Jan Carlzon
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Jan Gösta Carlzon, né ''Karlsson'' (born 25 June 1941) is a Swedish businessman. He is most noted for being chief executive officer of
SAS Group SAS AB, trading as SAS Group, is a Swedish airline holding company headquartered in Solna Municipality, Sweden. It is the owner of the airlines Scandinavian Airlines, SAS Link, and SAS Connect. As of 2024, SAS Group is owned by a group of s ...
from 1981 to 1994.Jan Carlzon interview with Bob Thompson, ''CustomerThink.com'', March 7, 200

/ref>


Early life

Carlzon was born on 25 June 1941 in
Nyköping Nyköping () is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and the seat of Nyköping Municipality, Södermanland County, Sweden, with 32,759 inhabitants as of 2017. The city is also the capital of Södermanland County. Including Arnö, the locality on the ...
, Sweden, the son of Gösta Carlzon and his wife Essie (née Jörgensen). He graduated with an MBA from the
Stockholm School of Economics The Stockholm School of Economics (SSE; , HHS) is a private business school located in city district Vasastaden in the central part of Stockholm, Sweden. SSE offers BSc, MSc and MBA programs, along with PhD- and Executive education progr ...
in 1967.


Career

Carlzon started his career in the international
hospitality industry The hospitality industry is a broad category of fields within the service industry that includes lodging, food and beverage services, event planning, theme parks, travel agency, tourism, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, and bars. Sector ...
at Vingresor AB. Carlzon was Product Manager at Vingresor AB from 1969 to 1971, Director of Marketing at Vingresor/Club 33 AB from 1971 to 1973, and finally CEO from 1974 to 1978. In 1978 he joined
Linjeflyg Linjeflyg was a Swedish domestic airline, formed in 1957 as a domestic subsidiary by Scandinavian Airlines System and Airtaco as well as by newspaper publishers Dagens Nyheter AB and Stockholms-Tidningen AB. History Airtaco (founded in August ...
, as its CEO. Carlzon joined the
Scandinavian Airlines System The Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), commonly known as Scandinavian Airlines, is the Flag carrier, national airline of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It is part of SAS Group and is headquartered in Solna Municipality, Solna, Sweden. Including ...
in 1980 and served as its CEO from 1994.


Challenges at SAS

At the time Jan Carlzon took over the helm of SAS, the company was facing large financial difficulties and losing $17 million per annumMarilyn Manning, ''How to Build Customer Services from the Inside Out'

/ref> and had an international reputation for always being late. A 1981 survey showed that SAS was ranked no. 14 of 17 airlines in Europe when it came to punctuality. Furthermore, the company had a reputation for being a very centralized organization, where decisions were hard to come by to the detriment of customers, shareholders, and staff. He revolutionized the airline industry through an unrelenting focus on customer service quality. One of the first things Jan Carlzon did at SAS was to introduce the world's first separate cabin for Business Class while at the same time doing away with First Class on its European routes. Within one year of taking over, SAS had become the most punctual airline in Europe and had started an ongoing training program called ''Putting People First'' developed by Claus Møller of Time Manager International ('TMI'). The program was focused on delegating responsibility away from management and allowing customer-facing staff to make decisions to resolve any issues on the spot. Jan Carlzon said at the time: "''Problems are solved on the spot, as soon as they arise. No front-line employee has to wait for a supervisor's permission.''". These changes soon impacted the bottom-line as well and the company made a profit of $54 million in 1982. Several case studies about the turn-around are available and it has been referenced widely in management literatureTMI Case Study: SAS
/ref>Albrecht, Karl & Ron Zemke, ''Service America: Doing Business in the New Economy'', Grand Central Publishing, New York City, 1990. This decentralisation of the organization led to both a large boost in company morale and the formalization of the training methodology of the program in a joint venture in 1982 with TMI called Scandinavian Service School. Scandinavian Service School since went on to establish offices in all three of the Scandinavian countries as well as Finland and the training program was exported to other airlines including
British Airways British Airways plc (BA) is the flag carrier of the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in London, England, near its main Airline hub, hub at Heathrow Airport. The airline is the second largest UK-based carrier, based on fleet size and pass ...
and
Japan Airlines Japan Airlines (JAL) is the flag carrier airline of Japan. JAL is headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its main hubs are Tokyo's Narita International Airport, Narita and Haneda Airport, Haneda airports, as well as secondary hubs in Osaka's Kansai ...
. The flat organizational structure, delegation processes, and empowerment of employees adopted at SAS also led to Carlzon writing a book, ''Riv pyramiderna!'' (''Swe.'', which translates into ''Tear Down the Pyramids''), published by Bonnier in Stockholm in 1985 and translated into English in 1987 by
Harper Perennial Harper Perennial is a paperback imprint of the publishing house HarperCollins Publishers. Overview Harper Perennial has divisions located in New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney. The imprint is descended from the Perennial Library imprint foun ...
under the title ''Moments of Truth''. The American Management Association, in their 75th anniversary issue of their magazine in 1998 called this one of the most important developments in management of the 20th century. The changes at SAS led to
Air Transport World ''Air Transport World'' (''ATW'') is an online and print trade publication covering the global air transportation industry. It is owned by Informa and is a sister publication to '' Aviation Week'', the ''Aviation Daily'' and ''MRO Digest'', whi ...
naming SAS the ''Airline of the Year for 1983'' in early 1984. Carlzon also oversaw a complete
corporate identity A corporate identity or corporate image is the manner in which a corporation, firm or business enterprise presents itself to the public. The corporate identity is typically visualized by branding and with the use of trademarks, but it can also i ...
re-design, a process which was marred when a journalist gained unlawful access to a hangar with a plane painted in a proposed livery was photographed and widely published in Scandinavian newspapers. Unfortunately, either the brief to the agency, Landor Associates, was not good enough or they had misunderstood it and painted the plane with 5 crowns to symbolize the 5
Nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; ) are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe, as well as the Arctic Ocean, Arctic and Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic oceans. It includes the sovereign states of Denm ...
. This caused a huge public furore as SAS only contains the airlines of the three monarchies Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Incidentally, the other two Nordic countries,
Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
and
Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...
, are both republics and would therefore not be represented by crowns. The task of re-developing the corporate identity was later given to another firm. In the latter years of Carlzon's tenure at SAS he was coming under increased pressure from shareholders as competitors had caught up with the lead established by SAS in the business market in the early 1980s. At the same time increasing oil prices and a less than profitable first class operation led to SAS scrapping First Class on its intercontinental routes and retiring its
Boeing 747 The Boeing 747 is a long-range wide-body aircraft, wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States between 1968 and 2023. After the introduction of the Boeing 707, 707 in October 1958, Pan Am ...
s from service, a task completed in 1987. SAS has never since flown aircraft with as large a capacity as it does not believe the flights would be profitable.


