In addition to his speaking and consultancy engagements Jan Lapidoth today runs his own publishing house – BookHouse Publishing – specialized in business books. To say that he is on top of everything happening in business innovation in the world to day is no to exaggerate.

Jan Lapidoth is most well known from his time with Scandinavian Airlines in the 1980s, when he undertook to revamp the service performance of the company with great success. At that time he was SAS’ first Vice President of Service, having been recruited to this position by its legendary CEO Jan Carlzon.

Jan Lapidoth’s ambition to build excellence in service originates from the time he worked as the travel agency Vingresor’s Regional Manger, based in Rhodes, Greece. Tour operations is a hands on business, dependant upon talented and well motivated young tour guides. Why couldn’t that experience be implanted in the more traditional culture of a national airline?

The recipe was not intellectually difficult. In effect it was rather simple. Attention to detail – and many, many details. And first of all respect for people’s wish to perform well in front of the customer. The formula became known as the “Moment of Truth” and most other service successes since have referred to their inspiration from that expression.

In the 90:s Jan left SAS to found Customer Focus Institute, a consultancy with a mission to help big service companies to implement their strategies. “Most service companies have great strategies around how to pamper their customers but difficulties in communicating and motivating their frontline employees” says Jan.