Would You Rather Write a Book ... Or Climb El Capitan?

An Article by Jane Chung, author of 'DHL: Three Letters That Shrank the World'

Having experienced the challenges of writing and publishing a book, and watched the film, Free Solo, about Alex Honnold’s ascent of El Capitan, I find it hard to answer this question. The two challenges have a number of similarities. You start, not knowing if you will finish. You get part way through, knowing that there is a point past which you cannot stop. You reach the end with a great sense of relief and accomplishment. You receive accolades for a job well done, knowing that you did it not for the accolades, but for the satisfaction of having overcome your worst fear – the fear of failure!

Here is a (relatively) concise account of how I achieved my dream of writing DHL’s history.

The Germ of an Idea

Since the mid 1980s, information about DHL has been published in various forms – newspaper articles, magazine articles, books, documentaries, films. Some is accurate, some is inaccurate; some is unbalanced, some is salacious; all of it is incomplete. I felt it was high time the record was set straight. 

For many years, early DHLers had talked to each other about writing DHL’s history. We all knew what an interesting, colourful, and adventurous history it was. Growth was exponential, existential battles were many and varied, and organisational change was constant. Within 20 years some 197 of today’s 220 countries were opened and the firm foundation upon which today’s DHL sits was built. 

The early DHLers not only created a global company, they also pioneered a new industry, international air express, and changed the way the world does business. In the process they overcame significant opposition from regulatory authorities – postal, customs and aviation – in many countries. I felt very strongly that the achievements of these people should be recognised, most got very little tangible reward. Some of these individuals had sadly died, others were getting on in years. If the history was not captured, it would soon be gone forever. 

While many had talked about writing the story, no-one had been brave enough, or foolhardy enough, to take on the challenge. The task would be neither easy nor straightforward, but little did I know how hard it would turn out to be! In 2009, I decided to try and get the project off the ground. My first task: convince key people of the importance of recording the history, as the task would be well-nigh impossible without their support. This required thinking through very carefully what I wanted, so that I could deliver a compelling pitch. 

The Vision

Right from the start I knew what I wanted to achieve: 

1.     To tell an engaging story in sufficient detail for readers to understand why things turned out the way they did, yet at the same time keep the book within the constraints of a single volume. This would not be easy because so much happened in DHL’s early years, in parallel, all over the world. The logical way was to use a time constraint, and so my narrative ends at the point where the future of both DHL and the international express industry was assured; when all the key battles were won, when no government would pass a law prohibiting an air express company from carrying out its business, and when DHL had the necessary financial and management controls to survive. 

2.     To intersperse the narrative with the voices of the many characters who built DHL so that readers could get a real feel for the hopes, dreams, trials, tribulations and successes of these pioneering entrepreneurs. 

3.     To use a rigorous academic approach towards the research and the narrative, despite this adding a significant layer of complexity. Without it the end result would lack substance and credibility. 

4.     Finally, I wanted to convey what it really takes to implement vision on the scale of that of Larry Hillblom – the ‘H in DHL’ and the driving force behind the DHL phenomenon. The book would then be a valuable case study for future generations of students.

First anecdote: As luck would have it, just as my book was entering the final editing/publication phase, Ken Allen was writing his memoir covering DHL’s latest existential crisis and the period from 2008 to 2018 (published under the title Radical Simplicity). He let me see an early draft, which enabled me to provide a link between the end of my history and the beginning of his. Having now read Ken’s publication, I see my book as Volume 1 of DHL’s history and Ken’s as Volume 3. It remains to be seen if Volume 2 will ever be written.

With the vision clear, it was time to implement the plan! I wanted to execute this in a way that reflected the camaraderie and teamwork of DHL’s early years.

Lift-Off

One by one, I tracked down those who had benefitted most from DHL’s success – David Allen, Po Chung, the Larry L Hillblom Foundation, and Bill Robinson, and made my pitch. Without their support, the project would lack credibility. Needless to say, this took a while and is a story in itself, but, at the end of the day, all agreed wholeheartedly to support my efforts. In the process other names were added to my interview list and a formal Terms of Reference written. DHL Express Global CEO, Ken Allen, added his support. Things were looking positive!

It was now 2010; it had taken almost a year to get to this point.

Gathering Raw Material

Next priority was planning the interviews and thinking about obtaining source documents: the bedrock upon which any substantive and authoritative company history must be built. DHL itself has no company records from its first decade, and precious little from the second. What does exist is not held in any easily accessible company archive, but in long-term storage, uncatalogued. National and judicial archives in the U.S. and other countries held records of lawsuits, regulatory and fiscal filings, etc., but it would take considerable effort to track these down. My best hope was that some on my interview list had DHL material in their personal archives, but great persuasion would be needed to get them to dig into storage units and attics spread across the globe.

