Continental Airlines

11 Pages 2779 Words

ons about good management and who possessed the courage to look past the bottom line, managed to motivate his people to bold new heights of excellence and win back this company’s long-lost customer base. This person, armed with a down-to-earth basic recipe for turning a company around, was and is Gordon Bethune. Change does not come about overnight, nor does it come easily. As stated by Merriam-Webster, change is “to make different in some particular fashion; to give a different position, course, or direction to; to replace with another; to make a shift from one to another; to exchange for an equivalent sum or comparable item; to undergo a modification of.” Management is defined as the “act or art of managing; the conducting or supervising of something (as a business); judicious use of means to accomplish an end; the collective body of those who manage or direct an enterprise.” (Merriam-Webster) These things all happened at Continental Airlines beginning in 1995 under the direction of Gordon Bethune. Gordon, as he is known to all of his employees from the second in command down to the newest ramp agent, is a leader who is about his people and his product. He is a feisty, plain-speaking man who fought for the position as Chief Executive Officer. After ten leaders in ten years, the Board of Continental had only wanted someone to be a figurehead for the company. They were not looking for a “leader;” they had had ten of those already. The Board simply wanted someone to “take over.” So, they let Gordon take over for the next ten days until the next board meeting; at that point, he would have a chance to address the Board and some decision would be made. What a timeline; what stress. Gordon knew the company needed dramatic change in every conceivable way. His first step was an easy one; he stuck a wedge under the once-locked, video camera monitored doors of the executive suite. This was the equivalent of hanging an “under ...