Flying High, My Story Page 13

  In the same month, we were named the world’s Best Low-Cost Carrier for the ninth year running. We are no longer the underdog or the Robin Hood of the aviation business. We are now a Goliath and becoming a Goliath brings a whole new set of challenges.

  There’s a poster up on the wall of the sixth floor of RedQ which Din points to when he’s talking to people about AirAsia. It says simply, ‘Work hard. Stay humble.’

  I reminded our senior management team of this at a conference we had in Phuket in 2017. The theme of the conference was future planning and culture. I wanted to restate to the senior team the story of our origins, our mission and our values because if we want to dominate the aviation business in Asia, we have to continue to act like David even though we are Goliath. How we do that was the essence of the conference. Culture, I said, was central to being able to achieve this.

  How do you create and maintain the right culture to become the world beaters AirAsia has become? It comes from the people and from ways of doing and thinking.

  One of the things we have always done is look inwards – we don’t care about competitors. Our competitors are ourselves. The day our ego gets the better of us, the day we don’t focus on costs, that’s the day we have to worry. That’s our competition, always. Our discipline of competing with ourselves on cost is fundamental to maintaining our place.

  While a lot of companies focus on external branding, I believe that internal branding – what the staff think of the company, how they respond to the mission and strategy – is more important. If the staff understand, support and enhance your ideals, you’re 50 per cent of the way there. Why try to sell your vision to outsiders if your staff don’t get it? If they do get it, every single member of staff is a walking advertisement and endorsement. That’s what we’ve been so good at and when it came to QZ8501 and the way our staff responded, I think you can see its value.

  As I’ve said, creating an environment in which people can express themselves is paramount. A lot of our best ideas come from the staff; this would be the case in most businesses but we have created a culture that encourages everyone to express those ideas. And it’s vital that with the massive increase in staff – from 200 to 20,000 in sixteen years – there is the environment and platform to continue to allow that to happen.

  Way back in 2004, Celia Lao Sio Wun (who was our first employee recruited in greater China and is now in charge of our operations in Hong Kong and Macau) suggested we fly to Macau. We were the first low-cost airline to do so. We’ve been going ever since and now operate four flights a day from Kuala Lumpur and more from other hubs.

  Wherever I spend time within the AirAsia family I get suggestions and pick up ideas. For example, I went to the funeral of one of our Indian engineers, which was deeply moving. Afterwards, a mourning colleague told me about a destination called Tiruchirappalli, which I’d never heard of. I got our route planners to investigate and we’re now flying there regularly. Again, we’re one of the first to do it.

  In the early days, I was talking to the chief engineer, who said that he thought we could extend the life of the aeroplane tyres if the pilots landed the aircraft in a slightly different way.

  ‘Why don’t you tell them?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that. Us engineers can’t tell a pilot how to fly a plane,’ he replied hesitantly.

  ‘Well, that changes now,’ I stated.

  At the time, we only had six or seven planes and they’d all come back to Kuala Lumpur at the end of each day when the engineers would get to work on them overnight. I used to call the pilots in to talk about the day gone and the day ahead. That night I left the chief engineer to talk to the pilots about his idea. At about midnight my PA, Kim, called me and said, ‘I think you’d better come in. It’s getting a bit hot in the meeting.’

  I walked in and there was a lot of hostility in the room from the pilots. After hearing their concerns I said: ‘Guys, it’s for your own benefit.’

  We increased the landings per set of wheels from 80 to 220. It was also the start of a close collaboration between the pilots and the engineers. That was the day I decided they should both have the same epaulettes on their shoulders – after all, without engineers, pilots wouldn’t be able to fly.

  If people are too scared to speak out, they won’t come up with ideas and the company won’t innovate. When a business isn’t innovating, it will die. Just look at Nokia, BlackBerry or Kodak, who all stood still and suffered. A business has to evolve and the people are the drivers for change. How the company adapts and deals with change is critical.

