Sorry to take the topic off PJs however back to the thread title - Qantas - Where to now? - how about take a leaf out of this man's book.....
How top leaders are changing the game
The gospel according to John Borghetti, Virgin CEO
15 August 2012 Anthony Black
LeadingCompany | Advice, Articles and News for Business Leaders
“A chief executive’s real job is to provide vision, inspire and create hope for company employees. My job is to provide the tools our staff need to deliver on that vision. An important element is face-to-face communication. I’m on a plane at least once a day. You have to talk to people – they know more about things than you do."
That's the view of Virgin Australia chief executive John Borghetti, who likes to think of himself as a “people man”. He works in a people industry, a focal point, he says, that’s too often lost on other airline chief executives around the globe.
“Talk to CEOs in aviation around the world and what most want to discuss is cutting costs,” Borghetti says. “Of course, that’s normal business. But very few of them talk about how to improve their airline’s revenue streams, their service, or how to engage more with their customers or staff.
“Aviation can be complicated, but fundamentally it’s pretty basic. It’s firstly a people business, not a numbers business. Every airline in the world flies the same aluminium tube through the air. The paint-jobs and seats might be different. But what separates airlines are the people they employ. Run the business right and the consequence will be good numbers.”
After becoming chief executive in May 2010, Borghetti’s strategy included repositioning an airline that had lost its way.
The turnaround
He says before joining the airline – Virgin Blue, as it was known then – it had deviated from its initial model as a low-cost carrier to a mid-tier one by introducing loyalty schemes, a limited range of lounges and premium economy. This led to higher costs, and competitors took advantage by offering cheaper fares.
Also, Virgin Blue was almost totally dependent on the leisure market, exposing the company to big losses from natural disasters. Borghetti says Virgin lost more than $100 million in six months due to the Christchurch earthquakes, Queensland floods and volcanic ash clouds.
“We had to diversify our revenue base from our dominant leisure market,” Borghetti says.
His aptly-named “game change” strategy included competing against Qantas in the more lucrative business segment. Qantas dominated the business travel segment before Virgin entered the space in January 2011.
“In any business, when you enter an almost monopolistic market, there’s only two things that are guaranteed,” Borghetti says. “The monopolist will wind up losing market share and the new entrant will win some. The only question is how much? When you see a monopoly, you think, I could take a crack at that.”
To entice business travellers, Virgin started a price war, undercutting Qantas business fares by 27%, which Borghetti says is sustainable over the longer term. “We’re gaining on Qantas,” he says. “We now have about 30% of capacity in the market while Qantas has about 65%. Take out Jetstar, and Qantas has about 45%. I don’t call it a price war – I call it competition. We haven’t cut fares for the short term.”
A new vision
Borghetti, a former Qantas senior executive and employee for more than 35 years, had a vision for Virgin just before he was appointed. He told the board: “If I’m going to take this role, here’s the strategy, so if you buy the strategy, then I’ll take the job.”
He says the company had too many brands – Virgin Blue, Pacific Blue, Polynesian Blue – and their different offerings confused customers. So he changed the company name to Virgin Australia last year to provide a new identity and a single customer proposition.
Aircraft interiors were modified for business class, new lounges were built, existing lounges were renovated and terminals upgraded. “On the service side, we had to create a network that gave us global coverage,” he says. “We elected to do it through strategic alliance partners, so we could co-operate on pricing, scheduling, co-ordination and reciprocity in terms of frequent flyer programs.
“So now we have a global network that can fly you into more than 400 destinations around the globe, to destinations on other people’s airlines with our code and passengers can still earn frequent flyer points. That was the other important thing – we needed a frequent flyer program that covered the globe and was competitive. When I joined, we had 1.8 million frequent flyers and I was told the program was pretty well matured. Today, we have way over three million and it’s growing by about 1600 members a day. We needed that critical mass.”
Borghetti changed the composition of the aircraft flown on different routes to extract the most value. Long-range planes were taken off relatively short routes and wide-bodied aircraft, providing more room and comfort, were introduced between Australia’s east and west coasts.
