Roger Woolsey says you might own your product or service, but
your customer owns your reputation. In other words, your company is what your customers think it is. In 2002, when Woolsey
acquired Million Air Interlink Inc., what customers saw depended
on the location. Woolsey, now the president and CEO of the charter air service company, was transitioning from franchisee to franchisor. As he gained a wide-angle view of Million Air, one thing
became apparent above everything else — Million Air didn’t have a
defined culture, so the Million Air name meant different things to
different people, depending on which of the company’s 27 airport-based operations you found yourself at.
“If you had to take a snapshot of what Million Air was in 2002, we
were in 27 cities, we had 27 management styles, 27 [profit and loss]
statements, 27 cultures, 27 independent ways of hiring, and we really
had to reinvent the whole system,” Woolsey says Not only did the system have to change, the very definition of Million Air had to be identified and communicated to airport staffers around the country, and the
Million Air pilots who cover the distances in between. Though the company is well established with a 25-year history and $700 million in 2007
revenue, it was virtually like starting from scratch with a brand-new
vision.
The solution for Woolsey and his leadership team was formed in
five steps — define exactly what Million Air’s image should be,
design a plan to promote that image, train employees to promote
the image, live it daily, then use the new image to grow the company.
