In 2013, when Tex Gunning, a Dutch CEO, took over the troubled package-delivery company TNT in Europe, he spent the first six weeks of his tenure working with front-line employees and meeting customers in an effort to gauge where the company’s main problems were originating. He also sent TNT’s 70,000 workers an email asking for ideas and concerns. He received over 1,000 messages — and responded to all of them himself. Gunning partly credits this initial effort at reaching out for stabilising TNT and enabling a merger with FedEx only a couple of years later.

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, September 26th, 2016