The Kindle title is not currently available for purchase

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Changing How the World Does Business: Fedex's Incredible Journey to Success - The Inside Story by [Roger Frock]

Follow the Author

Roger Frock

Changing How the World Does Business: Fedex's Incredible Journey to Success - The Inside Story Kindle Edition

by Roger Frock (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 136 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$29.95

$22.52

$11.99

Paperback, Large Print

"Please retry"

$37.99

$37.97

Kindle
from $28.45 Read with Our Free App
Hardcover
$29.95

15 Used from $11.99 5 New from $22.52
Paperback
$37.99

2 Used from $37.97 8 New from $37.99

From humble beginnings, FedEx has literally revolutionized the way business is conducted. Not too long ago, overnight shipping was barely an option for even the largest companies. Today, thanks to FedEx, it's available to every living room start-up. With annual revenues of $30 billion, more than 250,000 employees, 600 aircraft, and 70,000 surface vehicles, FedEx handles nearly six million shipments a day in two hundred countries. FedEx has become a household name, and has been named one of the top ten of America's Most Admired Companies by Fortune magazine.
But it wasn't always easy. From his inside vantage point as the company's first general manager and chief operating officer, Roger Frock reveals the remarkable details of how Fred Smith and his team endured their tumultuous early years--fraught with a seemingly unending series of legal, financial, and operational crises that continually threatened the company's ability to stay in business--and, in the end, created an entirely new industry.
Frock chronicles the dramatic last-minute saves and turnarounds the company engineered from its inception to the present. He entertains with stories of the trials and tribulations of the company's early struggles and victories--from Pilots using personal credit cards to fuel planes, to the courier who hocked his watch to put gas in his delivery van, and, one of the most memorable episodes, the time that founder Fred Smith literally gambled the company's last remaining funds to keep the planes flying.
Frock's story introduces all the players--FedEx's resourceful and resilient leaders and employees--and shows how these remarkable individuals gave Fred Smith's original concept wings and, through flexibility, creativity, and commitment, made a fledgling startup into one of the great success stories in modern business. Changing How the World Does Business is an inspirational tale for leaders and entrepreneurs everywhere.

Print length

259 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Publication date

October 19, 2006
File size

601 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Lowest Pricein this set of products
Vance H. Trimble
21
Kindle Edition
$4.99
Highest ratedin this set of products
Greg Niemann
217
Kindle Edition
$15.00
This item:
Roger Frock
136
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $28.45
Madan Birla
23
Kindle Edition
$24.00

Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Case History of Courage and Tenacity

1

FedEx has changed the way we do business, allowing established firms to expand their services throughout the world and helping smaller companies to look and act like corporate giants, making overnight connections with global markets. Its founders helped to restructure the transportation industry and created a unique corporate culture that has placed FedEx among the most successful new ventures of the past 50 years.

Fortune magazine has described FedEx as one of the top ten business triumphs of the 1970s and lists the firm as one of the Top 10 Most Admired Companies in America and the world; one of 100 Best Companies to Work For in America, among which it has been listed continuously since 1998; and one of the 50 Best Companies for Minorities.

The company has also received similar accolades and recognition from the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Computerworld, Wired, Logistics Management and Distribution, Information Week, Business Ethics, Forbes, Air Cargo World, and Financial Times. Internationally, FedEx has been recognized as one of the best employers in Canada, Switzerland, Brazil, Latin America, Mexico, Chile, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, the Philippines, India, and Argentina.

In its original incarnation as Federal Express, the firm developed a completely new concept of customer service, pioneered technical advances for the entire transportation industry, and significantly altered our work environment. People can now live and work outside major metropolitan cities by utilizing FedEx’s exceptional reach and reliability to connect with other areas of the business world. We can now move radiopharmaceuticals with short shelf lives and critical blood samples overnight and ship products directly from manufacturer to consumer, greatly simplifying the distribution chain.

2

While FedEx is now a household word, the company that invented overnight delivery was far from an overnight success. The inside story is one of great interest to anyone starting a new business, for it highlights the extraordinary combination of grit and determination, teamwork and creative thinking, luck and perseverance needed to keep a company afloat in its early stages.

I had the good fortune to be a member of the initial team assembled by Fred Smith, the founder of Federal Express. We experienced difficulties and near disasters, but we also had our share of good fortune and occasional help from some surprising sources. On several occasions, we came within an inch of failure, because of dwindling financial resources, regulatory roadblocks, or unforeseen events like the Arab oil embargo. Once, Fred’s luck at the gaming tables of Las Vegas helped to save the company from financial disaster. Another time, we had to ask our employees to hold their paychecks while we waited for the next wave of financing.

