Fedex Quick Quotes

One of the people in charge of props told me: “It’s not my job necessarily to make things look exactly as they were in real life. But I want [the movie] to look so authentic that when you see it, you’ll think it’s part of your own personal history. It will be your life to hold onto.” That attention to detail--and that care and dedication--moved me, and I did everything I could to help them. Still, I didn’t want to just put my memories in the mail or FedEx. To put me at ease, the studio offered to use a team of couriers so that the material would be in someone’s hands each step of the way. They sent a driver out one day. He was a big, hulking fellow who filled Chris’s office the way Chris would have. “I just have a few more things to pack up,” I told him. “If you could just wait a second.” “Sure.” Bubba came in, still wearing his jammies. “Hey,” he said to the guy. “You play darts?” “Uh--“ By now Bubba was so used to people dropping by and playing with him that he didn’t even need to ask who they were. He’d also become pretty good at darts. I wrapped up quickly, sparing the poor fellow the humiliation of losing to a kid whose voice wouldn’t change for several more years.

As Charlie Munger has said, “I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort almost my entire adult life in understanding the power of incentives, and yet I’ve always underestimated that power. Never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes a little further my appreciation of incentive superpower.” An example from FedEx is one of his favorite cases in point. As he explains, the integrity of the FedEx system relies heavily on the ability to unload and then quickly reload packages at one central location within an allotted time. Years ago, the company was having a terrible problem getting its workers to get all the boxes off and then back on the planes in time. They tried numerous different things that didn’t work, until someone had the brilliant idea of paying the workers by the shift as opposed to by the hour. Poof, the problem was solved.2 FedEx’s old pay-by-the-hour system rewarded those who took longer to get the job done. They were incentivized to take longer. By switching to pay-by-the-shift, workers were motivated to work faster and without error so they could go home, yet still earn the wages of a full shift. For the workers, finishing early amounted to a higher effective hourly wage. By aligning the business’s interests with the worker’s incentives, FedEx got the outcome it and its workers both desired. The