Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

by Simon Sinek

Bethune focused on the things they knew to be important, and to an airline the most important thing is to get the planes running on time. In the early 1990s, before Bethune arrived, Continental had the lowest on-time rating of the nation’s ten largest airlines. So Bethune told employees that each month Continental’s on-time percentage ranked in the top five, every employee would receive a check for $65. When you consider that Continental had 40,000 employees in 1995, every on-time month cost the airline a whopping $2.5 million. But Bethune knew he was getting a deal: being chronically late was costing it $5 million a month in expenses like missed connections and putting passengers up overnight. But most important to Bethune was what the bonus program did for the company culture: it got tens of thousands of employees, including managers, all pointed in the same direction for the first time in years. Gone were the days when only the brass would enjoy the benefits of success. Everyone got their $65 when the airline did well and no one got it when the airline missed its targets.