Jan Carlzon was head of the Scandinavian Air System (SAS) in the 1980's. The airline had lost money in 1979-80 but while other airlines went on to lose record amounts of money, SAS returned to high profitability and became airline of the year. Carlzon's approach was customer service which he achieved by empowering the front line staff. He sought to cement in this revolution by an extraordinary attack on middle management. He reduced its numbers dramatically and sought to make the remainder responsible for breaking down the inter-departmental barriers which he saw them guilty of creating in the first place. The problem with middle management is that of silo management — the creation of vertical empires in an organisation that appear to live for their own needs and between which communication is often impossible. This silo structure greatly inhibits customer service.

Carlzon reversed the normal pyramid view of organisations that shows the boss at the top and the people who actually meet customers at the bottom. In Carlzon's view, the only justification for management is that it should enable and facilitate the people in customer contact to do their jobs well. Thus, he drew the chart with himself at the bottom, the customer at the top and the customer contact people just below them — a reverse pyramid. (In English, his book was called Moments of Truth.) .

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