Customer Reviews

The World on Time: The 11 Management Principles That Made FedEx an Overnight Sensation

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A wonderful look-behind-the-scenes. This breezy account of FedEx's idiosyncracies heightened my respect for this market leading firm.

This book takes a look inside the always exciting and fast paced culture of FedEx Express from an outsiders point of view. The book explains the policies that FedEx used to chage the shipping industry and policies that FedEx still uses today. This book is not writtin by a FedEx Express Employee or former employee. Interesting reading for any FedEx Express Employee or any Person(s) who are in the frieght industry.

After graduating from college, almost four decades ago, and joining a Consulting Company in the Wall Street area, I came across Peter F. Drucker's new book, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. The officers and staff used to meet regularly and discuss Drucker's ideas. Management wanted us to be versed in this stuff. I personally latched onto his thinking. Drucker was famous for the whole concept of Management by Objectives (MBO). It was a logical tool for businesses to plan their growth, future, operations and the management of their day-to-day business, departments, etc. This grew into what we know today as Strategic Planning. It made sense! It worked! I carried it with me to other companies on Wall Street as I grew into management positions, and later in the Management area of several computer manufacturers' Software Engineering Research and Design departments.

Chapter 36, "The Spirit of Performance," That was a chapter which emphasized: "To Make Common Men & Women Do Uncommon Things--The Test Is Performance, Not Good Feelings--Focus on Strength--Practices, Not Preachments--The Danger of Safe Mediocrity--What "Performance" Means--What to Do with the Non-performer--"Conscience" Decisions--Focus on Opportunity--"People" Decisions--The Control of an Organization--Integrity, the Touchstone." It basically encompassed the most essential things a manager had to know about managing, motivating and dealing with people. It spoke of things like responsibilities, accountability and fairness. It was extremely uplifting.

It emphasized things like: 1) The spirit of performance requires that there be full scope for individual excellence. 2) "Morale" in an organization does not mean that "people get along together"; the test is performance, not conformance." 3) Spirit of performance in a human organization means that its energy output is larger than the sum of the efforts put in. And 4) Morality, to have any meaning at all, must be a principle of action. It must not be exhortation, sermon, or good intentions. It must be practices. Practices tell the people in an organization things like: "We do this!" and "We do not do that!" They make it clear what an organization is all about.

While reading "The World on Time" and about FedEx, I was drawn back to Peter Drucker's words and thoughts. The book is centered on its subtitle: "The 11 Management Principles That Made FedEx an Overnight Sensation." These are the practices that were the heart of the FedEx's formation by CEO Fred Smith. These are the practices that guided its growth and success. These practices seem to follow the mind of Drucker who taught:

1. The focus of the organization must be on performance. The first requirement of the spirit of organization is high performance standards, for the group as well as for each individual. The organization must inculcate in itself the habit of achievement.
But performance does not mean "success every time." Performance is rather a "batting average." It will, indeed it must, have room for mistakes and even for failures. What performance has no room for is complacency and low standards.
2. The focus of the organization must be on opportunities rather than on problems.
3. The decisions that affect people: their placement and their pay, promotion, demotion and severance, must express the values and beliefs of the organization. They are the true controls of an organization.
4. Finally, in its people decisions, management must demonstrate that it realizes that integrity is one absolute requirement of a manager, the one quality that he has to bring with him and cannot be expected to acquire later on. And management must demonstrate that it requires the same integrity of itself.

I really liked this book because it was an inspiring book on leadership. A leader is someone people want to follow. Obviously, this describes who and what Fred Smith is. It also describes the people he formed to help him build and maintain this company. Peter Drucker says of this, "There is no substitute for leadership. But management cannot create leaders. It can only create the conditions under which potential leadership qualities become effective." No doubt, this is what Smith did and continues to do. Everything in the company revolves like concentric circles around the "11 Management Principles." These are the practices that bind its people together. Drucker says, "They require no genius--only application. They are things to do rather than to talk about." And he insists, "The right practices should go a long way toward bringing out, recognizing, and using whatever potential for leadership there is in the management group. They should also lay the foundation for the right kind of leadership. For leadership is not magnetic personality--that can just as well be demagoguery. It is not "making friends and influencing people" that is flattery. Leadership is the lifting of a man's vision to higher sights, the raising of a man's performance to a higher standard, the building of a man's personality beyond its normal limitations. Nothing better prepares the ground for such leadership than a spirit of management that confirms in the day-to-day practices of the organization strict principles of conduct and responsibility, high standards of performance, and respect for the individual and his work."

A great book! An inspiring book! A book on leadership, but more so, a book on people and what they can do. They are a company's greatest resource. As the author James Wetherbe writes, "Fred Smith knew from the beginning that if he put people first, quality, service and profits would follow." This book describes what that means.

I began reading this as research for my Strategic Planning class and found it to be an enjoyable, easy to read synopsis of how FedEx successfully incorporated its values internally and externally. A must for HR professionals and others interested in the breadth of management fundamentals at FedEx.