work of planes and trucks together with his innovative hub-and-spoke concept of routing, Smith used aggressive advertising methods to lead and build FedEx into one of the fastest growing companies in the 1980s. Innovative, risk-taking, and aggressive by all accounts, life was not always a success for Fred Smith. There was one point in his life where the innovative leader considered taking his own life. His fledgling company was threatened with bankruptcy, his sisters were suing him for misappropriating inherited funds, the federal government was suing him for bank fraud (for floating a $2 million loan on non-existent collateral), and his wife was suing for divorce (Trimble, 1993, ix). Above all, Smith is a survivor. Through his innovation, daring, and tenacity, Smith was able to turn this gloomy scenario into one of overwhelming success within a decade. Smith’s leadership skills are recognized and respected the world over in the business community. FedEx’s motto, People-Service-Profits includes both customers and employees when it comes to the people part. Smith’s leadership success has a great deal to do with his belief that you can never do enough for your people, either customers or employees.
Of course, Fred Smith’s innovations also included owning the air carriers and airport where the central hub was located, which helped to greatly reduce costs from personnel to warehousing and storage. He also did research to discover that many of the nation’s airports are dead during the night from midnight to six, which meant his planes would not experience lengthy delays or other problems of flying into busy airports. Today, this innovation has made FedEx a world leader in airfreight forwarding, with UPS its next closest competitor. Smith secured U.S. Postal Service contracts to fly mail to give investors a guaranteed source of income. He also had to deal with external regulatory obstacles like old Civil Aeronautics...