Fred’s tenacious drive and brilliant leadership got us through crisis after crisis. However, no individual can create and build a successful enterprise without the help of others. This book contains the personal insights of the people who took part in the FedEx startup—many appear for the first time in print. This is the insider’s view, full of cliffhangers and last-minute saves that show the trials faced by anyone launching a new business.

The FedEx story shows the careful planning required for a startup and the flexibility and quick thinking needed to deal with unanticipated challenges. Knowledgeable professionals evaluated the Federal Express concept, researched the potential market for the service, investigated the competition, and prepared a startup plan. However, the concept went through several critical adjustments on its roller-coaster ride to success. In this book, I set out to explore the process of innovation and the character traits needed to move a promising vision into the real world.

3

FedEx went through several periods of risk and turmoil, yet breakthroughs often followed our periods of deep apprehension and doubt. Our final lesson is a positive one: If the concept is right, courage and tenacity can tilt the odds in one’s favor.

The FedEx story is also an antidote to the negative press big business has received in the past few years. We read every day about the greed, the lies, and the fraudulent practices in both the private and public sector. The founders of FedEx were not perfect, but their basic operating principles of integrity, truth, equality, and personal responsibility provide a model for others to emulate. In a rapidly changing business climate, we valued open communications and cooperation at every level of the organization. FedEx created a win-win climate for all of its constituents, providing security for its employees, reliable service for its customers, and a fair return to its shareholders.

After the Enron and WorldCom scandals, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued its requirement that chief executive officers attest to the correctness of their financial reports. FedEx was one of the first major corporations to do so, without requesting extra time for review, because its CEO had created an ethical climate and remained closely involved with the company’s day-today operations.

It is my fondest hope that this book will serve as a principled guide for new startups as well as established companies, and perhaps even convince a few of the ethically challenged to reexamine their options. It is possible for an organization to operate with ethical principles and still be successful.

The front-row seat to FedEx’s incredible journey to success that this book offers will appeal to a wide and diverse audience. In addition to those launching new enterprises, business analysts will profit from this firsthand account of the company’s growth from startup to maturity. Executives desiring to improve their leadership skills can learn from the strategy and tactics employed by Fred Smith and his leadership team. Finally, managers and supervisors can learn how to motivate employees and encourage innovative thinking.

For convenience, the book is organized chronologically.

PART I examines the development of the concept, with the initial goal of transporting small time-sensitive packages overnight, and the initial feasibility studies.
PART II describes the operating plans, initial management staff, regulatory roadblocks, and inauguration of the service.
PART III focuses on the company’s continuing financial struggles and expansion of the service network.
PART IV recounts the growth of the organization up to the first public offering.
PART V explores the transformation from a startup company to a mature organization and shows the growing pains that FedEx endured.
PART VI looks at the corporate culture that is largely responsible for the company’s success and how FedEx has changed the way others do business.
4

FedEx today has annual revenues of $30 billion, more than 250,000 employees, and a fleet of over six hundred aircraft; operates more than 70,000 surface vehicles; and provides service to over two hundred countries, representing most of the industrial world. On a typical day, the company handles nearly six million important time-critical packages and larger freight shipments. It is, in fact, one of the largest transportation companies in the world, ranking in the top five in revenue among the world’s airlines.

The rise of this company rests on two key innovations. The first is the hub-and-spokes network—the system used to move packages and documents from origin to destination. The hub, located in Memphis, Tennessee, is the facility for sorting packages and documents. The spokes of the network are the routes to and from the originating cities. Packages picked up from shippers in the afternoon are flown to the hub before midnight, sorted to outbound flights within two hours, and delivered to their destination the following morning. No one had ever created such a simple and elegant process to move time-sensitive packages from place to place.

5

However, our employees and unique supporting culture were equally important contributors to the success of the company. At several places, I refer to the “purple blood” attitude of the FedEx employees, borrowing a color from our logo to describe the impassioned workers who were the lifeblood of our company. I have included stories about the dedication and contributions of these remarkable individuals who stood by us from the beginning, when outsiders ridiculed our efforts and called our vision crazy. As Tom Morris observes in If Aristotle Ran General Motors, “it is the people within any enterprise and their interactions that ultimately produce excellence or mediocrity.”

