His true calling: longtime AT&T HR executive Hal Burlingame is hailed as a pioneer in linking business and human capital strategies - Profile - includes related biographical article

HR Magazine, August, 2002 by Steve Bates

When Harold W. Burlingame graduated from Muskingum College in Concord Ohio, in 1962, and started a job as a commercial representative for Ohio Bell, his local phone company, he had little inclination of his true calling. Forty years later, Burlingame can look back on a career that took him to the top HR position at AT&T, one of the nation's largest corporations, where he helped shepherd nervous executives, employees and stockholders through a series of giant corporate breakups and spinoffs. It was the sort of challenging stuff that many HR people see only in their dreams--or nightmares.

And Burlingame's nor done yet. He currently finds himself at yet another AT&T spinoff, AT&T Wireless, which became independent in July 2001.

Burlingame, 62, is a senior executive advisor with the new company. In addition to heading the HR operation, he recruited members of the board of directors and staffed senior positions. Not bad for a guy who had already been given a retirement party.

"It has been a wonderful trip," he says.

Burlingame has been hailed as a model HR executive for his longtime emphasis on HR involvement in the business end of an organization. Yet those who know him say they are impressed not lust by his resume but by the rock-solid, steady manner in which he has helped organizations and employees stay focused and productive in times of extreme stress.

It's not just that he's a people person, say Burlingame's colleagues. It's that he always seems to know how, and when, to apply the right amount of prodding and praise to help people succeed, without demanding or expecting personal credit.

"He's got a very compassionate streak, but he also has a tough mind," says John Petrillo, executive vice president of corporate strategy and business development at AT&T. "He's well respected by the AT&T board" as well as by others in the HR and communications worlds, adds Petrillo, who once reported to Burlingame and has "enjoyed a running dialog with the man" for many years.

"If Hal saw something that required a change in people's thinking, he always seemed to know when to do it," says Michael Maccoby, an executive consultant based in Washington, D.C., who has known Burlingame for 25 years.

"He was before his time," says Maccoby. A generation ago, Maccoby notes, "many HR people were more like policemen" than managers of human capital, but Burlingame "was always very strategic. He had a deep understanding of how to connect HR to business strategy, as much as any of the HR people I know. His model of thinking is an important one for the HR world."

Adds David Ulrich, a professor of business administration at the University of Michigan, "He's been a thought leader in a dramatic way. He's had an impact on companies across the country."

Up Through the Ranks

Like many HR executives at large corporations, Burlingame was not always an HR professional. He worked his way through Ohio Bell in the 1960s and 1970s, holding operating and public relations positions before being transferred to AT&T's headquarters to manage its corporate policy seminar in 1977. He also served as corporate advertising manager before going back to Ohio Bell in 1979 as assistant vice president for public relations.

Burlingame returned to AT&T in 1981, and two years later he was named vice president of public relations at AT&T Information Systems. Next stop: senior vice president of PR for AT&T. In 1987 he came to the defining position of his career: executive vice president for HR at AT&T, a position he held for 12 years of volatile change in the corporation and the communications world.

It was time to break up the Bell System, and Burlingame was a key player, working to smooth out many of the ripples caused by the massive restructuring.

That was "the mega breakup and spinoff of all time," says Burlingame. "I was part of the team that helped with the launch of Lucent. Now you see that AT&T is breaking up again" with the divestiture of AT&T Wireless.

"I've been through many restructurings and they were always different depending on the environment," says Burlingame. But a common denominator was that "the people need to have a real sense of where the business is going, the purpose of the business, where they fit into it, so they can understand how they make a difference."

"If you fail to communicate clearly and don't put energy into those elements of the transition, it makes a very real difference as to how successful that new business will be," Burlingame adds.

Making people comfortable with a new or modified job in a new business entity doesn't just call for HR professionals to hold the hands of anxious workers, says Burlingame. "Usually, the comfort level came when employees saw that the organization was working for customers."

People started dealing productively with change "when the organization was uncoupled from the mother ship and began to get a sense that it had more flexibility to do things than it had in the past, and people felt good about that new flexibility and freedom, but at the same time it was balanced with the enormous sense of additional accountability" in the new company.