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Excellent Executive Coaching: Growing Your Business and Enhancing Your Craft.
EEC 417: From Failure to Leadership Success: Swiss International Airlines featuring Lorenzo Stoll
00:19:33
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Transcript43 lines
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Foreign.
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And this podcast is part of a series on excellent international leadership. So I hope you will enjoy it. It's reissuing it and it explains how these powerful leaders, what they credit their success to enjoy. Welcome Mr. Lorenzo Stoll. I'm delighted to have you here. Could you tell us a little bit about you and your career till date?
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Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to have this discussion with you. A few words about myself. Well, I'm turning 44 years old this year. I was raised from a Swiss Italian mother and a Swiss German father in in Swiss Romans. So I do believe I am a kind of a complete Swiss because I have the Swiss German rigor combined with the Ticinese passion, but the whole mixed with some romand douceur de vivre. I studied, I had a maturity in modern languages. French, Italian, German and English.
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B
Do you speak four languages at least?
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At least, yeah, because my mother language is Italian because at home we were always speaking Italian. Then having a Swiss German father, I'm fluent in German and in Swiss German. Now we can have the semantic discussion if this is two languages or one. And then I use French every day and I practice my English as often as I can.
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B
That's great. So tell me what you particularly like about your job today and describe us a little bit what the job consists of.
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A
Well, in my function as the general manager for Swiss in Swiss Romande, I think we're trying to demonstrate that Swiss can provide an alternative to the competitors that are present on the market today. And I think what makes the job so fascinating and so passionate is that it is a job that mixes technological complexity, which is the airline operation as such with very high financial stakes. Because there is an aircraft is an expensive asset to operate with emotions because the flying keeps a certain sense of magic and the passion those people have about flying. So if you that unique cocktail makes me say that I probably have one of the most interesting jobs you can have in Swiss Romande currently.
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B
Wow, that sounds very interesting. And what are some of the challenges you have currently in the environment? Because I mean the planes and travel is very competitive.
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So as an airline based in Geneva, the biggest competitive challenge we face is that we come with a legacy carrier structure. So we have a history. We were born from the bankruptcy of Suissaire and we need to compete against low cost carriers which have come to the market about 15 to 20 years ago with an absolutely new model, an absolutely new way of traveling. And because they were so innovative about it, they've been able to gain a Lot of market shares.
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So explain for our listeners what was the old model, the old business model and how would you qualify the current.
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Business model before what we started doing here in Geneva with Swiss Swiss was what is called a hub and spoke carrier. So the whole network and the whole way of doing the fares and the prices was designed to concentrate a maximum of people on a given platform that would be our Zurich hub and then from then have them fly to another destination. What we have changed now is that in Geneva we moved away from the hub and spoke concept to a point to point concept. So we have built our total network. So to fly from one destination to another and the connection is not the first decision driver. The first decision driver for our passengers to travel with us is that they need to go somewhere and that we provide them with a good price and a good schedule. This is what drives the decision on a point to point network versus a hub and spoke network.
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B
And what brought the industry to that decision?
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I think as I said, the game changes on the short haul business in Europe were the low cost carriers because they came and brought this point to point service which was not part of the industry standard 20 years ago. And as every time where people or companies show up as game changers at the beginning they were a bit spotted and said, hey, okay, your model is not going to fly because we have, you know, we are the biggest historic carriers. And they have proven that the historic carriers were wrong because they created a travel need from nothing. Because effectively, who wants to fly to a remote destination in Europe like for example London, I know that's not remote, like Rennes, for example, there's no need to go to Rennes. But if you told you can go to Rennes for 40 Swiss francs the round trip, you might consider going, spending a weekend in Rennes. And that was where the competition really started rising against the legacy carriers. We're saying first of all, we don't go to Rennes because we don't see the potential for the market there. And second of all, if you take you there, you will pay a significantly higher price. Because we come from this history. We came from almost a monopolistic situation. And the low cost carriers came and literally shook down the market with something new. I think they were as visionary 20 years ago as for example Elon Musk is today with Tesla reinventing a market, totally reinventing. And we had to adapt and it took us a lot of time. But now since 2013, Swiss in Geneva, I think we are reinventing ourselves very fast and providing to the Passengers an alternative to the low cost carrier experience because it's slightly also another travel experience.
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B
So that must have been quite a challenge for Swiss.
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It is still a big challenge for Swiss because you need to rethink your business model. You need to rethink your way of working. You might have to consider some of your company culture to be rethought. You might have to rethink some of your leadership. And then Swiss in Swiss Romande has a very sad, if I may say so, past because at the times of Suisseur in April 96, Suissaire decided that it would not operate any long haul flights anymore out of Geneva. This created an emotional shock in Swiss romance.
