Focus on your employees
It hasn’t always been easy, but little by little, the merger of Republic, Frontier and Midwest is working out. The company ended 2009 with $1.6 billion in revenue but already had $1.3 billion through the first six months of 2010.
“We’ve been putting up record load factors for the last five months, so it feels like customers have been sticking with us,” Bedford says.
The technology problem is nearing resolution and Bedford says the company’s cultures are continuing to come closer together.
The most important lesson he takes from the experience is that you need to focus on your employees first, even if it comes at the expense of your customers.
“Naturally our inclination is to focus on the customer first,” Bedford says. “I’d probably flip it and say focus on your employees first. If it means delaying your customer initiatives by 90 days, it’s probably 90 days well spent. Just get to the acquisition and start immediately focusing on answering the why question to the employees: Why are we here? How did we get here? Where are we going from here?
“One of the biggest mistakes we made in the acquisition process was we became so focused on the customer experience, so focused on fixing the technology challenges that we knew were leading to a bad customer experience, that the employee emotions and psychology and this nebulous concept of trust, we did not spend the time we probably should have to develop that trust.”
It’s a lesson learned that Bedford believes will be valuable going forward.
“When people understand the why of what we’re trying to accomplish and why we’re trying to accomplish it and why it’s so important that we do it better than others, they get pretty jazzed up about it,” Bedford says. “But then as a management team, you have to deliver the why.”
How to reach: Republic Airways Holdings Inc., (317) 484-6000 or www.rjet.com
