[2] At the time Jan Carlzon took over the helm of SAS, the company was facing large financial difficulties and losing $17 million per annum[3] and had an international reputation for always being late.

Furthermore, the company had a reputation for being a very centralized organization, where decisions were hard to come by to the detriment of customers, shareholders, and staff.

Within one year of taking over, SAS had become the most punctual airline in Europe and had started an ongoing training program called Putting People First developed by Claus Møller of Time Manager International ('TMI').

The program was focused on delegating responsibility away from management and allowing customer-facing staff to make decisions to resolve any issues on the spot.

[3] Several case studies about the turn-around are available and it has been referenced widely in management literature[5][6] This decentralisation of the organization led to both a large boost in company morale and the formalization of the training methodology of the program in a joint venture in 1982 with TMI called Scandinavian Service School.

The flat organizational structure, delegation processes, and empowerment of employees adopted at SAS also led to Carlzon writing a book, Riv pyramiderna!

Carlzon also oversaw a complete corporate identity re-design, a process which was marred when a journalist gained unlawful access to a hangar with a plane painted in a proposed livery was photographed and widely published in Scandinavian newspapers.

Unfortunately, either the brief to the agency, Landor Associates, was not good enough or they had misunderstood it and painted the plane with 5 crowns to symbolize the 5 Nordic countries.