After SAS

Carlzon left SAS in November 1993 and founded the investment company Ledstiernan in 1994 where he was chairman. Carlzon was also one of the founders of the Internet retail company CDON AB. In 1999 he (who is an avid tennis player in his spare time) became chair of the Swedish Tennis Association and a board member in the
International Tennis Federation The International Tennis Federation (ITF) is the governing body of world tennis, wheelchair tennis, and beach tennis. It was founded in 1913 as the International Lawn Tennis Federation by twelve national tennis associations. there are 211 nat ...
. He served as chair of the British Swedish Chamber of Commerce between 2003 and 2006British Swedish Chamber of Commerce newsletter Summer 2003
/ref> and, until June 2010, he chaired the entrepreneurs' organization Företagarna.Företagarna
/ref> He was also one of the founders of European
telecoms Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...
company NETnet International S.A. and is part owner and chair of Karl Stockman AB, a Swedish investment company.


Personal life

In 1966, he married Agneta Wärn (born 1942), a flight attendant, the daughter of merchant Evert Wärn and Evy (née Axelsson). He is now married to Susanne Bourghardt Carlzon (born 1959). He has three children in his first marriage and two children in his second marriage.


Quotes

*"We have 50,000 moments of truth every day." – said at the start of the First Wave seminars to turn SAS around in 1982 and referring to every time an employee of the company came into contact with a customer.Later that quote was rewritten in the book "Moments of Truth" where Carlzon said: "Last year each of our ten million customers came in contact with approximately five SAS employees, and this contact lasted an average of 15 seconds each time. The SAS is 'created' 50 million times a year, 15 seconds at a time. These 50 million 'moments of truth' are the moments that ultimately determine whether SAS will succeed or fail as a company. They are the moments when we must prove to our customers that SAS is their best alternative.", Carlzon, Jan: ''Moments of Truth'', 1987, p. 3 *"An individual without information can't take responsibility. An individual with information can't help but take responsibility." *"I learned that, before you reach an objective, you must be ready with a new one, and you must start to communicate it to the organization. But it is not the goal itself that is important." *"Mistakes can usually be corrected later; the time that is lost in not making a decision can never be retrieved".Carlzon, Jan: ''Moments of Truth'', 1987, p. 26 *"... the right to make mistakes is not equivalent to the right to be incompetent, especially not as a manager."Carlzon, Jan: ''Moments of Truth'', 1987, p. 83


Honors and awards


Awards

* H. M. The King's Medal, 12th size gold (silver-gilt) medal worn around the neck on the
Order of the Seraphim The Royal Order of the Seraphim (; ''Seraphim'' being a category of angels) is the highest order of chivalry of the Kingdom of Sweden. It was created by Frederick I of Sweden, King Frederick I on 23 February 1748, together with the Order of the ...
ribbon (1988) * Commander with Star of the
Royal Norwegian Order of Merit The Royal Norwegian Order of Merit (Norwegian: ''Den Kongelige Norske Fortjenstorden'' (Bokmål) or ''Den Kongelege Norske Fortenesteordenen'' (Nynorsk)) was instituted by King Olav V in 1985. It is awarded to foreigners, Norwegian citizens livin ...
(1 July 1990)


Honors

*Honorary Doctor of Laws from
Pepperdine University Pepperdine University () is a private university, private Christianity, Christian research university affiliated with the Churches of Christ, with its main campus in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Pepperdine's main campus consists ...
*Honorary Doctor of Laws from
Pacific Lutheran University Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) is a Private university, private Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran university in Parkland, Washington. It was founded by Norwegian Lutheran immigrants in 1890. PLU is sponsored by the 580 congreg ...
(11 September 1991) *Fellowship in the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences


Filmography

*'' Sällskapsresan 2 – Snowroller'' (1985) - waiter *''The Proof of the Pudding...'' (1983) - himself


Bibliography

* *


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Carlzon, Jan 1941 births Living people Stockholm School of Economics alumni SAS Group people Swedish airline chief executives Members of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences People from Nyköping