  We had been using Google+ as our intra-company communications platform since the early days but it wasn’t really helping our Allstars get their ideas and messages out. It just wasn’t up to it. One day I saw an article about Facebook’s new platform for business communication, Facebook Workplace, in the Wall Street Journal. I was in touch with Facebook the next day and we had signed a deal to install it for all our staff within four days. We had 8,000 people talking to each other instantly. You have to innovate and, when you do, you have to move quickly. A lot of companies would have gone through a six-month evaluation process, got their technical teams, HR and representatives from each department to represent their voices, before finally making a decision. That’s way too slow – paralysis by analysis once more. The whole idea loses momentum and focus and will probably be dead in the water before it’s even launched.

  I encourage my staff to tell me if they don’t like something about the business – anything. That isn’t to say that I’m going to agree every time but at least there is the platform and opportunity to say it without fear of the sack or censure in some way. Recently, I withdrew some flight coupons (AirAsia staff get heavily discounted flights on our routes) because they were being abused. I got a ton of messages complaining about it – people said they thought it was wrong or unfair or suggested a different way of tackling the problem. I listened to the ideas, engaged in the conversation, and as a collective group we reformed the policy in under six hours. I was proud of everyone at that point for two reasons: first, that they had the courage to stand up against something they believed wasn’t right; and second, because the culture and environment meant they could do so without being scared.

  Every manager, director and CEO says they have an open-door policy, but their door’s always closed. We’ve abandoned doors altogether: offices are a major source of frustration and politics, which create barriers to communication. Having a working space where people can move around and talk to each other regardless of who they are is so important. Not enough modern leaders spend time simply walking around their workplaces; they sit there in ivory towers on the sixth or sixtieth floor and feel they are too important to mix. I spend half my time walking around, talking to people and asking questions about their family; establishing a rapport and listening. It gives everyone a sense of ‘He knows what I do and he cares about it’, which is vital for company loyalty and for a culture in which sharing is valued. I do the same whenever I take an AirAsia flight – I get up and say ‘hello’ to the passengers. You learn so much from everyone you talk to and they’re sitting ducks for two hours – I urge my cabin crew to get as much information from every passenger as possible. The information is so much more useful than 1,000 customer feedback forms.

  My style is different from most Asian management, which is rigidly hierarchical. Instead, I believe in democracy and that flat structures are the best way. My aim is that from top to bottom there should be only three layers; there shouldn’t be multiple branches to the management tree. People should be allowed to get on with their jobs, becoming better and better at them. Too often, layers are created to appease people who want a better job title, but management have to concentrate on the work that’s being done.

  Hierarchy is one weight I’ve tried to reduce at AirAsia. Another is bureaucracy, which I think is possibly the biggest enemy of an organization. Facebook Workplace is a tool to combat this. Instead of sending ou
t companywide emails from HR or the Comms team, anyone can upload a video, share a thought or chip in to a discussion. You have to have rules, particularly in a business like aviation, but within that framework you have to have freedom; bureaucracy kills a lot of creativity.

  At the conference in Phuket, we talked a lot about getting back to the dynamic culture of our smaller, younger days. Too often I felt I’d seen people hiding behind spreadsheets or in meetings. Aviation is about providing a safe, cheap, enjoyable journey for passengers. You can’t be a part of that if you sit in front of a laptop screen all day. I encouraged everyone to get out and fly as much as possible.

  After sixteen years, there are three main things that I’ve learned about running businesses. Call it my business philosophy if you like.

  A company must be able to adapt to change.

  A company must be disruptive – it must create models that weren’t there before.

  A company must have the right people.

  Where I’ve been less successful in the past is when one of those three things wasn’t applied.

  The future is now about moving AirAsia from ‘just’ an airline to a big-data technology company, because that’s what I see as the next frontier. Data is the new oil and I want AirAsia not only to be the world’s best low-cost airline every year in the future, I want it to be a data platform to drive other businesses. But that’s for another chapter.

