THESE VITAL SPEECHES

36
CICERO SPEECHWRITING AWARDS
ness partner, it’s more important to know
what a company stands for than whether
it’s innovative or dominates its market.
68 percent said that it’s even worth
making short-term financial sacrifices to
cultivate long-term relationships.
80 percent agreed that a successful
company’s biggest idea is often the one
on which it was built.
Culture gets everyone rowing in the
same direction, toward the same goals.
It builds esprit de corps around a set of
shared values. It makes the whole stronger
than the sum of its parts.
That’s all very good. However, let me
give you an example of the risks.
For years and years our drivers
mapped their daily routes with push pins
and clipboards. They loved their clipboards.
They were part of our history
and culture.
About 10 years ago, one of our engineers—his
name is Jack Levis—started
work on a project to make those clipboards
obsolete.
Jack’s goal was to use operational
technology to identify the most efficient
routes a driver could take while making
their daily stops. Some considered his
quest blasphemy. After all, for nearly a
century we had done pretty well with
our push pins and clipboards.
The project eventually consumed
eight years of Jack’s life. The first seven
of those yielded little tangible progress.
People were telling him that he was
putting an otherwise fabulous career
in jeopardy.
The easy thing would have been for
us to stay the course with our push pins
and clipboard approach and for Jack to
go back to his day job.
But he didn’t. And, finally, he and
his team found the algorithm—and the
solution—they were looking for.
The system they came up with—
which we call ORION—considers all of
the potential routes a driver might take
to make an average of 120 stops per day.
That’s the number on the screen. I’ll
save you the eye strain. That’s 199 digits.
ORION has saved our company 10
million gallons of fuel … $300 million
dollars … and reduced 100,000 tons
of carbon emissions. That’s like taking
21,000 passenger cars off the road.
It’s a good thing a stubborn engineer
didn’t allow culture and history to block
a more efficient path to the future.
Today, our company delivers more
than 4.6 billion packages a year—about
18 million a day—in more than 220
countries and territories. It’s an achievement
that’s only possible because our
employees rally each day behind the
principles Jim Casey and the founders
promoted—respect, honesty, hard work,
humility and a commitment to the communities
we serve.
But it’s like fingernails on a blackboard
when I hear an employee say,
“That’s not how we’ve always done it.”
Or ask, “What would Jim do?”
Jim Casey built a company on timeless
values, and there’s no doubt his
presence is still felt at UPS. But I want
to say, “Folks, Jim isn’t here. We’re on
our own.”
But I don’t. Instead, I remind them
that Jim was smart enough not to become
too sentimental nor too attached
to the old ways of doing things. He
promoted the concept of “constructive
dissatisfaction,” knowing that the only
way to survive in business is by never
getting too comfortable.
Others wish they had heeded the
same lesson. Plenty of companies were
so intent on staying on the path of least
resistance that they didn’t see the threat
coming up behind them.
Film didn’t see digital—and the
company that saw it first discounted its
disruptive power. Newspaper classifieds
didn’t see Craigslist. Video stores didn’t
see Netflix. Travel agents didn’t see Expedia.
And the process continues.
Jack Welch, GE’s longtime CEO,
could have warned them all. “If the rate
of change on the outside exceeds the
rate of change on the inside,” Welch
said, “the end is near.”
Certainly the technology-led and
consumer-empowered ambush is far
from over. Look what streaming is doing
to networks and cable. Look what Uber
is doing to cabs and limos. Look what
Airbnb is doing to hotels.
Let’s throw in shopping malls, maybe
financial advisors, libraries and the
family farm. When technology offers a
better way, the better way wins.
Too many businesses resemble Army
ants. Army ants are blind—to survive
they follow each other over a pheromone
trail. Sometimes an ant will lose the trail’s
scent and wander away from the group.
The ants behind follow. Eventually they
end up going in circles, marching without
stopping, even to their own death.
But on occasion, an ant manages
to break away from the death march,
sometimes by accident. When it steps off
course, the renegade creates a new path
for the ants to follow. Its radical departure
ends up saving the entire group.
Winners become losers because it’s
easier to keep doing the things that
made them winners. Easier than challenging
whether what built success will
be enough to sustain it. Fortunately, UPS
never followed a pheromone trail.
Clearly, Jim Casey saw the need for
non-linear shifts in our business. On
multiple occasions he had the vision
and the fortitude to veer away from the
established model.
The first time was when he saw that
the telephone was going to eventually
put his and other messenger companies
out of business. He did it again when
automobiles with plenty of room for
packages and groceries threatened the
package delivery service.
In more recent times, starting about
20 years ago, data and operational technology
fueled a new era of expansion.
We’ve since built the largest and most
sophisticated technology infrastructure
in the transportation industry.
Our mainframes operate around the
clock, processing 27 million instructions
every second and tracking 18 million
packages every day. They collect and distribute
information from drivers’ handheld
computers. Then they use that
information to coordinate the operations
of our global fleet of vehicles, as well as
an entire airline.
We’re using all that information to
bring customers deeper into our network
and help solve their problems in new
and innovative ways.
So, the question becomes: “How do
you manage for growth while respecting
your past?” My answer, is that the job
falls to leaders. And it’s a job in three
critical parts.
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