AT&T's Donovan: Women Adapt Faster Than MenAT&T's Donovan: Women Adapt Faster Than Men

AUSTIN, Texas -- Big Communications Event -- Women fill an increasing number of roles in John Donovan's organization at AT&T not because he's necessarily focused on diversity, but because he finds women are better able to adapt -- a necessary trait for surviving in today's disruptive environment.

"People say I'm an advocate for women, but really I'm just making commercial decisions. Women adapt faster than men in these situations," Donovan, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T)'s chief strategy officer and group president for AT&T Technology and Operations, said during his keynote here in Austin. (See CEO Chat With AT&T's John Donovan.)

Figure 1: Donovan tells Light Reading's Carol Wilson that women are better at adapting to which she responds, "duh."

When it comes to companies in the comms industry, AT&T tends to be more diverse than its peers, and Donovan said it is getting more so in terms of the gender split. According to its annual diversity report, released in April, 32% of its workforce are female and 35% of its leadership team are women. (See AT&T's Band of Women .)

Donovan is tasked with the enormous job of leading AT&T's transformation efforts and given that -- as he said -- only those that can adapt can survive, hiring and promoting women is a natural decision for him. He said there was a period of time when the entire industry seemed to freeze and grapple with, "How do I get paid, and what if something breaks?" But, over time, AT&T has had to change everything from performance management to how it pays and promotes people. (See Indigo: A New Shade of AT&T and AT&T White Box a Disruptive Force.)

For more perspectives on women in comms, check out our past Mentor Monday profiles here on Light Reading.

His advice for handling this rapid pace of change (besides acting like a woman) was to build your own "pivot room" or "flywheel" -- start not by asking permission for a big program but by fixing or changing something within your own organization. Create an "air gap" in your budget through innovation and then reinvest it yourself in the timeframe you have.

"We are fighting a three-front war," Donovan said -- over-the-top players in an architectural war, fighting with traditional competitors for the same revenue pools as they exist today and fighting the war within. "Winning two of the three is failure. For the industry to succeed but you not to transform, is just as problematic."

To watch the full interview between John Donovan and Carol Wilson, click on the video below:

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— Sarah Thomas, , Director, Women in Comms