More fuel-efficient planes, the ATR 72s, were introduced on new regional routes from capital cities; the routes Borghetti considered to be monopolised, such as Emerald, Gladstone and Port Macquarie. Borghetti also increased the number of flights between Melbourne and Sydney from the low 20s to 31 a day. He considers the three growth routes in Australia to be from the east coast to Western Australia, regional markets within a state and between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
But, as he says, having a strategy is one thing, and executing it is quite another. Borghetti is almost two years into a three-year plan that he continues to roadshow at least twice a year to his 7000 staff, sharemarket analysts and journalists.
Why it works
“To make a strategy work, it’s all about communication,” he says. “You have to be able to convince the staff that what you’re doing is the right way forward and is going to benefit the business. It’s easier to convince people if you believe in it. Everyone likes clarity – you can’t execute a plan if it’s confusing. And stick to the strategy; it might need tweaking here and there, but it has to be consistent. Don’t drastically change it every two or three months – that’s a certain highway to failure.
“A chief executive’s real job is to provide vision, inspire and create hope for company employees. My job is to provide the tools our staff need to deliver on that vision. An important element is face-to-face communication. I’m on a plane at least once a day. You have to talk to people – they know more about things than you do.
“What a pilot sees in an hour, management won’t see in a week. Management sending emails and letters is all very nice, but 90% of them don’t get read. They get deleted. I talk to passengers in lounges and ask where we can improve and how we can make them more comfortable. They may be very basic questions, but the feedback delivers a lot.”
By all accounts, Borghetti’s strategy appears to be working. Investors will find out when he delivers the company’s full-year results in late August.
About this time last year, the company reported a net loss after tax of $67.8 million for the 12 months to June 30, 2011. This result included $36 million in unrealised foreign exchange losses due to the rising Australian dollar. But for the half year to December 31, 2011, Virgin Australia reported a statutory net profit after tax of $51.8 million, up 118% on the prior corresponding period. Total revenue for the six-month period increased by 18% to $2 billion.
The right staff
Borghetti is also fussy about who he hires.
“I would rather employ someone without a degree, but who has a lot of energy, passion and a can-do attitude than someone who’s got 10 degrees, lacks personality and lacks any form of urgency,” he says. “Because you can’t teach those skills. You can teach technical skills, but you can’t always teach people about character.
“If I’m employing someone in senior management, I will never read a person’s CV until I’ve made up my mind. The reason is everybody’s CV looks brilliant – they’re geniuses. Have you ever read a bad CV? I would rather talk to prospective employees face-to-face. If you think there’s something there, then you go back and look at the CV. I put a lot of emphasis on a person’s character and attitude. You can tell when someone has the right attitude and that’s what I want.”
The gospel according to John Borghetti
Q: What is the one thing a leader should never say or do?
A: A leader should never say: “It can’t be done”. A leader should never become complacent.
Q: What elements are critical to achieving change?
A: Vision, belief and communication. When I arrived, I had the vision, but how was I going to make it work? You have to be able to sell a story. And the only way you can sell it is with honesty and conviction. If the board, management and staff see you are confident and you believe in the story, they will generally come along in the same direction.
Q: What makes a workforce productive or more productive?
A: Strong leadership. You have to lead from the front, by example. You should never tell or ask anybody to do something that you haven’t done yourself. The moment you do that, you lose touch with reality. There’s only three things staff have to do to make a customer happy. They have to look people in the eye, smile and call them by their name. Those three things will hide a multitude of errors.
Q: What important qualities do you look for in your direct reports?
A: Urgency, attitude, decisiveness and an ability to lead people.
Q: What is your favourite source of leadership inspiration and ideas?
A: Life in general. I learn from as many people as I can. I learn from mistakes. I don’t have a mentor. One person can’t get everything right all the time.
Q: What was the worst moment of your career?
A: September 11, 2001. I was with Qantas and two of our staff died when the planes hit the buildings in New York. Qantas also had planes in American airspace at the time of the attacks, and were ordered to land at the nearest airfields. Ansett was about to go broke at the time, so we had been working long hours in case it did. I was awoken to be told of the terrorist attacks. I turned on the TV to see shocking pictures; the worst nightmare. It was surreal. All these things going through your head at the one time. Terrible.
. 
) has been a recurring problem out of LAX. 
Q needs and needed change and he would have made enemies in doing things his way but I do believe he would have a done a far better job at making the changes with a lot less acrimony.
) the 'effiencies' are maintained which makes the bottom line look groovy, but in the long term the business suffers because the bonus system doesn't take into account the fact that sometimes a company needs to spend money on boring things like staff and maintenance. 
