Champions Fax Archive

Gordon Bethune is the President of Continental Airlines. Since joining Continental in 1994, the airline has dramatically reversed its fortunes. When Bethune assumed leadership of the organization, it was under-performing, financially and physically, and suffered from chronic low morale. Now the organization has record profits and more importantly, some of the highest customer satisfaction rates for airlines. In his new book, From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of Continental's Remarkable Comeback - A Flight Plan for Success, he shares what he believes are the principles for their comeback.

Church Champions often find themselves leading organizations that were like Continental four years ago. They need turnaround leaders. Here is an edited list of the principles that Bethune discusses as well as application comments for Church Champions.

1. "Make sure that when the team wins, everyone wins." Many times organizations set turnaround goals and targets that focus on internal measures and results. Make sure that those targets also include your customers and client churches. How do they benefit from your improved performance? What about on your own staff? Does a super performance by one division create opportunities for the whole team to benefit? Or, are you playing one group off of another, creating win/lose situations?

2. "Tell employees what is going on, fully and honestly." Hard times call for frankness and realistic appraisals. Unrealistic optimism without honest assessment of the current situation and the immediate future is fruitless. Team members can tell when a leader is not being open. Most would rather hear the situation with the facts rather than be given hopeful statements about possible improvement.

Many organizations have downsized in recent years. One of the comments from downsized denominational employees tend to reflect the thought that leadership did not communicate through the years how bad financial situations really were.

Good leaders will give honest assessment of conditions, internally and externally, and give team members road maps to see a realistic future.

3. " Remember that customers want dependability and predictability." That is certainly true of airlines and church service organizations. Dependability and predictability are strong influencers of trust factors. Trust factors are key determinants in a church champion to church relationship. Think back to the past year. Have there been times when your organization had to cancel something? Has the organization made a quick turn that left customers bewildered? These types of activities hurt the trust level given to your organization.

4. "It's a lot harder to keep things going great than to get them going great in the first place." Turnaround situations seem to have their own inertia once the turn is made. Small lifts in performance can create rapidly improving morale. Back-to-back years of growth and improvement lead to a feeling of arrival. Time needs to be taken to celebrate the accomplishments. That same sense can also breed complacency. Incremental improvements then become more difficult and costly. New cycles of innovation and life cycle are harder to jump start because "things are going well now."

The challenge for many denominational judicatories and church champion organizations that have been re-vitalized in the past four years is to keep reinventing themselves for the future and not get stuck in the present.

The book uses some fascinating stories about Continental practices that frequent flyers will find interesting. Though not a strict business book, it is a good read for the summer.

From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of Continental's Remarkable Comeback - A Flight Plan for Success by Gordon Bethune and Scott Huler. John Wiley and Sons, 1998. Available at bookstores and online at www.amazon.com.