Building Federal Express from concept to triumph was a wonderfully rewarding business adventure. Fred Smith’s beginning concept and dynamic leadership inspired us all, but it took an incomparable workforce to turn his vision into reality. I am fortunate to have been a part of FedEx’s incredible journey and honored to be the one putting our tale into print. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Review

"This book is the manual for entrepreneurs with big dreams. Frock has documented, through personal experience and painstaking research, one of America's most successful start-ups. He provides the critical ingredients for bringing a major dream to life—no matter what the business or endeavor."
— Michael Basch, CEO, Nature's Lighting, author of Customer Culture: How FedEx and Other Great Companies Keep the Customer First Every Day

“Early on, Frock recognized the value of international service and calculated that the global market would eventually need and support the FedEx business model. We worked closely with him to establish their first cross border network between the US and Canada. His vision helped us to become the most successful player in the Canadian market.”
— Simon Caviezel, President and CEO, Cansica, Inc., Federal Express Canadian Licensee

“[This book] explains the vital importance that enthusiasm and passion play in people who tackle seemingly overwhelming obstacles and find a way to make it work. In many ways, the Porsche turnaround that I [led] in the 1980s was an application of the management concepts detailed in Changing the Way the World Does Business. Properly applied, these concepts can people to rise to a performance level that achieves business miracles in an increasingly competitive world.”
— Peter W. Schutz, former head of Porsche

“The success-laden secrets of a corporate giant’s heart and soul are revealed as Frock shares his personal experiences and entrepreneurial views with a keenness that is at once exciting and enlightening… Changing How the World Does Business reflects [Frock’s] ethical nature from which success of gigantic proportions was realized as the global giant known to us all as FedEx.”
— Linda G. Sapia, former Manager, FedEx

“Tomorrow’s leaders will be encouraged by this exciting succession of experiences that ‘Changed the Way the World Does Business.’”
—The Honorable Roger W. Kallock, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Logistics and Material Readiness, and Chairman, Chagrin Consulting Associates
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005LY2FLW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 1st edition (October 19, 2006)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 19, 2006
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 601 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 259 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,217,791 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #968 in International Business & Money
- #1,033 in Workplace Behavior
- #3,511 in International Business & Investing

Customer Reviews:
4.3 136 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Roger Frock

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

136 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Robert

Got the job finished!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 23, 2023

Verified Purchase

Was okay, but good for him.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 4, 2008

Verified Purchase

Having worked in the air frieght industry as an operations manager for some time I always had a fascination with Fed-Ex and its systems. I now own my own business (no longer in transport) but the principles in this book still apply to it and any other business.

The Author is a no-nonsense straight talker and the chapters are short which makes the book easy to read when you only have moments to steal here and there. He drills down into specifics and anyone who runs their own business will certainly be able to appreciate the hard luck, the dumb moves, the good luck and the creative thought that went inot getting this company off the ground and running. It's nice to know that even a great company like Fed-Ex made its own fair share of stupid errors and was able to become a great success.

Any busines owner will feel much better about their lot in life after reading this.

I loved it.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bibliophile

Good book, terrible ebook

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 16, 2021

Verified Purchase

The book is very interesting, but the Kindle version is pretty awful. The whole text is italicized, which makes it so hard to read. There are page numbers in the place where they would be for print, which means on the Kindle that they are randomly scattered throughout the text. There are typos galore. I had to use Calibre to fix everything or it would have driven me nuts.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 9, 2021

Verified Purchase

Great American success story. Amazing real story of the beginning of FedEx.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 26, 2017

Verified Purchase

Wow the story of FedEx is literally the little engine that could. After reading the history of FedEx I can now see and appreciate how they think and operate. I'd understand "the bleed purple" even more if I was working for them. Either way Great Read and she reads fast too!!!

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

C.Salazar

Fascinating story of the birth of FedEx

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

A great read about leadership, perseverance and decision making. It’s a easy to read, story like format that will keep you turning pages from the beginning to end. Highly recommend.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 6, 2012

Verified Purchase

I bought this book for a paper I had to write on FedEx. It was pretty good. It was an easy read that kept me interested. Word of caution to potential readers. If you are getting this for school or informational purpose it only covers the earlier years.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 2, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book makes me want to be an entrepreneur as it causes me to be terrified of the idea. What an amazing company with an unbelievable story.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Andras Bognar

A very entertaining read. The only thing I missed ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 12, 2016

Verified Purchase

A very entertaining read. The only thing I missed from it were some financial reports and operational statistics that could have underpinned the story.

Follow the Author

Changing How the World Does Business: Fedex's Incredible Journey to Success - The Inside Story Kindle Edition

What do customers buy after viewing this item?

Editorial Reviews