Voice of the Customer, part 2: At Southwest Airlines, a Different Kind of Leadership
In my first installment of this two-parter (Voice of the Customer: Newsweek Blog Scopes Out Readers on Best, Worst Airlines) I peeled back the onion of a Newsweek Budget Travel blog-survey to reveal customer perceptions of two American airlines that are polar opposites of each other.
What drives such extreme differences in customer perceptions of Southwest and United?
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Remembering 9/11, Eight Years On
September 11, 2001 … September 11, 2001 … 9/11.
Just a mention of a date is enough to reopen and expose many tragic and unnecessary memories.
Yes … of course you remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard. I was at a neighborhood restaurant in Elgin, Illinois having breakfast with the woman who would become my wife exactly one week later. I remember the waitress, trying to both refill our drinks (with shaking hands) and tell us what the sharply escalating buzz was about. She knocked a glass of water all over me, but seemed not to notice; her thoughts were elsewhere. The queue grew rapidly at the cash register as people left half-eaten meals to rush home to their TVs and Internet connections.
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The Kennedy Era and the Legacy of Flight
I am mourning the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy this morning. As a child of the 1960s (I was born in 1959) the Kennedys have always been part of my consciousness with regard to who Americans are and what they can be.
As a boy, with a cheap Sears telescope and a Polaroid camera, I took pictures of the moon, inspired by President John Kennedy’s challenge in May 1961 that Americans should fly to the moon and explore it by the end of the decade. Of course we accomplished the president’s goal early and the whole world cheered the brave pilots of Apollo 11 who in 1969, ably flew to the most distant place we could yet reach. It was a singular human accomplishment that has not been surpassed in over 40 years. No country but ours has ever flown man to the moon, to walk there.
As I look back on it now, as I near the age of 50, I realize that the event is so historic and memorable because it happened at the intersection of leadership, science, technology, education, dreams, and daring, and exemplified to the world the better nature of Americans.
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Jim Cramer Welcomes Glenn Tilton
For over twenty-five years, Jim Cramer has been offering streetwise business advice to investors. He’s a multi-faceted talent, having worn hats as an investigative reporter, lawyer, investor, hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, media personality and author. His current platforms, TheStreet.com (he’s co-founder) and CNBC’s Mad Money, have legions of loyal followers who tune in for Cramer’s distinct brand of brash, no-nonsense, pragmatic advice to investors.
Last month, in response to an email suggestion from a viewer who is a UAUA employee, Cramer bestowed upon United CEO Glenn Tilton a singular honor: a spot on Mad Money’s “CEO Wall of Shame.”
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