  9. Ground Speed

  Soundtrack: ‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman

  From the outside, my Formula One experience looks pretty shambolic: I ended up in court, created a team that didn’t do well and in the process lost a lot of money. As a business venture, you’d mark it up as a disaster. But while all that is true, I actually think that F1 was good for me and for AirAsia, and if I was given the chance to do it again, I’d leap at it. I’d do it differently, admittedly – but I’d definitely do it.

  A passion for racing reaches back to my childhood. As a kid, the highlight of my year was to go to the small racetrack at Batu Tiga with my dad, about half an hour in the car from Damansara Heights. We’d go for a full weekend, taking in all of the Formula Two and MotoGP races that were on the programme. The noise, the huge crowds, the edge of competition have all stayed with me.

  When I came to England in 1977, my day-student friends would invite me to their homes on Sundays to watch the Grand Prix on TV. Later in my school career, I’d go to Brands Hatch and sit outside the circuit listening to the cars, spending the weekend there camping. I never had enough money to go into the track, but the thrill of being there on race weekends was enough.

  My hero from the start was Frank Williams. He was also one of my tuck-box stickers.

  Frank had started off as a driver and mechanic before moving on to designing and producing cars, initially in the Formula Two and Three classes. In 1977, the year I started at Epsom, he entered the Formula One championship, coming second in the constructors’ championship in 1979 and then winning both the drivers’ title with Alan Jones and the constructors’ competition in 1980. Perhaps it is because his career coincided with the start of my new life at Epsom, or because he was so passionate about his profession, his cars, the drivers and the sport, but to me Frank Williams is a legend.

  I have followed motor racing throughout my life. I cried when I went, with my family, to the first Malaysian Grand Prix in 1999 at the newly built Sepang International Circuit. Just hearing the rev of the Formula One engines and imagining what my dad would have made of a Grand Prix starting in Malaysia was enough to tip me over the edge. I went back as often as I could.

  As has often happened in my life, one business I’m involved with takes me into new worlds and I’ve been lucky enough that the new world is one I’m passionately interested in. This was the case when AirAsia did the Manchester United sponsorship deal in 2005. When the press reported that we were thinking of that deal, Marcus Wight, who worked at the French advertising giant Havas, got in touch. We started to work together on the Man United deal – he and colleague Nick Lockwood helped the marketing team through the whole process and another important partnership was formed.

  It was also the start of a relationship with the two of them that is still going strong today. When they decided to set up their own media and sponsorship company, called Phar, I encouraged them to grow their business in South East Asia. I always told them there was more to life than catching the same train every morning from a Surrey station. It has given me great pleasure to see Phar grow throughout the region over the years and one day I think I will help them take on Havas.

  I’m unusual in the airline business because, with the exception of Richard Branson, I’m by nature a marketeer and a brand creator. A lot of airline CEOs are aviation experts but I’ve come at the business from a different angle and it’s served me well. The Man United deal had been superb for our brand so Marcus, Nick and I started to explore other ideas.

  Two thousand and seven was a good time to be a sponsor. There wasn’t a lot of cash around for it because of the financial crash and Marcus and Nick got us increasingly good deals in the world of Formula One, starting with just the AirAsia logo on the driver’s helmet, before we began to talk to Williams about a spot on the car itself.

  As with any other deal, sponsorship for me is about the relationship with the partners. At the point that we were about to spend more with Williams, Din and I went to Oxfordshire in March 2007 to meet Frank Williams. Like I said, my life has been about making my dreams come true. If I’d known when I was fifteen I was going to write that sentence, I’d have pinched myself. The meeting was one of the biggest thrills of my life – the man was such an inspiration. Our sponsorship was a three-year deal for a small AirAsia flash on the Williams car but that wasn’t really the point. Frank released a statement that was worth more than its weight in gold when we signed:

  We are immensely proud to have AirAsia as the latest addition to our partner portfolio. From a standing start, it now carries more passengers than Singapore Airlines in a matter of five years and is a very impressive organisation with clear global ambition. We look forward to assisting this ongoing international growth and, of course, to the team using AirAsia’s services for the significant number of races we now attend in locations served by the airline.

