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From Worst to First

By Gordon Bethune With Scott Holder

Jane Sunley shares her views on an oldie but a goodie!

I recently chaired a conference where, at no expense spared, the organisers flew over a keynote speaker form the US – David Grizzle Senior Vice President – Customer Experience Continental Airlines. He described how Continental, under the dynamic leadership of CEO Gordon Bethune achieve one of the most dramatic business turnarounds ever, increasing it’s share price by 1700 percent and winning just about every service award going.

I suppose it’s telling that the book is endorsed by one George Bush who includes the immortal line: “Heaven knows we can all learn from a successful leader”.

When Gordon arrived, Continental’s airport employees would actually remove the badges from their uniforms to avoid having to represent it. Morale was desperately low. Within four years though, sales of logo’d merchandise to employees had gone up 400%.

Is Gordon magic? He thinks not – he just followed a few simple rules concerned with problem solving, good information flow, communication, common sense, decency and respect.

In the first part of the book, Gordon describes how he and his team changed the organisation. In the second, he examines the lessons they learned along the way. And there’s a handy summary in the last chapter for anyone who doesn’t really like reading!

Gordon came up with the ‘Go Forward Plan’ which addressed every element of the problems at Continental. His point here is that you can’t just address one or two key issues. The first step of this was pretty simple – to stop doing things that were losing money. They also began to run the business using the ‘row-five test’. Any new idea had to be considered from the perspective of the average customer – the person sitting in row five, to see whether it would improve the person’s customer experience, whether it would add value – value the person would pay extra to receive.

Gordon removed the company’s old focus on cost savings and gimmicks by simply focusing on putting out a first class product; clean, safe, reliable flights. And to keep the financiers at bay he was honest and upfront, sharing the recovery plan with them and keeping them involved.

Which part of a wristwatch don’t you need? The answer is that you need all parts to make a watch work. Gordon showed his employees that the airline was like a watch; that everyone had to do his or her job. He changed individual bonuses to a team and company basis and in this way he forged a team from a group of disparate and feuding people. Suddenly people found that they liked winning together much better than fighting – and they’ve been winning ever since.

Great stuff – read it – there’s plenty more where that came from!

25 July 2007