Farewell Oz Nelson, the visionary Republican who reinvented UPS and wasn’t afraid of being known as ‘woke’

This week, Atlanta respectfully bid enterprise visionary Oz Nelson a remaining farewell and saluted his 30 years of beneficiant devotion to the neighborhood, to not point out his technological reinvention of logistics big UPS as CEO and his relocation of the corporate to Atlanta. I knew that Oz Nelson and was lucky to have been in shut contact with him for 36 years. However there’s far more to be mentioned.

Kent Nelson’s demeanor so matched the picture of his TV namesake that “Oz” grew to become his childhood nickname and stayed with him till his passing at age 85. Nobody who knew Oz Nelson can recall a picture of him with out his real calming smile and eagerness to puzzle out issues. By no means did he revert to advert hominem assaults, private finger-pointing, or drawing traces of battle with colleagues, rivals, regulators, or neighbors.

The true-life Oz Nelson was a mannequin of heat, creativity, and ambition with humility–and was as real on and off the display screen. That congeniality did disguise a paradoxical character trait: Oz Nelson was an industrial pioneer and a social revolutionary in a enterprise swimsuit. His path to administration violated the usnorms of the time of working for years as a supply driver. He began out as an hourly worker, a “clerk” in evolving secondary gross sales and repair roles. Reasonably than see this service position as secondary, he elevated that monitor to remodel UPS right into a customer-oriented enterprise somewhat than strictly a extremely environment friendly operations-driven firm.

Nelson launched the corporate’s celebrated satirical advert marketing campaign that made enjoyable of the competitors with the irreverent Amratti & Puris company. Privately, he acknowledged the technological edge (on the time) of opponents  Federal Categorical, Airborne, TNT, and Emery Airfreight. He pioneered the event of handheld scanning units for monitoring packages and placing dense codes on package deal handle labels to permit higher tracing, automated sorting, operational effectivity metrics, and buyer analysis. The truth is, below Oz Nelson, the time period “buyer” was launched to the trade. Earlier than him, the time period was “shippers”–and recipients have been known as “consignees.“

After I first met Oz in 1986, I used to be a 32-year-old, seventh-year professor on the Harvard Enterprise Faculty. I used to be in a rush to get someplace with my profession however was fairly certain it was to not be a supply driver in an 80-year-old trucking firm. Nevertheless, Goldman Sachs’ revered John Whitehead had simply bestowed HBS with a brand new fellowship for a younger scholar to embed in an organization that’s on the sting of transformation however that was not saturated by MBAs. The truth is, the one MBA on this big transportation firm was working within the two-person advertising and marketing division. The corporate was principally a U.S. home floor package deal supply enterprise. 

That quickly modified. Nelson constructed up one of many world’s 5 largest airways from scratch inside three years. He soared forward of the competitors to change into a frontrunner in know-how and to tower over all transportation corporations in Fortune’s extremely aggressive company status surveys. Regardless of the skepticism of my academy colleagues, he and his vice chair, Don Layden, labored seamlessly on the worldwide entrance to increase from their toe holds in Canada and Germany and to change into a direct service supplier to extra nations than the UN even represented by means of a mixture of cautious acquisitions and internally pushed world expansions.

Their headquarters catapulted from a non-descript linoleum floored low-rise brick Greenwich workplace constructing to an award-winning advanced by architect Tom Ventulett.  Internally lit by means of hovering views and large sheets of glass, the nonetheless low-key workplace constructing Oz commissioned spans a stream working by means of it, in a forest on the sting of Atlanta. With two full-time arborists, there have been extra bushes on the property after UPS constructed than earlier than. Many Atlantans joked that “these Yankee carpet baggers” cared extra concerning the Georgian panorama than the outdated timers did.

In 1990, UPS employed 245,000 employees and delivered 2.9 billion packages yearly with, revenues of $13.6 billion. By 2022, UPS revenues have been over $100 billion, with 500,000 workers, and serving clients in additional than 220 international locations.

In a tribute to Oz’s position in getting UPS that far by means of new applied sciences and logistics companies, present UPS CEO Carol Tome, a pioneer herself, mentioned: “We additionally keep in mind Oz for main along with his coronary heart. He was deeply dedicated to individuals–UPSers and clients across the globe–and the communities the place we stay and serve, driving the corporate’s philanthropic and volunteer efforts to new heights. Oz served in management roles for quite a few nonprofits, together with the CDC, the Carter Middle, United Method of America, and the Annie E. Casey Basis, and he made important contributions to schooling reform in Kentucky.”

At all times open to new approaches, Nelson even privately conferred with this high administration crew over altering the uscolors from gold letters on the “pullman brown” base to one thing he thought-about much less drab. His colleagues forcefully resisted–and he listened. He listened equally to colleagues, clients, communities, and even opponents. I watched Oz chide a brand new rent for making a joke a couple of competitor’s misstep–and saying everybody learns from daring initiatives.

Accordingly, he listened to inner dissent on delicate world technique. Within the early days of their world enlargement, he was the advocate for buying a big world competitor. With the contracts about to be inked between the five-member crew of the goal firm and 40 UPS purchasers, some UPSers found some irregularities within the enterprise conduct of the goal firm that had not been detected by the consultants and attorneys. With no hint of defensiveness, Oz didn’t hesitate to reverse course–and killed the deal on the 11^th hour.

On political and societal points, as a lifetime Republican, he championed variety, skilled conduct, and beneficiant advantages throughout the firm. Externally, he championed financial growth for communities in want,  workforce coaching, and commerce reform (with seamless relations throughout the Carter, Reagan, Bush,  and Clinton administrations). He even served because the long-term chair of the Carter Middle and the CDC Basis. He had no worry of being known as “woke” for doing the best factor. He suggested me on the gathering of teams of distinguished CEOs who met spontaneously in 2020 and 2021 to offer their civic voices of stewardship and patriotism by means of the needlessly rocky presidential transition and voting rights battles.

One among Oz’s predecessors, reflecting on the consensual decision-making tradition at UPS and the constant reliability of execution, described it as “a cross between a Quaker assembly and the U.S. marine corp.” Oz is a reminder that even in a team-oriented humble tradition, the initiative of particular person leaders nonetheless issues.

The true Oz Nelson knew methods to be powerful and persuasive as an alternative of powerful and autocratic. As I witnessed myself, when he noticed an injustice, he spoke out and led others into righteous battles for fact. At a time of coarsening of public discourse, Oz labored throughout sectors to indicate that braveness doesn’t require cruelty. He reduce his personal path–with out torching the forest.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Lester Crown Professor in Administration Follow and Senior Affiliate Dean at Yale Faculty of Administration.

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