'Pulling a gardner' in the Age of Wireless

The first word that comes to my mind when thinking about Windstream CEO Jeff Gardner is genteel. Of course, since Noah Webster's heirs and the Merriam brothers combined to ascribe several definitions to a single word, one has to be careful and hopeful that in choosing a word that the intended description is conveyed. I once called my mother-in-law a "bodacious bohunk" thinking I was complimenting her and have been paying for it for more than 30 years.

If you've ever met Gardner in person or seen and heard him speak at a conference or on an earnings call, you know he is as polite and respectful a person as you'll ever meet. Genteel is also kind of a Southern word, taken from a time and place where genuine gentlemen could be found as opposed to the vulgar men found in cities to the north. Not to take anything away from Little Rock, Ark., but Gardner seems a cut above the Midwest without ever showing that he knows it. It is not easy to convey extreme confidence without also conveying a noticeable dose of vanity (compare Gardner with the man he is ousting as CEO of PAETEC, for example) yet he pulls it off. But either a Webster or one of the Merriams added a twist to the word genteel that conveys a sense of falsehood through which a person only appears to be so refined and free of vulgarity.

I don't think this necessarily applies to Gardner, but you have to wonder, because he has been kicking some serious butt in the M&A world. If this were a movie, we would get to see the part where he enters the board room, rips off his jacket and starts pounding his fist on the table. We might see him tearing his executive management team a new one or pouring ex-NuVox CEO Jim Akerhielm a 30-year-old scotch before cutting him off at the knees. But this is not a movie so we have to fill in our own blanks. I prefer to think that among all the weird and unthinkable changes going on in this country that perhaps there is one more: Nice guys finish first.

There was a time only a few years ago when analysts were wondering if Windstream had the guts to make a big move, as they were all speculating it should. But they were all thinking wireless. How, in the coming age of 4G could any communications company survive without a strong, nationwide independent wireless division?

Well, Windstream had the guts all right. It had the guts to be different. It had the courage of its convictions. Collectively, it pulled a gardner. To pull a gardner is to trust your well-informed instincts. In telecom, pulling a gardner means to proceed with quiet confidence while doing what he or she trusts is the right thing to do then refrain from crowing about it or writing a book about it before the twists and turns of a competitive, evolving industry have shown it to be a wise move or not.

Windstream didn't buy the next biggest Independent telco or a wireless operator. It bought NuVox and Iowa Telecom and PAETEC and some smaller companies. It bought diversity and innovation. It bought in some ways an odd collection of properties. But it also bought respect, something a gentleman would never think of doing. Jeff Gardner, you rascal you.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@vpico.com or click on the comment button below.