UNITED TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION

United Technologies Corporation (UTC) is one of those many organizations in the U.S. that impacts our lives every single day in a variety of ways while the majority of us who benefit from their products and services have never heard of them. 

It’s certainly not that they’re in hiding. Not by a long shot. They have a beautiful corporate headquarters located in historic Hartford, Connecticut. They conduct business virtually everywhere in the world, boasting 4,000-plus locations doing business in approximately 180 countries in 30 different languages. They employ approximately 215,000 employees and are recognized as the 47th largest employer in the world on the 2006 Global 500 list, in Fortune.) 

Boasting revenues of $47.8 billion last year, UTC is a diversified, American, multinational conglomerate generating more than 50% of their revenues outside the United States with 60% of their employees working abroad.

While you may not recognize the corporate name, you may very well be familiar with many of their products and services. Their business units include: 

Carrier heating and air conditioning systems
Hamilton Sundstrand aerospace and industrial systems
Otis elevators and escalators
Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines
Sikorsky helicopters
UTC Fire & Security protection services
UTC Power
United Technologies Research Center

RANKING
20th largest U.S. manufacturer (2006 list, Industry Week)
43rd largest U.S. corporation (2006 list, Fortune)
55th largest publicly held manufacturer in the world (2006 list, Industry Week)
126th largest corporation in the world (2006 Global 500 list, Fortune)
Named “Most Admired” aerospace and defense company (2001-2006 lists, Fortune)

The core group of United Technologies companies was founded in 1929 as United Aircraft & Transport Corp. by the merger of Boeing, Chance Vought, Hamilton Standard, Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky Aircraft. As a result of the Air Mail Act of 1934, United Aircraft and Transport broke up into three independent companies: Boeing, United Aircraft, and United Airlines. United Aircraft changed its name to United Technologies in 1975. Otis Elevator was acquired in 1976, Carrier Refrigeration in 1979, and Sundstrand in 1999. UTC entered the fire and security business in 2001 by purchasing Chubb Security. In 2005, United Technologies acquired Boeing’s Rocketdyne division, which was merged into the Pratt & Whitney business unit.

The next time you’re riding an escalator, relaxing in air conditioning, or enjoying your airplane flight, you’ll know just who was responsible for your comfort and safety.

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Everyone knows the most recent headlines about our country’s greatest leaders. In this feature, we’d like to shed some light on the lesser-known facts about these folks in hopes of giving you a little greater insight as to what makes them tick.
 
Meg Whitman

I’ve been following the career of this charismatic leader for quite some time now. If you’re looking for a role model for your children or grandchildren, look no further. Share the details of her past and simply focus your attention to your newspaper, magazine, television or the internet to see what she’s mastering at the moment. Her bio reads like a fairy tale, and just when you think her career has peaked, she takes it to another level. Today’s average business leader, if there is such a thing, would be pleased as punch to boast of just one of her previous accomplishments. Wait until you see the entire list and you’ll see what I mean.
 
Why all the success? What drives this woman to unparalleled success at a time when your daily newscast reveals another leader thrown to the curb or even on his/her way to prison? Listen to her employees, associates, and competitors, and it quickly becomes blatantly obvious. Education, experience, worth ethic, focus, integrity, unlimited passion, creativity, keen judgment, listening skills, the ability to earn respect, a pioneer mindset, a respect and belief in customer feedback and the expertise to create, encourage and support community. The list goes on, but I’m sure you see why she continues to excel in everything she undertakes.
 
Margaret C. “Meg” Whitman has been the President and CEO of the online marketplace we know as eBay since 1998. Whitman joined eBay when the company had 29 employees and operated solely in the United States; eBay is now a global organization with over 11,600 employees.
 
She led the company from a few customers to nearly 50 million … revenue jumped from a few dollars to nearly $6 billion.
 
