Implement the vision
Eyeball to eyeball.
Woolsey says that is the most effective way to get employees
involved, so when the time came to turn planning into action,
Woolsey — a licensed pilot — did one of his favorite things. He took
to the air.
“I literally went to every single location; I looked eyeball to eyeball
with every single employee. I think I visited 27 cities in two months,”
he says. “Literally every day, I was in a new city, standing before all the
employees and really trying to push that passion and vision, trying to
get that buy-in.”
Above all else, Woolsey wanted to explain the “why” behind his
plan to refocus Million Air’s culture. When employees are used to
doing their jobs a certain way, getting them to see the big-picture
benefits of changing can be difficult. But the simple act of giving a
clearly stated reason can do wonders for their acceptance of the
idea.
“That is very important as a human, we all want to know why,” he
says. “There was a great study done. They had people on a subway,
dressed up, dressed down, young and old, male and female. They
got on a subway and asked if they could have a seat. When they
tried that, maybe 8 percent gave up their seats.
“But when they said, ‘Pardon me, may I have a seat because I want
to sit down,’ it was like 91 or 92 percent gave up their seats. How silly
is that if you stop to think? I’d like to have a seat because I want to sit
down. But if you’re asking someone to do something and you explain
the why, you have a 90 percent chance of being successful.”
Woolsey says communication is always the No. 1 priority when
trying to implement an organizational change. To keep messages
consistent, Woolsey didn’t vary the message by audience. Pilots,
office staff, financial managers, groundskeepers, all heard the
same messages from Million Air’s management.
“We have pilots, we have MBAs, we have people fresh out of high
school within the walls of our organization,” Woolsey says. “In the
beginning, I took a little criticism when I was talking about value
equations and strategy. Some of our senior general managers said
that Johnny, fresh out of high school, isn’t going to understand and
that I’m talking over their heads.
“My opinion was that I was not going to dumb down the organization by treating Johnny that way. I thought Johnny had more snap
than that and needed to understand the strategy of the organization.
That’s the only way the organization is going to make the strategy
come true, and I’m really glad I took that approach. Likewise, sometimes you make things simple and you can take some criticism that
things need to be a little more complicated, but I also don’t necessarily think that’s the truth.”