I set off, tape recorder and starter list of questions in hand, on what would become almost three years of travelling the world interviewing and researching. By the middle of 2010, I had several hours of interviews with the very earliest DHLers and news of the project was spreading throughout the efficient DHL grapevine and being greeted with great enthusiasm. Offers of help were legion. 

Original documents started to appear. I remember being particularly excited by the discovery of 1972 tape recordings that Adrian and Marjorie Dalsey made when the first stations in Asia were opened, and copies of DHL’s first employee newsletter. Jim Campbell offered me his rich archive of DHL’s regulatory battles and helped me to scan every single one of the thousands and thousands of pages it contained. Peter Donnici persuaded the San Francisco District Court to dig out the records of the Loomis lawsuit – an existential threat and important turning point in the DHL story.  

One by one the key lawsuits, Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) filings, and DHL’s testimony before various U.S. congressional committees were tracked down. I spent weeks and weeks over several visits to the U.S in courthouse offices and the U.S. National Archives in San Francisco and Washington DC, photographing every single page – thousands and thousands of them! I came across some wonderfully helpful people. DHL’s earliest lawsuit from 1969 was held on microfilm in the San Mateo Courthouse. There were four microfilm viewing machines available to the general public. Users came in, printed off a few pages, paid and left. It would have cost a pretty penny for me to do this for the number of pages I needed to copy.  The staff were so helpful, they allowed me to put a camera on a tripod in front of the machine and photograph the screen. This meant they would receive no revenue. This didn’t seem right, so I agreed a token sum for each day’s use, subsequently monopolising one machine for four full days, in the process burning out two of the machine’s high-powered light bulbs! On my last day, I arrived with a very large box of See’s candies! The staff at the San Francisco District Courthouse not only let me in with a camera, something they did not normally allow, they also agreed that I could stay outside of their regular opening hours in order to complete the work. These lawsuits, CAB filings, and congressional testimony were key. They contained information about DHL’s early operation, lists of customers, volume of business, as well as the business philosophy of Larry Hillblom and Adrian Dalsey. More importantly the depositions they contained enabled me to include Adrian and Larry’s voices in the narrative.

Another archive, belonging to Po Chung, stored for decades in a Hong Kong warehouse, and virtually forgotten, yielded many, many items of interest, including powers of attorney, network operating agreements and company minutes, as well as the most complete set of DHL newsletters I had come across. There was helpful information about the early diversifications, and, to my great excitement, the material Larry Hillblom worked on when he went to Hong Kong to fight the battle with the Postmaster General. His notes, annotations, and desired changes to Hong Kong law, misspelt, and in his rarely seen spidery, erratic handwriting, covered these documents. I spent more than a month scanning everything into my growing archive. 

Other archives, held by the Legislative Council and the University of Hong Kong, contained documents pertaining to DHL’s first important win over a postal authority. I spent almost two weeks, in front of a microfilm machine at the university becoming colder and colder in the freezing temperatures of the microfilm room. Fortunately, the university’s technology was more advanced than that of the San Mateo Courthouse and I was able to download the images onto a USB drive.  

A surprise, and welcome, find were items in Steven Kroll’s archive. Initially he thought he had nothing. But, as we talked, memories came flooding back. One day, he excitedly presented me with a video of Larry Hillblom, in which Larry talks about his business philosophy. The two of us spent a wonderful evening watching the grainy footage, laughing like children as we remembered Larry’s more esoteric eccentricities! Steven’s journals from the time appeared, along with another box containing a virtual treasure trove of early DHL documents.

Piet Heerema, had an attic full of old DHL material, including documents, photographs, and diaries, dating back to 1973. Piet and I spent several days scanning the documents, and Piet subsequently spent considerable time scanning all the photographs and making notes about where and when they were taken and what/who they contained. His diaries helped me to pin down dates of various key events. An example of DHL teamwork!    

Others had smaller, but nonetheless important, contributions. 

Adding historical context to DHL’s development required further research – Google Scholar, and the British Library in London and Boston Spa proved invaluable.

Slowly and surely my DHL archive grew until it contained tens of thousands of pages that were eventually catalogued into an accessible databank. This was the bedrock from which I was able to reconstruct DHL’s history, and against which I was able to measure the accuracy of the recollections obtained from some 120+ interviewees. I discovered that human memory is extremely fallible – a topic on which an entire article could be written! Suffice it to say that while everyone provided something of interest to colour the narrative, individual recall ability covered the range from ‘almost photographic’ to ‘practically blank’.

Transcription of the interviews proved to be a monumental task, during which I began to wonder what on earth had possessed me to start the project! However, perseverance is everything, a lesson learned well at DHL, and eventually the transcription mountain was climbed. By the end of 2011, despite not having transcribed all the interviews, I took the plunge and started working on the narrative. 

