The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership by Richard Branson

all I could do was smile and do a lame ‘Ooh baby!’ impression of Austin Powers.
    Back in Australia, though, there are still a couple of things on which John Borghetti and I have not completely come to terms as yet. First of all he expressed a concern that we spent too much time and money on staff parties – that’s one that I think we will win him over on after he’s been to a few more of them. The other one is his proclivity for tie wearing – something borne out of all those years at stuffy old Qantas, I’m sure. This is another part of the ‘Virginisation’ process that I am confident will also get sorted out in time: so far I think I have only snipped off a couple of his expensive silk ties with my ever-ready scissors. With other chronic tie-wearing cases such as John, I’ve found it can sometimes take as many as three or four ‘tiectomies’ before they are completely cured of the habit.
    Our second ‘imported’ airline CEO is Craig Kreeger at Virgin Atlantic who, like John in Australia, joined us after a very long time at a legacy airline. In Craig’s case he put in twenty-seven years at American Airlines, but despite this it appears he won’t be too difficult to ‘untie’. I met Craig for the first time when he came to Necker Island as the last stop on the selection process bandwagon. When I asked him what his greatest concern was about coming to work for Virgin he surprised me by saying, ‘Well, to be perfectly honest, Richard, probably knowing what to pack to come down here to meet you. I figured that I wouldn’t need a tie but after that I hadn’t got a clue as to what the dress code was going to be!’ I think Craig must be the first person ever to have worried about ‘dress code’ when meeting me, and I am sure it will never again be a problem for him.
    As with John in Australia three years earlier, Craig’s hiring may have been a surprise to a few people who had thought Steve Ridgway’s successor (Steve had been Virgin Atlantic’s CEO for twelve years) was probably going to come from within the airline. Again, though, like in Australia, we opted to take someone from a big legacy carrier – it wasn’t the first time we went fishing at American, having hired David Cush from there to head up Virgin America some years earlier. From the get-go I was impressed with Craig’s easy-going manner and one part of his CV also jumped off the page: his role at American several years earlier in London had included putting together American Airlines’ big alliance with British Airways. As we were just about to announce that Delta Air Lines had acquired the 49 per cent stake in Virgin Atlantic that Singapore Airlines had held for a number of years, we needed someone to mastermind that new relationship on our behalf. Singapore had always been a very passive partner, but the Delta relationship was going to be very different and maximising on every ounce of the many transatlantic synergies the new relationship would present was going to be critical to the on-going growth and profitability of the airline we had built from scratch in 1984.
    So Craig was our man and while at the time of writing he is still relatively new to the job he is already making his mark and has established a highly comprehensive two-year plan against which everyone can measure their own and the company’s progress. Both John and Craig are demonstrating my long-held belief that everything can always be improved upon and often only someone who has seen your operation from the outside in can bring the required perspective and willingness to upset even a pretty sturdy applecart.
    So don’t spend all your time obsessing over what the competition is up to – divert some of that energy to looking in the mirror to see how you appear to your employees, your competition and your customers. And you shouldn’t wait until the tyres start falling off before you get out there and kick them; do it while the going’s good if you want to keep it