Define and design the vision
When Woolsey took over Million Air, he challenged every employee
at every location to view the company and the brand through the eyes
of the customers.
“We stopped and closed our eyes, and we asked, ‘When someone
says Million Air, what do we want then to think and feel? What do
we want them to smell and sense?’” Woolsey says.
“‘What is our product?’ That is such a great question that every CEO
can ask themselves. A lot of times, what you sell is not what they are
buying.”
The answer went beyond the act of flying passengers from one place
to another. In the charter jet business, as with any luxury-focused business, the product is an image, along with the results to support that
image.
“An example I love is when you go to Home Depot and you buy a
quarter-inch drill bit. Are you buying a quarter-inch drill bit or a
quarter-inch hole?” he says. “When your people really understand,
they realize that customers aren’t buying products or even services.
They’re buying results. When you understand what that result is,
you can better craft it for them.”
The key to developing that understanding is to keep your employees
involved as you define your company’s mission and design a plan of
attack. At Million Air, Woolsey used mass communication to get the initial message out.
“As the leader, I had to come to the table with some clear convictions
and understanding of where I wanted to take the organization,” he
says. “I started out by making phone calls to each location, giving them
my ideas of where I was headed and soliciting their input. I then distilled that into written documentation and sent it out in e-mail masses
to every single employee. Whether it was the gentleman who mows the
grass in Burbank, Calif., the lady who sweeps the floors in New York
City, the CFO in Houston, I asked them, ‘Hey, here’s what I’m thinking,
where I’m headed, help me clarify that.’”
Woolsey pooled the feedback, decided what he wanted to adopt,
what he wanted to disregard and what he wanted to table for further discussion among the company’s leaders.
Employee input is good, but too much information can lead to a
case of paralysis by analysis. As much as you might want to give
employees their say in crafting the future direction of the company,
sooner or later you’re going to have to make something happen.
“In any leadership role, we can overanalyze, we can sometimes solicit too much input,” he says. “At the end of the day, you really have to
listen to your gut, use some science and blend it with the input from
the people on the front lines, then try to make a decision. Once you
make that decision, you have to close your eyes and mash on the gas.”