The Writing Process

The first actual writing task was to put all the documents in my archive into chronological order. They then had to be read carefully and in order. Any items of interest were highlighted for incorporation first into a detailed timeline, and eventually into the narrative. The timeline was an essential precursor to putting pen to paper. An index followed shortly after. These two items provided the framework for the book. 

Despite, its many drawbacks, I decided to use MS Word, primarily because I was familiar with it. The thought of learning new word processor software filled me with foreboding. MS Word is not good with large documents, particularly when subject to extensive changes and moving around of text – the norm in any writing project. To mitigate this, each chapter was kept as a stand-alone file until it was time to hand the manuscript over to a professional editor when, with fingers crossed, joss sticks lit and frequent prayers, I slowly and carefully put everything together in one file. 

Layout styles were experimented with and templates prepared for headings, sub-headings, etc. These went through a number of iterations as my knowledge of the requirements of the writing process grew. Incorporating correct academic-level citation and ensuring consistency of naming the items in my archive proved challenging. There were at least three iterations as the narrative unfolded before I was happy that I had a method that worked for my book. 

First drafts of early chapters appeared towards the end of 2012, almost three and a half years after I started pursuing my dream. A handful of people, intimately associated with many aspects of DHL’s development during the early years, were invited to review my work as it took shape, chapter by chapter. Some of what I uncovered was news even to these people. It soon became clear that Larry Hillblom was the only person who knew everything about how DHL developed, everyone else had knowledge only of what was happening in the particular area they had influence over. This was the way Larry controlled DHL. 

Compiling DHL’s history proved to be a million-piece jigsaw puzzle, maybe even a two million-piece one! Each piece of that puzzle had to be extracted from the thousands and thousands of pages of original company documents and from the tens of thousands of words in the interviews. It then had to be fitted into its correct place in the timeline in order to understand why DHL developed in the way that it did. Interviewee statements had to be cross-checked with original documents. Sometimes this raised additional questions that needed clarifying with more research. I went back to the drawing board more times than I care to think about when a fact appeared from a newly uncovered source, or something just did not hang together, or make sense. 

The writing process is intensely iterative, 19 major versions were produced over 5 years, with many, many more minor versions as text was rewritten and shuffled around. Organising the narrative to make the key developments understandable, to make the narrative flow, and to engage and keep the reader interested was extremely challenging. There were times when I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew. But I persevered, never losing hope that I would deliver my vision.

More than once I was asked if I had experience in writing a book. Some were rather surprised when I said, no. I couldn’t understand why experience mattered. After all, Larry Hillblom didn’t have experience in building a global company yet, as DHL proves, he was extremely successful. Elon Musk had no experience in rocket technology before he built the world’s first reusable rocket. I had no experience in raising children, but that didn’t stop me raising two! Others were all too keen to tell me what the book should be like, how it should be written, what the main focus should be. Some wanted some things said, but other things hidden. There was some concern about potential lawsuits. At the end of the day, it is the author who is responsible for what appears in a book, and I take full responsibility for every sentence. What appears is what I felt needed to be there to tell the real story of DHL and capture its ethos and culture, warts and all.

By the end of 2016, a draft of each chapter existed. There were weaknesses – a certain amount of repetition, sections, paragraphs, and sentences that could be better structured or better ordered. Grammar and punctuation needed review – my degree is in Mathematics not English! When to start a new paragraph was, and remains, a mystery to me! I could have continued to hone and polish, but I chose not to. It was time to let other eyes review my work.

Unveiling the Final Draft

Potential reviewers of the entire work were approached, non-disclosure agreements signed, a number of copies of the final draft printed off, bound and dispatched via DHL. The reviewers, Marilyn Corral, Geoff Cruikshanks, Neil Ferguson and Steve Schwartz were chosen for their considerable knowledge of all aspects of DHL’s operation, structure, geography, finances and culture. I am enormously grateful for the considerable amount of time they devoted to the task and for the constructive feedback they provided. By the end of 2017, this feedback had been incorporated. My story was now ready to enter the publication process. This was my next adventure, and a story for another article!

Second Anecdote: From the very early days of the project, people asked me what the title was. I had a working title, ‘Global Messengers: A Case Study,’ but I could see little point debating or putting any serious thought into a title until it looked as if I would actually complete the project. In the end a title that spoke to me was suggested by Steven Kroll: ‘DHL: Three Letters That Changed the World.’ ‘Changed’ was ultimately replaced by ‘Shrank’ and I had my title!

Article written by Jane Chung, author of DHL: Three Letters That Shrank the World. ?Jane Chung, 2019

This book is available online at: https://bit.ly/DHL3Letters 

Limited edition hardback costs ￡25 and is currently shipped free worldwide by DHL. e-book is ￡5.99. Also available on Amazon.