Front-Line Experience Delivers
For FedEx's Asian-Pacific Chief
By BRUCE STANLEY
July 28, 2008; Page B5
Fuel prices are soaring and the U.S. economy is wobbling, but FedEx Corp., the world's biggest cargo airline by packages flown, is expanding in Asia. For the past 10 years, the coordinator-in-chief of this regional drive has been David L. Cunningham Jr., president of the Asian-Pacific division of FedEx Express, FedEx's largest business segment.


Mr. Cunningham is paying more attention these days to mainland China, where FedEx is experiencing some of its fastest volume growth.

Early last year, FedEx paid $400 million to buy out its local partner in a joint venture for domestic deliveries in China. In May 2007, FedEx launched next-business-day deliveries to more than 30 Chinese cities, and it now operates 26 weekly round-trip flights between the U.S. and Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, up from 11 in 2004.

Mr. Cunningham's next challenge is to ensure that FedEx makes a smooth transition from its long-established regional hub in Subic Bay, the Philippines, to a hub in Guangzhou in southern China's industrial Guangdong province.

Mr. Cunningham, 46 years old, joined FedEx in 1982 and has been based in Hong Kong since 1999. He has a master's degree in marketing and a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Memphis.

He shared his views on management in a telephone interview with Bruce Stanley in Hong Kong, speaking from FedEx's regional headquarters there.

WSJ: What advice would you give someone starting out in your field?

Mr. Cunningham: If you haven't been on the front lines, get there. Experience it. I've loaded and unloaded planes and sorted packages. Those kinds of operations are the heart of our business. Strategy is important and tactics are important, but at the end of the day, understanding what happens on the front lines is what it's all about.

WSJ: What principle of management do you wish you knew when you were starting out in your field?

Mr. Cunningham: It's all about people. When you first start out in management, a lot of people think it's about direction or setting the strategy or tactics. But when I say it's all about people, I mean it's about selecting the right people, it's about directing them correctly, it's about making the best use of their skill sets, so you can find solutions to business and business problems -- because you can't do it all yourself.

WSJ: What are you reading now?

Mr. Cunningham: "Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster" by Jon Krakauer. [The mountain-climbers] had the best sherpas, the best equipment, plenty of money, but the systems and the processes and the decision-making ended up breaking down, and 16 people ended up losing their lives. A FedEx employee was on the same mission and lost her life.

Also, "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power" by Daniel Yergin. It's hard to imagine such a long book [more than 800 pages] about oil, but Yergin captures you in the first 10 pages. Business books usually don't do that.

WSJ: What was the most satisfying management decision you've made?

Mr. Cunningham: Taking an idea from conception to reality and overcoming the inevitable challenges that come up. For example, we recognized that we were fast outgrowing our Asia-Pacific hub in Subic, and we had to find an alternative to it. We identified the best location as China, in the Pearl River Delta, by an international airport. And we sat down and figured out how we could do this. Our new hub in Guangzhou will open in December.