In addition to managing eBay, she currently serves on the Board of Directors of Procter & Gamble and Dream Works Animation. According to Forbes magazine, Whitman is currently worth an estimated $1.3 billion. She is one of only seven women to have been repeatedly ranked among the world’s most influential people by Time Magazine.
 
Now let’s take a look at her incomparable track record. Buckle your seatbelt … here we go.
 
She attended Princeton University as an undergraduate with every intention of securing a career in medicine. However, she became an economics major after a summer job selling advertising for a campus publication … obviously a major turning point. She went on to receive an MBA from Harvard Business School.
 
Whitman began her working career at Procter & Gamble from 1979 to 1981. It was at Procter & Gamble that she built her experience in brand management. She then spent eight years working for Bain & Company, a leading global business and strategy consulting firm, eventually becoming a vice president.

From 1989 to 1992, Whitman worked at the Walt Disney Company, where she served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing for the Disney Consumer Products Division.

From 1992 to 1995, she served as President of the Stride Rite Corporation’s Children’s Division where she was responsible for the launch of the highly successful Munchkin baby shoe line and the repositioning of the Stride Rite brand and retail stores. She has also held the positions of executive vice president for the Keds Division and corporate vice president of strategic planning.

From 1995 to 1997, Whitman was President and CEO of FTD (Florists Transworld Delivery), the world’s largest floral products company. While at FTD, she oversaw its transition from a florist-owned association to a for-profit, privately owned company.

She then left to become the general manager of Hasbro Inc.’s Preschool Division, responsible for global management and marketing of two of the world’s best-known children’s brands, Playskool and Mr. Potato Head. During her tenure, Meg oversaw the reorganization of the Preschool Division and its resulting return to profitability.

As you can plainly see, as the corporate prodigy made her way through a series of posts at blue-chip companies, she certainly left her mark in a most positive way.

In 2005, she was interviewed by Disney’s board of directors to succeed Michael Eisner as CEO, but dropped out a week later, prompting the board to give the job to Robert Iger.

She then joined eBay and has been growing the organization at a fever pitch. I have a strange feeling she is far from slowing down.

Whitman is a multi-billionaire and one of the richest female CEOs in the world.

Whitman donated a significant sum of money to her alma mater, Princeton University, said to have totaled more than $30 million, which has allowed the construction of the university’s sixth residential college, Whitman College, opening this year.

She is married to Griffith R. Harsh IV, a neurosurgeon.

It might be interesting to keep your eye on this dynamic leader in the future. I’m certain her career and continuous success is far from finished.

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Day after day we see, hear, and use the names of leading businesses in many industries as though they were family members. In a way, I guess they really are. We use their products and services daily and have done so most of our lives … so much so that we often take them for granted and don’t realize how little we really know about them. We drive their cars, eat their food, wear their clothes, fly their airlines, stay in their hotels, rent their cars, watch their movies, and the list goes on and on. What would we do without them? Yet we know so little about them. We hope to change that with this particular feature. We’ll delve into those unknown but interesting facts about many well-known companies.  
 
