WEBVTT

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I started my career

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at Verizon as a customer service rep,

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and that lives within my DNA and always will

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because the privilege to serve customers

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is what we do and why we do it.

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And yet, at the end of the day,

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the single most important component for us at Verizon

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as we faced the COVID crisis was protecting our employees

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so that they could serve.

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I think one of the challenges early on in the crisis onset

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was for us as leaders

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to realize that we weren't really going to be in control.

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And so, we had to get really good at these are the facts,

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this is what we have to react to,

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and so you wind up as a leadership team

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quickly coalescing around guiding principles

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and what are the ultimate objectives

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that you're aiming at?

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So that every day when you have to triage

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against the new facts that are presenting themselves to you,

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you have some way to filter those,

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make decisions from a guided set of values,

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and that served us really well

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for our communication with our employees.

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We're focused right now with every customer

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that we serve on doing the right thing,

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so that when the business comes back,

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and it will come back,

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that we will be known as the partner

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that customers can trust.

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And you think about our brand,

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our brand is anchored on two things:

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trust and innovation.

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And building that trust

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and innovating on behalf of our customers

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during this COVID period has been particularly important.

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For us, the values were very simple.

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We said, we're gonna be guided by our values,

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which are our Verizon credo,

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and we gonna focus on two things:

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keeping the world connected

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and keeping our employees safe.

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And so, we've been able to just keep

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those two things in front of us

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every time as we've worked our way

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through how to respond to the facts

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and the situations that the crisis has presented us with.

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I'm talking about collaboration quite a bit

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because it's one of our values,

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relationships matter,

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you know, partnerships matter, and the people matter.

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Especially at the very beginning of COVID-19,

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every minute counted,

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and it was not lost on me

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the valued relationships within our community.

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One of the things that we did,

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I heard that we needed,

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all of us heard, we needed more PPE and masks.

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And so I remember, as I was visiting

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all of our regional hospitals,

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I was also texting leaders of businesses

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in our community saying, "Can you make masks for us?

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Can you make face shields for us?

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We need hand sanitizer.

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Can you make hand sanitizer?"

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and everyone came back and said, "Yes.

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How much do you need?"

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My takeaway is that the relationships that we've formed

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and all the day-to-day things that we have,

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everyone came together to help

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our community, to help us serve those that were vulnerable,

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and I am forever grateful for them.