DHL

Po Chung is Co-founder of DHL International and the Chairman of The Hong Kong Institute of Service Leadership & Management. Mr. Chung was born in Macao. He graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Stanley in 1963. He obtained a degree in fisheries management from California State University at Humboldt in 1968 and 13 years later he attended the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University in 1981. He obtained a Master of Fine Art from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in 2005. Roger Bowie is former Global Services Director, DHL Express.

• Chapter 1: Born Global | 1 The Little Company Which was Seen as Illegal in Every Country | 1 Chapter 2: The 70s | 5 Chapter 3: The Start-up Years | 9 Chapter 4: The Start-up Years: Business Innovation | 13 Door to Door, Desk to Desk | 13 Just Like Taking It There Yourself | 14 Still Expensive, However, for a Start-Up ... | 15 ... and Increasingly Complex | 16 So, Try and Keep It Simple | 17 So Simple, Almost Too Good to Be True | 18 Proof was Needed, and So Proof was Provided | 19 With the Airlines as Friends (Albeit Fair-Weather) | 20 Chapter 5: Innovation and Its Broader Impact on Business Dynamics | 23 The Infectious Nature of Speed | 23 Size Doesn’t Matter, Content Does | 24 Keeping It Dense | 25 But Keeping It Simple | 25 And Everyone Sells | 25 Service Is Not Servitude | 26 Creating a Time-Based Value Proposition | 27 Challenging Traditional Work Habits | 27 And in the Spirit of Partnership | 28 Chapter 6: Cultural Dynamics: What was Going on Here? | 29 Against All Odds | 29 Ahead of its Time | 29 It was also the People | 29 An Emerging Company Culture | 33 The Nature of the Business Helped | 33 But it Wasn’t Just the Business | 34 Chapter 7: Barely Legal—Early Regulatory Battles | 35 First, What Kind Of Business Is This? | 36 Ah, You Mean You Carry Mail? | 37 And What About This “Smuggling” Theory? | 41 Airline Schizophrenia | 43 Okay, Understand The Challenges With Post Offices, Customs And Airlines, But Surely You Were Doing Everything Else By The Book? | 45 Chapter 8: 1970s Vignettes and Bloopers | 47 Strange Bedfellows | 47 Caught Napping | 47 Plenty of Space, and Not So Much | 48 Strange Passengers | 48 Delivery Heroics | 48 It’s Tough Being Ahead of Your Time | 49 Chapter 9: Transition | 53 Taken Off, but Not Yet Landed | 53 A Biological Phenomenon | 54 With Intuitive, Instinctive Leadership | 56 Which Attracted and Inspired | 57 Cowboys with Wing | 58 And an Ounce of Luck | 58 Underpinned by Trust | 59 A Common Language | 59 And the Rule of Common Law | 60 But it was Precarious | 60 Chapter 10: The 80s | 63 Economic and Political Turbulence… | 63 Presaging Fundamental Geopolitical Change | 63 Policed by America | 64 With Asia Awakening | 64 Business Models Must Change | 65 A New Age of Consumerism | 65 And Speed to Market | 66 The End of History? | 67 Perhaps a Hybrid Would be the Answer | 68 Chapter 11: The Walden Years—Structure and process | 69 Nascently Global | 69 But Not Sustainable | 71 Structure to Support a Growth Strategy | 72 With A New Confidence | 73 Coming Out | 74 And Cash is the King | 75 Chapter 12: Business Innovation | 77 Getting it There in No Time at All | 77 Tentative Steps to Expand the Offering | 78 If you can get to the internationally remote places, why not just down the road? | 80 Europe Overnight | 80 And What About a Second Brand? | 82 Early Computerization | 82 What Aided and Abetted Also Threatened | 83 But Also Provided Opportunity | 84 Building a Brand | 85 Ongoing Geographical Expansion | 86 Less than Door-to-door | 87 Early Steps in Logistics | 88 Answer the Phone, Dammit! | 88 Chapter 13: Business Context—What Was Going on Here? | 91 A New Era of Globalization Begins | 91 What was DHL Carrying? | 93 This was an Outbound Phenomena | 93 The Information Age Beckoned, but Expensively | 95 Airports Grew Up | 95 Strategic Disconnect | 97 Chapter 14: Business Context—Competition Explodes | 99 Competition? (What, Really?) | 99 Finally, Strength Through Numbers | 99 But in Context | 100 Those Pesky Airlines Again | 101 The “Empires” Try to Strike Back | 102 But FedEx Strikes First | 102 And Starts to Force the Pace | 103 The Enemy of My Enemy can be my Friend | 103 Chapter 15: Regulatory Battles | 105 Postal Battles Heat Up | 105 Progress with Customs | 110 Tax, Cashflows and Blocked Funds | 112 The Dutch Sandwich | 113 Chapter 16: Cultural Dynamics | 117 Heroism | 117 It Wasn’t Just the Cowboys | 117 Growing Up | 118 Some Contextual Frameworks | 122 And Perhaps a Modern Example of Another, More Natural Law, is in Play Here | 124 Change Agents | 124 Pirates of the Caribbean (Never Waste a Good Crisis) | 126 Expat Versus Local | 127 Persistence at Heathrow, with Help from the US | 128 Chapter 17: Anecdotes, Accidents, and Altruism | 131 Excellence Discovered | 131 Going the Extra Mile | 131 Going Many Extra Miles | 132 Making Calls was a Shoe-In | 132 The Green Bags must go Through | 132 Shenanigans in Bahrain | 133 The Future Sometimes Takes Longer | 133 DHL Never Sleeps | 133 Never Fear, DHL is Here | 133 Be Bold, Be Fearless, Be an Upstart | 134 The Worm Turns | 135 Unblocking the Funds | 135 Thank Goodness for Unintended Consequences | 136 Unintended Consequences Version Two | 136 Bill Walden’s Office | 137 Crazy Texans | 138 Negotiations in China | 138 Pat Lupo’s Story: The Most Employee-Motivational Thing We Did | 138 Chapter 18: Adolescence to Adulthood | 141 Mission Almost Accomplished | 141 A New Man in Charge | 141 Bring in the Suits | 143 A Deal Made in Heaven, But | 144 Finally, A Head Office | 145 Organizational Innovation | 146 An Ongoing Emphasis on Data Networks | 146 And a New Sense of Mission | 148 WORLDWIDE MISSION STATEMENT | 149 FedEx Loses a Battle | 150 With the Best Good Will in the World, it Didn’t Work Out | 151 The Ultimate Compliment | 151 Chapter 19: Powers | 153 Chapter 20: From Start-up to Upstart to the Most International Company in the World | 169 Chapter 21: Epilogue: The 2008–16 Reincarnation | 173 Market Growth | 173 A Much and Long Desired Prize Becomes the Bogeyman | 174 Somebody Press the Reset Button, Quickly | 175 Focus, Connect, Grow: Pressing the button | 176 We Have a Strategic Plan: It’s Called Doing Things | 178 Ubiquity | 180 Motivated People: The CIS story | 180 Discipline, Process and the Power of Routine | 182 Great Leadership | 184 Ubiquity again | 184 Results are the only True Sign of Excellence | 185 Going Global, Staying the Course: The Powers Revisited | 185 Focus, discipline and routine | 188 Synthesis | 188 Renewal | 189 Index | 191