PROCTER & GAMBLE

• Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Procter & Gamble community consists of over 135,000 employees working in more than 80 countries worldwide.
• What began as a small, family-operated soap and candle company now provides products and services of superior quality and value to consumers in over 180 countries.
• William Procter, a candlemaker, and James Gamble, a soapmaker, immigrants from England and Ireland respectively, might never have even met one another if they hadn’t married sisters, Olivia and Elizabeth Norris.
• Since both their industries used similar resources, the “Panic of 1837″ caused intense competition between the two and, as a result, it led to discord within the family. Alexander Norris, their father-in-law, decided to call a meeting where he convinced his new sons-in-law to become business partners. As a result of the suggestion, a new enterprise was born in October of 1837: Procter & Gamble.
• The company prospered during the nineteenth century. In 1859, their head count reached 80 and their sales reached one million dollars.
• In the 1880s Procter & Gamble began to market a new product, an inexpensive soap that floated in water. The company called the soap IVORY. It seemed to be an instant favorite for consumers and seemed to kick off an aggressive development and marketing program that placed P & G in a leadership role for decades to come.
• In April 2006 the company’s operations were categorized into three ”Business Units” with each unit divided into “Business Segments”:
  • P & G Beauty & Health Unit (Beauty Care segment — Health Care segment)
  • P & G Household Care Unit (Pet health, snacks, and coffee segment — Baby Care and Family Care segment — Fabric Care and Home Care segment)
  • Gillette Unit (Duracell & Braun segment — Blades & Razors segment)
• While hundreds of millions of consumers world-wide are very familiar with the many P & G brands, those same patrons may not be aware that their favorite brand belongs to the P & G family of growing products.
• The following 21 brands have reached the level of MORE than a billion dollars in sales annually!
  (Always – Bounty – Braun – Charmin – Crest – Dawn – Downy – Duracell – Folgers – Gillette – Gillette Mach 3 – Head & Shoulders – IAMS – Olay – Oral-B – Pampers – Pantene – Pringles – Tide – Wella – Fab)
• Procter & Gamble produces close to one hundred other very well-known products you see on your grocery shelves every day. That list would include popular staples such as Bold – Bonus – Bounce – Camay – Cascade – Charmin – Cheer – Clairol – Comet – Cover Girl – Dash – Dreft – Dryel – Febreze – Fixodent – Gaub – Gleem – Ivory – Joy – Loving Care – Luvs – Max Factor – Metamucil – Mirage – Miss Clairol – Mr. Clean – New Wave – Nice’n Easy – Noxema – NyQuil – DayQuil – Old Spice – Pepto-Bismol – Prilosec OC – Puffs – Safeguard – Scope – Secret – Sure – Swiffer – Tampex – Tempo – Thermacare – Vicks – Vidal Sassoon – Wash & Go – Whisper and Yes to name a few. 

Their ability to meet the needs of today’s consumer world wide seems to be as strong as ever. God Bless Fathers-in-Law. 

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Everyone knows the most recent headlines about our country’s greatest leaders. In this feature, we’d like to shed some light on the lesser-known facts about these folks in hopes of giving you a little greater insight as to what makes them tick.

Bill Gates

• William Henry Gates was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, USA.
• His father William was a corporate lawyer, and his mother Mary was a schoolteacher.
• By the age of 17, Gates had sold his first computer program, a time-tabling system for his high school, for $4,200.
• Gates scored 1590 on his SAT standardized test. The top score for the test is 1600.
• Gates told his university teachers he would be a millionaire by age 30. He became a billionaire at age 31.
• While at Harvard, Gates co-wrote Altair BASIC, which became Microsoft’s (then called Micro-Soft) first product.
• He met his wife, Melinda French, in 1987 at a Microsoft press event in Manhattan while she was a worker for the company. They would go on to get married on New Years Day in 1994. 
• In 2002, Bill Gates was considered more idolized than Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung in a poll of teenagers in Hong Kong and China. The survey was conducted by the City University of Hong Kong.
• In 2005, Gates was honored with the title Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II of England.
• As of the March 2007 issue of Forbes magazine, Bill Gates has been listed as Number 1 on “Forbes’ Richest People” list for 13 years in a row. His current net worth is about $56 billion.
• Gates has recently announced that he will be reducing his involvement at Microsoft and will be devoting more time to his charity work.
• He is currently having a building named after him at Carnegie Mellon University, called the Gates Building of Computer Science.
• Gates is the current owner of the Codex Leicester — a 72-page collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific writings. The writings are a mixture of observations on water properties, astronomy, and rocks and fossils. Gates puts the Codex on public display once a year in a different city around the world.
• Bill Gates earns $250 every SECOND; that’s about $20 million a DAY and $7.8 billion a YEAR!
• If he drops a thousand-dollar bill, he needn’t even bother to pick it up because in the four seconds it would take him to pick it up, he would’ve already earned it back.

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.