Raise the bar
Whether you have rough travels or not, another lesson McQuay
has learned is to constantly look to improve.
“As I tell my management team, the moment that you think
you’re there, you’re lost,” he says. “You have to constantly be raising the bar, and you got to be constantly looking at ways to provide
better services for your customers, and you can’t take anything for
granted. It’s not something where you ever really win. You have to
constantly be better.”
He says once you’re successful, you have to focus on more and
more opportunities to improve.
“You’ve got to analyze how it’s working within the business,”
McQuay says. “Understand your capabilities within the business
— clearly understand your competitors and what they’re doing,
and then take what you have as a business and apply it to what’s
going on in the industry and the marketplace and constantly communicate that to your people.”
In order to keep reaching those new goals and levels of excellence, your people have to be excited about them, as well.
“Adjust the incentives that you have so you’re keeping your people incentivized to produce in sync with the priorities of the business,” McQuay says.
One of the main ways to do that is to look at what people are
capable of and match it up with the new goals.
“Try to identify things that are critical to move it forward, and
then you analyze the business from the standpoint of seeing how
each person in the company can contribute to those goals and
establish incentives that are rewarding to both the company and
the individuals for producing to those levels,” he says.
Once they get you there, then, once again, you have to raise that
bar.
“There’s a lot of things in the business that will tell you when it’s
time,” McQuay says. “A lot of it has to do with the feeling that you
have for your business — the instinct — the inputs from your leadership team and from your employees about challenges and
opportunities that they all see and then constantly being aware of
what your capabilities of your business are so you don’t overex-tend yourself to the point that you not only keep the success you’re
at but achieve the levels of improvement that you’re working
toward.”
When you have that input and are making those decisions,
McQuay says to follow your natural instincts and that will help
you win.
“A lot of that comes from experience and instinct and, once
again, going for the single — the hit and run — and not trying to go
after the home run,” he says. “The home runs will come — you
have to focus on doing the basics.”
HOW TO REACH: Bombardier Flexjet, (800) FLEXJET or www.flexjet.com