Foundation to the Donald Danforth Plant Science
Center. The grant will fund a state-of-the-art,
300-seat meeting and conference facility at the
Danforth Center, which will bear the Southwestern
Bell name.
|
|
Newton Philosophy number three: “You have to enjoy what
you do.”
Looking back over all her Southwestern Bell jobs, Newton says
the most challenging but most rewarding was a position she accepted
in 1996, leading the effort to open up Southwestern Bell’s markets
to competition. She had a staff of six and six months to negotiate
contracts with competitive companies in the market. “The day President
Clinton signed the bill into law, in February 1996, we received
eight requests from competitors,” Newton says. “When I left that
job two-and-a-half years later, we had 4,000 people involved, negotiated
more than 400 contracts, processed more than a million orders from
competitive local companies and generated more than a billion dollars
worth of revenue.”
Because she was the first person involved, Newton worked interdepartmentally
to set up service centers, determine how to interconnect with the
new companies and rewrite programs for billing, ordering and provisioning.
“It was a huge transformation, and a lot of work,” she says. “But
it gave me the opportunity to personally drive the change that I’ve
seen our company go through.”
Newton’s Southwestern Bell official duties only constitute part
of her real job, however, in representing Southwestern Bell, Newton
commits a lot of energy—and a whole lot of time—to serving on the
boards of numerous civic and charitable organizations. “I start
a lot of mornings with board meetings at 7:30, then I work all day
and go to evening events for boards, and sometimes on weekends,
too,” she says. “I put in very long hours and very long weeks, but
I’m blessed with a spouse who truly enjoys participating.”
Currently, Newton is a member of Civic Progress and serves on the
boards of the Girl Scout Council, Greater St. Louis Area Boy Scouts,
Grand Center, Hawthorn Foundation, Junior Achievement, St. Louis
Symphony, Backstoppers and United Way.
She’s president of the board of the Variety Club, which supports
hundreds of programs serving more than 200,000 disabled or disadvantaged
children. “Jan has brought a tremendous amount of organization to
our 40-member board, and her attention to our immediate needs as
well as our long-range planning has been very important,” says Jan
Albus, executive director.
Albus says Newton created and oversees the Variety Club’s Super
Star Collection lithograph series, featuring St. Louis Rams Football
players. The 300 limited-edition prints will sell for $2,500 each.
“Considering her duties at Southwestern Bell, I’m amazed at how
Jan finds time to keep up with things here,” Albus says. “It’s like
they say: Find the busiest person to be in charge, because that’s
who’s the most organized.”
Newton also is a member of the RCGA’s executive committee. From
that perspective, she believes the region is benefiting from a growing
consensus among business, community and political leaders about
priorities. One of those is to focus on the positive aspects of
the region. “Although many businesses have left or gone through
changes, many companies that are still here are very strong and
very involved in the community,” she says.
Among those is Southwestern Bell, which in the past five years has
contributed more than $30 million statewide toward initiatives that
positively impact students and teachers.
One example is Southwestern Bell’s support of the Multi-Media Interactive
Network Technology Schools (MINTS), a collaborative program that
brings together advanced communications and the traditional classroom
environment to create an interactive learning experience. The program
has served hundreds of students in six school districts and received
a Smithsonian Award as one of the nation’s leading programs in demonstrating
the links between technology and education.
Another example is the Midwest Telecommunications Preparatory Academy,
a $1.3 million public-private venture funded by Southwestern Bell
Foundation, St. Louis Community College, St. Louis Regional Empowerment
Zone, St. Louis County Government and the RCGA. The Academy, located
in Wellston and set to open this fall, will prepare young adults
for entry-level technical jobs in the telecommunications industry.
“This is a great initiative that focuses on keeping jobs here in
St. Louis,” Newton says. “Also, it’s located in an economically
disadvantaged area, yet it provides job skills and training to allow
people to get very productive jobs in the St. Louis area.”
The SBC Foundation also recently provided a $1.9 million grant to
support a state-of-the-art auditorium at the $146 million Danforth
Plant Science Center. The Center, scheduled to open this fall, is
expected to become one of the world’s leading independent research
facilities for plant sciences.
Newton Philosophy number four: “Don’t underestimate the
benefits of staying with one company.”
“When I tell people I have 25 years of service at one company,
I get a few raised eyebrows,” Newton says. “But I feel like one
of the most fortunate people around because I never could have told
you when I started with Southwestern Bell that I would now be heading
up its Missouri operations. It is a real privilege to provide leadership
in this position.”
Looking ahead, Newton expects the future will hold “as many or more
opportunities as I’ve experienced in the past,” she says. Beyond
that, she hopes to have more time to garden, golf and ski with her
husband, and enjoy her favorite kind of evening: staying home and
barbecuing.
Considering the future from a more philosophical viewpoint, Newton
believes technology will continue to drive rapid change. “I would
offer we are just at the very beginning of a dramatic technological
shift,” she says. “I don’t think it’s possible to underestimate
the impact technology will continue to have in terms of transforming
the way we live our lives.”
Pam Droog is a St. Louis-based free-lance writer.
|
|
|
|
|
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