  The point about sponsorship is not the money you spend or the exposure you get from the placement of your logo, it’s about making the association come alive for people – what sponsorship people call ‘activation’. You have to plan and budget for this. Once you pay for the sponsorship itself you have to set aside the same amount of money to exploit and squeeze the association you have with Williams or Manchester United. Activation is the key to making any sponsorship deal work.

  On 8 April 2007 I stood with the Williams team on the starting grid of the Sepang International Circuit wearing my red AirAsia cap. If my dad could have seen me, he would have been so proud. I wiped a tear away and looked around: 120,000 fans at the circuit with millions watching worldwide. Earlier that week the F1 team had flown into Kuala Lumpur on an AirAsia Airbus painted in the Williams colours, and it was broadcast live on TV: the activation was starting to pay off.

  To be honest, I think I’d have been happy to keep going with the Williams sponsorship deal. I got to go to a Grand Prix and hang out with incredible people like Frank Williams, Ron Dennis (the legend behind McLaren) and the drivers. AirAsia benefited from extraordinary exposure globally. The estimated worldwide television audience for Formula One in 2008 was 600 million viewers – no amount of lavish advertising, canny marketing or controversial PR can get you that kind of recognition. With all the side events and spin-offs we were able to run, the money invested was more than worth it.

  But in June 2009, I was on my way to Ascot when my phone went.

  ‘Tony, it’s Déj.’

  ‘Hello, my man. What’s happening?’

  ‘You know you like motor racing? A friend asked me whether you’d like to put an F1 bid together.’


  ‘Hahaha.’

  ‘I’m serious. There’s an opening in the 2010 season – BMW has withdrawn so there’s a slot, if you’re interested.’

  As always with life, if someone offers you an opportunity, the very least you can do is have a proper look at it.

  I went to meet Max Mosley at Brands Hatch. First up, I asked him to tell me straight: how much did it cost to run a Formula One team? His answer was $40 million a year – less than previous years because the plan for the 2010 season was to place less emphasis on the technology and engineering, and to get back to racing. This appealed. It was still an eye-watering amount of money but the concept of pitting the drivers against each other rather than focusing on the size of engineering budgets meant that a new team would have more of a chance of getting at least the odd point. Din and I looked hard at the numbers and decided we still needed another partner. We called S. M. Nasarudin, who was CEO of the Naza Group, a conglomerate which mainly deals in car trading. He agreed to come in with us.

  If we were going to do this we’d have to build a team and a car from scratch. As with AirAsia, we knew nothing about the business we were getting into. Our first port of call, after we’d met Max, was to talk to a man called Mike Gascoyne.

  Mike’s last job had been chief technology officer at Force India – previously known as Spyker – and before that he had worked at McLaren, Tyrrell, Jordan, Benetton/Renault and Toyota. Mike was being eased out of Force India, so he signed up as our technical director, which meant leading the design and build of our car.

  Then we went for it. We had to put a bid together to present to the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), motor sport’s governing body, and provide bank guarantees. Din and I looked after the money side and left the bid to the experts: Nino Judge, who had worked with Lotus for years, Sir Harry Nuttall, a sports marketing entrepreneur, and Mike Gascoyne. We had hoped that Petronas would sponsor us but they opted for Sauber instead – a shame that the Malaysian oil and gas company wouldn’t get behind a local team. However, Proton, the Malaysian car manufacturer – whose parent company is DRB-HICOM – did grant us permission to use the historic Lotus Racing brand for our team. The team presented our case in late July 2009 and we waited.