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FedEx Delivers: How the World's Leading Shipping Company Keeps Innovating and Outperforming the Competition

by: Madan Birla
en

0471715794  9780471715795  9780471737179 

 


FedEx Delivers: How the World's Leading Shipping Company Keeps Innovating and Outperforming the Competition
By Madan Birla


 


Product Description:

An inside look at leadership practices that enabled the world's leading shipping company to outthink and outperform its competition

Using firsthand accounts from top leaders at FedEx, FedEx Delivers explains how the company became an international powerhouse and one of the most trusted global brands by using leadership practices that tapped into the creativity and commitment of its employees.

Both a compelling business story and a prescription for business success, FedEx Delivers presents a model to show how these practices created and sustained an innovation culture. Readers will learn how to apply this model to their organizations for developing a culture of innovation that evolves with the times and offers fresh solutions to new challenges.

Innovative thinking and disciplined execution are what made FedEx a market leader, and they can help any business in any industry do the same. Each chapter covers a different aspect of innovation with real-life stories that highlight its effectiveness, and offers valuable ideas that lead managers through the process of implementing those practices.

By breaking innovation down to its three simplest steps-generation, acceptance, and implementation of ideas-and offering proven leadership practices that really work, FedEx Delivers offers unique insight and invaluable advice on building an organization that can adapt to any challenge and meet any goal in today's highly competitive global economy.



Summary: Simplistic and Incomplete!
Rating: 1

Fred Smith and FedEx overcame incredible obstacles in the company's start-up, and cannot be congratulated enough for doing so. In addition, it went on to become the first service company to win the prestigious Baldrige Quality Award in 1990. However, Birla's "FedEx Delivers" does neither readers nor FedEx any service by its incomplete and simplistic coverage.

Birla's book emphasizes a quasi-Baldrige/human-relations perspective. However, my research showed that maintaining an important competitive advantage and low costs are far more important to organizational success. Birla does not address these aspects. (This conclusion is reinforced by several Baldrige Award winners subsequently encountering severe financial downturns after winning the award - even bankruptcy.)

The second major problem with the book is that it does not cover FedEx's series of acquisitions since successful startup. These include Viking Freight, Watkins LTL Express, Roadway Package Express, Flying Tigers, and Kinkos. Again, FedEx has done a great job of building these existing businesses, but Birla tells us none of it - important since so many acquisitions fail. Neither does he address the resulting incursion of substantive competitive disadvantages. (One obvious issue is substantial route and facility overlap between various divisions - this becomes increasingly untenable as fuel prices increase.)

Finally, my experience (FedEx Ground) is that FedEx has NOT tried to substantially change the human-relations environment in these companies - even though they may seriously contradict Birla's summary of the original Baldrige-winning FedEx.

For example, FedEx Ground drivers are not company employees - rather hired by thousands of truck-owners contracting with FedEx, and labeled "independent contractors." If you're an independent contractor, neither the company nor the truck owner pays state workers compensation or federal unemployment and disability taxes. They are also released from matching workers 7.65% Social Security and Medicare taxes; an independent contractor pays the full 15.3% load. This creates great inconsistencies in work environment and pay. Almost all the FedEx Ground drivers and all the owner-operators receive no benefits and are paid far less than their UPS counterparts. (My sense is that FedEx is turning Watkins LTL into a similar situation, while reducing pay, increasing non-productive wait-times, and eliminating benefits at the same time - despite having been ruled in violation of IRS regulations and subjected to assessments estimated to eventually total $1 billion!)

Another issue is that because the over-the-road truck owners have invested considerable time and equity in their trucks and routes, FedEx has been unable to take advantage of much-more fuel-efficient piggy-back rail service - without buying out truck owners at considerable expense, which it has chosen not to do. (UPS uses considerable piggy-back rail service.)

Still another problem arising out of its acquisitions and new start-ups is that FedEx has duplicating routes - FedEx Express (its air arm), FedEx Ground, and FedEx Home Delivery vehicles all overlap in their service areas. (Conversely, UPS' use of a single vehicle for package delivery also allows it to charge by service speed, NOT transport type - often allowing use of low-cost ground transport instead of aircraft to provide higher-revenue next-day service.) Again, FedEx helps overcome these strategic disadvantages by paying employees less, and sometimes hiring unqualified drivers (eg. FedEx Ground OTR) - contrary to Birla's book.

FedEx has greatly benefitted from periodic UPS labor union strikes - a sustained competitive advantage also ignored by Birla. (On the other hand, Birla also ignores FedEx's labor strife among its pilots, especially after acquiring Flying Tigers.)

Bottom Line: "FedEx Delivers" is not worth reading.



Summary: A Very Disappointed Book
Rating: 1

I'm afraid that I've to say that it is a terrible book on both FedEx and Innovation. The book talks a very little about FebEX in terms of its story and its business innovation, although in the name of FedEX Delivers. And it is very shallow and unsystemic, actually no (much) value, in learning of management and of innovation.
It is almost waste of time!
Sorry of my frank comments but I just share my feeling.



Summary: Is this book about Fed Ex?????
Rating: 3

I was very disappointed in this book on Fed Ex. This is a great management theory book but really told me nothing about how Fed Ex is innovating again and again. I am hoping that someone will come out and tell us how Fed Ex as a company is succeeding but it is not this book. For those interested in academic management you will find this interesting otherwise don't waste your time and money.



Summary: Good Book.
Rating: 4

There are lots and lots of useful management ideas in this book. Fed Ex seems to know how a business should run and how to treat its customers and its employees. If you have a business with employees or are contemplating starting one this book would be good to have around. It will help you to grow your business by incorporating the help of others whith their views which may be different from your own.



Summary: Sharp delivery on FedEx's innovative philosophy
Rating: 4

Author Madan Birla spent 22 years with FedEx, watching its culture of innovation develop as it applied new ideas in the marketplace. Birla's fluid writing style and his first-hand observations and insights make this an exceptional corporate story. He knows the people who built FedEx at all levels, from delivery drivers to CEO Frederick Smith. Birla focuses his book on how FedEx became a leading innovator and reshaped the global airfreight business. While many corporations give lip service to innovation and employee development, Birla says FedEx delivers the real thing, and he provides rare specifics as he shows companies in other industries how they can replicate FedEx's successes. We recommend this book for executives at all levels in large and small businesses. If you absolutely, positively must learn to innovate, this book delivers.