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Shortly after the turn of the Millennium I went to India to do programs about the Digital Revolution and how it would change commerce around the world. One of the joys of the trip was my travelling companion, Dr. Jim Knight, Dean of Continuing Education at the University of Florida.

The University was part of a partnership that was sponsoring my programs, along with a US company and an Indian company. Jim was along to get a feel for whether it made sense to do more programs.

He was a great person to travel with. He had good sense of humor, a keen intelligence, a penetrating curiosity and the kind of balance that holds things together during the usual glitches in international travel.

One of those glitches happened when we were late leaving the US. The connection in Frankfurt was going to be tight anyway. It got even tighter when we left late. It got tighter still when we lost time in the air.

The result was that when we got to Frankfurt we had less than five minutes to make it to the Lufthansa flight that would take us to Mumbai. It would be a miracle if we made it. I just assumed that our luggage would not. I reckoned without Lufthansa.

At Frankfurt we charged up the jet-way where we were met by a line of uniformed men and women from Lufthansa pointing us to our Mumbai flight, half a concourse away. As we neared the departure gate I spotted a man who seemed to be in charge.

I gasped out the question of when our luggage would make it to Mumbai. In heavily accented English he told me that it would be on our flight.

I didn't see how that was possible so I gasped again, "Are you sure?"

He gave me a stern look and almost came to attention. "Sir, this is Lufthansa!"

When we got to Mumbai, our bags were on the plane. Somehow in less time than my normal US airlines would take to open the cargo door, people from Lufthansa and found our bags and raced them over to make sure they made the flight to India.

I've thought about that many times since. It was amazing enough that the airline organized a cordon of their employees to help us make a flight with moments to spare. It was amazing that they transferred our bags so they were on the plane with us.

But the most amazing thing to me was the supervisor who simply assumed that they would make it all happen. He was almost scornful of my doubt that that they would pull of what I thought of as a miracle.

It wasn't a miracle to him. It was his job. That is what performance culture is all about.