Harry Gray RIP

During 1984-85 I was in a project analysis group within the finance organization of AT&T Information Systems, a subsidiary created to spearhead AT&T's entry into unregulated markets after its divestiture of local telephone operating companies on 1/1/84. Our mission was to review the business cases associated with major new projects, and to recommend whether these proposals should proceed, be modified or be rejected. The longest-running analytic effort we had during that period concerned a proposed "shared services joint venture" with United Technologies. Last week's death of Harry Gray, the man who pretty much built present-day UT in the 1970s and 80s, has evoked memories of this episode in my career.

In a nutshell, the project would be an alliance between AT&T and UT to package a variety of services to developers of office buildings. UT already had a firm foothold in this market with its Otis Elevator and Carrier Air Conditioner subsidiaries. AT&T would chip in its communications expertise, offering a common PBX (private branch exchange) phone system that would serve all tenants of a building, rather than trying to sell each its own PBX, a higher cost proposition for a given tenant.

The proposal drawn up by the wily Gray and his team skewed the financial benefits towards UT. Nonetheless, the AT&T executive pushing this deal seemed undeterred. He found the prospect of doing a deal with the high-flying Gray to be rather glamorous. We in project analysis were in something of a quandary, since we had no authority to kill a project outright, only to make a negative recommendation. Our politically-savvy head grasped this fully, and thus was always loath to knock a project that was bound to go through anyway, no matter how questionable it was. Looking ahead towards his future advancement, he didn't want to alienate any executives who might be key allies in the future. His oft-voiced credo was, "I'm not stepping in front of a moving train."

The proposed joint venture with UT eventually died from delay, and the head of project analysis did indeed move on to bigger and better things. Nonetheless, this was an early lesson for me as an idealistic young guy who expected financial organizations to be independent watchdogs over the shareholders' purse: all too often they are not. Beware.