The 2006 Leadership Excellence Summit
"Leadership as Engagement: How FedEx Cultivates a Passion for Service Excellence"
Rodger G. Marticke
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
FedEx Ground
The ice broken, Marticke said that he resisted the urge to go to a dictionary and look up the definition of leadership. Instead, he formulated his own - the ability to inspire people to achieve a common goal, value or culture. Common goals are things like increasing revenue. Common values may be trust and respect. A common culture is the foundation necessary to give people the confidence to make good decisions for themselves and the organization.
Marticke discussed some great leaders that have lived his definition of leadership. These included well known leaders like Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale, who was a POW in Vietnam, Mother Theresa and Bill Gates. He emphasized that there are hundreds of lesser known leaders, just as great as their well known counterparts, like Kathy Cloninger, CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA.
There are several reasons why people make good leaders, Marticke said. It's often a combination of luck, charisma, circumstances at birth, divine inspiration and even serotonin levels in the brain. The main lesson is that leadership can be an individual journey; a journey that's combined with internal motivation and opportunity.
Organizations can't just teach leadership to individuals. They must teach it collectively to teams of people that are working together to reach the same goal. Marticke explained that you do this by following five principles of leadership. To begin with, challenge the process. CEOs often do this but people farther down in the organization don't often challenge the process and these are the people that should. To illustrate his point, Marticke explained how Christine Jones, a customer service representative for FedEx, often heard the same complaints from customers trying to navigate their system. To combat this problem, on her own time Jones created a user-friendly manual for customers, explaining the system. Chances are this problem wouldn't have been noticed, let alone solved, if left to a CEO.
The next principle is to inspire a shared vision. A team leader has to create a vision and communicate in an inspirational way to convince people that the vision is not only attainable, but that they play a large role in bringing it to life.
Enable others to act is Marticke's third principle of leadership. You have to empower employees to make decisions. There is no "they;" there is only "we." You cannot hoard the power that you have. Giving it away is more likely to produce extraordinary results.
Model the way. Actions speak louder than words. Don't simply talk about things like how important communication is - really live how you say you do.
The final, and perhaps most important, principle of leadership is to encourage the heart. You must give heartfelt praise to employees. At FedEx managers are encouraged to recognize and reward praise. Things like a handwritten note or a public celebration go a long way.
Marticke then explained how FedEx follows these principles and what its done for the company. His company believes that leadership can be taught, nurtured and advanced at every level. FedEx introduces leadership early in its employee's career. Everything from classroom discussions, to web discussions, to wilderness based activities are used to teach and promote leadership to its employees.
This type of leadership training is very valuable. This is best seen in employees like Mike O'Donal. O'Donal is the "CEO of the customer experience." He's really a FedEx Ground employee. His day starts at 3:30AM and from that moment on, he strives to give his customers the best experience he can. Once a customer's package, containing a gift worth $300, was lost. The customer was very distraught and O'Donal went and bought the same gift with his own money. Employees like O'Donal are invaluable.
Marticke closed by announcing "The Purple Promise." The Purpose Promise is "I will make every FedEx experience outstanding." Everyone that works for FedEx follows this mantra. And it works.
Rodger G. Marticke is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of FedEx Ground. Marticke is responsible for all FedEx Ground U.S. operations, which includes more than 500 facilities across the country that deliver more than 2.6 million packages a day. A 26-year veteran of the transportation and logistics industry, he was president and chief executive officer of Viking Freight, now FedEx Freight West, prior to his current position.
Marticke graduated from Cornell University in 1973 and earned his MBA at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1982. He is a U.S. army veteran and a member of the Council of Logistics Management, the National Small Shipments Traffic Conference, and The Conference Board