When I go to T-Mobile retail stores, I jokingly tell the employees that everybody between me and them is the enemy. In effect, what I mean is that in my paramilitary hierarchy, if I can hear them and they can hear me, everything will be fine. All we need to do is make sure the entire company understands that it's their job to pass information between us. And so far so good.

I think this job at T-Mobile has more than anything else helped me really see and understand how to set a strategy, communicate like crazy, and then passionately lead from the front of it.

Strangely, from a life-change standpoint, I sold the company I was running and got divorced in the same month. And so there I was, at home, and I'm not the CEO. I took a few months thinking about what I wanted to do. When the first call came in about running a company owned by Deutsche Telekom, I thought it was laughable and really not something I'd do. I took the meeting mainly because the headhunter I knew. At first I thought I was just helping her fill out the roster, but then I dug into it.

I went, and my first interview was with René Obermann, who was the CEO of Deutsche Telekom at the time - wonderful guy. And right after hello, I told him that it was my opinion that he could only fail one way in the US. I said, "Do exactly what you're doing - nothing."

I've given my email address to all 3,000 T-Mobile stores. Serious customer escalations come directly to me. Customers get a kick out of me responding to them, and the employees do, too.

I say that the genius of the marketing strategy that we've had in every company that I've ever been in, is that if you ask your customers what they want and you give it to them, you shouldn't be shocked if they love it.

I'm very careful, especially with the company, to not spend too much time playing the success reel because I really do believe that everything that's been accomplished can be parlayed in an equal amount going forward.