Larry Kellner, Chairman & CEO for Continental Airlines Inc.

Just back from the beautiful Bahamas and attended today one of our Wachovia lecture series.

The speaker today was Larry Kellner, Chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines, the world's fifth largest airline. He is actually a magna cum laude with a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina, earning numerous awards.
He now manages 43,000 co-workers world-wide and strongly believes that the world is getting more and more global.
Before 1995, Continental was a lousy company, as he said: from its first meeting with its former CEO he understood the problem; it was the worst airline in everything from on time to losing bags. They were heading for another bankruptcy. He transformed the company overnight, turning it into a successful business.
He advised us:

• "Spend a dollar to make a dollar!" - the secret in the world of business. "CFO has to make sure you don't make only 90 cents."
• "The companies that are successful are the one who make people go together!" (they shared the rewards from being on time - everybody has to win if they worked together).
• There are four parts to every business: people plan, product plan (make reliability a reality), marketing plan and financial plan (fun to future). They should not be ignored and the result should be crisp and clear, in the same time easy to communicate to the rest of employees.
• "Believe in a product, a quality product: whatever you promise the customer, you need to do!"

After 9/11 they went through not un-hurt, they made tough cuts in employees and flights. They faced reality, sent this message to the world and won the race.