When Big Guys Get Loud, Small Businesses Should Listen Quietly

Every so often, a corporate giant lobs a memo into the world that makes the rest of us stop, tilt our heads, and think: Huh… so that’s where they’re headed.

AT&T just did it.

Their CEO, John Stankey, sent a 2,500-word response to his company’s employee engagement survey—a survey 99,000 people took the time to fill out. Instead of treating it like a gift, he treated it like a complaint box.

The short version? “We’re changing. You don’t like it? There’s the door.”

It’s not that Stankey was wrong to clarify expectations. Every healthy workplace needs a clear understanding of what employees can and should expect in return for their effort. That unspoken understanding even has a name in organizational psychology: the “psychological contract.” The trouble is, his version read less like a contract and more like a set of terms and conditions you agree to without scrolling to the bottom.

And this is where privately-held, owner-operated companies should lean in—not to copy, but to contrast.

Because here’s the thing: What makes sense (or at least is survivable) for a 100,000-employee telecom is rarely what will make your 100- or 400-person business thrive.

The Problem Isn’t the Survey — It’s the Silence After

If you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve heard the grumbling about employee engagement surveys. Not the questions themselves — the graveyard of nothing that happens afterward.

I know a regional company with about 450 employees who took their survey results seriously… or at least wanted to look like they did. They didn’t like what they saw. So they hired a different survey company and did it again.

That was the entire action plan.

And now they wonder why their people roll their eyes every time the word “engagement” comes up.

The point of a survey isn’t to produce a colorful bar graph for the next leadership meeting. It’s to uncover the gap between what you think is happening and what your people are actually experiencing—then do something meaningful to close that gap.

Why the Big-Company Playbook Doesn’t Fit Smaller Teams

When a CEO of a century-old behemoth talks about “market-based culture” and “realigning professional expectations,” they’re playing a game with rules the rest of us don’t have — or want.

Big corporations can afford to burn some goodwill. They have layers upon layers of departments, recruiters, and brand recognition to keep the machine moving, even if morale takes a hit.

Privately-held and family-run businesses? You can’t afford that luxury. Every person matters more. The culture is smaller, tighter, more personal. A bad departure isn’t a blip on a quarterly report — it’s an empty desk your whole team walks past every day.

When you lead a business where everyone knows everyone’s kids’ names, you don’t get to treat loyalty like a quaint, outdated idea. You don’t have a “talent pipeline” in HR jargon — you have Mary, who’s been with you 14 years and runs the department like her own. You have Daniel, who started in shipping and now heads up product development. You have people whose value isn’t just in “capability, contribution, and commitment” but in the fact that they are the culture.

Look Outside Business for Better Answers

One of the quickest ways to get stuck is to assume the only place you can learn about leadership and engagement is from other companies. If you only study your own industry — or worse, only Fortune 500 giants — you’re basically photocopying someone else’s answers to a test they keep failing.

The non-traditional business school Wizard Academy teaches this approach. Called Business Problem Topology, it’s a technique used for the discovery of innovation models that have been proven, tested and refined in a business category other than your own.

Sports teams. Military units. Theatre companies. Classrooms. Community nonprofits. Each of these has its own playbook for building loyalty, performance, and pride. And here’s the secret: they work better for most small and midsize businesses than the “market-based” models the big players are selling.

Why? Because those worlds understand something corporate America keeps forgetting: people will walk through fire for you if they believe you’d do the same for them.

Fear Works Fast—and Fails Faster

The tone of Stankey’s memo fits a growing trend in C-suites: management by fear. The idea is simple — scare people into staying in line because they have fewer places to go.

Sure, fear can get people to move faster. But you don’t get their best ideas. You don’t get their creativity. You don’t get their desire to go above and beyond. You get the minimum they can do to avoid being noticed—and eventually, you get their resignation letter the minute the job market loosens up.

In smaller companies, fear isn’t just bad strategy — it’s toxic. It doesn’t just erode performance; it eats away at the relationships your whole business depends on.

A Better Way Forward

So, what’s the alternative? It’s not pretending change is easy or that hard conversations aren’t needed. It’s leading with transparency, yes—but pairing it with reciprocity.

If you’re going to ask your team for adaptability, show them yours.

If you’re going to ask for commitment, make commitments you actually keep.

If you’re going to measure engagement, be ready to respond with action—not another survey.

And most importantly, remember that in a privately-held or family-run business, you’re not just protecting a brand—you’re protecting trust. Once you lose that, it doesn’t come back with a new policy memo.

The Takeaway

AT&T can choose the road it wants to take. The rest of us don’t have to follow it.

If you lead a smaller, tighter-knit company, your advantage isn’t in mimicking corporate giants — it’s in staying human. In listening and responding. In valuing loyalty, not as a relic of the past, but as a competitive edge.

And if you’re going to ask for your people’s voice—whether in a survey, a meeting, or a hallway conversation — treat it like the gift it is. Not with defensiveness. Not with dismissal. But with the simple, radical act of saying: I hear you. Let’s fix this together.

Because for businesses like yours, loyalty isn’t dead. It’s alive and well. It just has to be earned.

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