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Yes, I remember that emotional shock. I was part of it.
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They abandoned us. We are second grade Swiss citizens. And this has kind of also created the emotional turf for EasyJet to grow in Geneva. And we're trying now to come back and demonstrate that with a high quality brand we can literally offer an alternative to our competitors. And that's one of the challenges, an emotional challenge. Another challenge is a company way of working challenge you need to reinvent when you're a legacy carrier. Moving from the hub and spoke thinking to the point to point thinking and applying some of those recipes in terms of operations management that have made the low costers successful is also something new for us. And then on a personal base. For me it was a huge challenge because I'm not an airliner. My professional background was I spent 12 years with Nestle, so I'm a retail man and I'm a fast and moving consumer, sales and marketing person and had to get into this airline business that has an incomparable complexity and that has not a very strong sales culture because we never really had to sell ourselves. If you want to go from Geneva to London fast, you must take an aircraft. The brand that is on the aircraft is up to you. We never really had to sell it, so that was also something new to me. So that was the challenges I faced.
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How did you come over those challenges? And also as a leader of an organization, what are the kinds of things that you had to do to make the shift in culture?
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It might sound a little bit easy, but I think the first recipe is hard work. It's really hard work and I had to learn about this industry. So I was given the opportunity to, at the age of 42, change my professional life, which was fantastic. The price for that opportunity was that in a few months I had to learn the fundamentals of this industry. I'm not claiming Today being a specialist at all, but at least I know who I need to ask to get more detailed information. I feel comfortable with most of the concepts and the precepts of the airline industry.
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So your learning curve was extremely high. To learn this new industry and as a leader, to help the others to change to this new mindset. What were some of the things you had to do?
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One of the reasons Swiss came and offered me this was they were seeking on purpose a set of capabilities that was not an airline set of capabilities, because they knew that when you look at it from an outside, you might see things that nobody sees anymore within the organization because it so deeply rooted into it. So what I did, and I'm still doing is question the existing. And what is difficult about questioning the existing is you need to do it in a way that you don't, if I may say so, offend people. It's not that before the question time you were doing wrong. It's just that somebody has another perspective on what you're looking at. And you need to be a bit diplomatic about how you challenge the existing. And sometimes diplomacy is not my first quality. I'm a rather straightforward guy, so I had to learn how I question how I challenge things and also accept that not everything is challengeable, not everything can be questioned. There are some recipes that are working since 20 years and they're fine, they keep on working. So also selecting what do you want to work on, what do you want to change, what do you need to change? And do you change for the sake of changing because it's nice? Or do you change because you can demonstrate that the change is for a better result than with what you're doing today with the same ingredients.
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So on one hand you had to question the status quo and the other that to learn to say things diplomatically. And then the third element is to find out what you need to change and what you don't need to change. What's working and what's not working. How do you make the difference between what's working and not working?
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Well, there is for sure a trial and error approach on some things. So we tried a lot, we learned a lot, we made some mistakes. I have to say, not a lot, but some mistakes we made and we learned about it. And then also I had to accept that once you have decided what are the topics you want to work on in terms of change, you can't do everything at the time at the same time. So it's not a holistic approach. If you want to be successful, it Must be a sequential approach. So one thing after the other. And one of my characteristics is as a person, I'm very passionate about what I do, I really am. But I'm very impatient, which is not easy. Then when you're impatient and passionate and you want to move things and you have a lot of energy to do it, to accept that you need to do one thing after the other, because if you start moving too many things at the same time, you lose control of the motion. It's better to have, I call it the bigger, better and bolder approach. Let's do one or two big things where we want to change. Let's do that very properly, very good. And then we'll move to the next thing while trying to change a lot of things. So I had to learn to become from a good total thinking into a sequential approach of things, which has paid off with some success, I have to say.
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B
Good. And what is your biggest learning from this experience besides the fact that you have to do it sequentially and one after the other? Was there any other?
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Yeah, there is. That success is the result of hard work. You turn it the way you want, you can be a visionary leader, you can be a charismatic personality to be very innovative, but hard work takes it all. I think it's only in the dictionary where success comes before work.
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So hard work, hard work.
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Yeah, but it's not that I'm saying, hey, you know, I get up at 4 in the morning and I work 20 hours a day. I think you need to be. The secret for me is really to work in a very dedicated. This is what I call hard work. Currently I'm focusing on the success of Swiss in Geneva.
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So it sounds like it's a focused effort.
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It is a focused effort. And being willing to also do the necessary choices to achieve the goal you have set yourself or you have been given by your shareholders or what you've given yourself. Literally, it comes with the price. It is an investment and you need to be very focused. And you could do a lot of very, very fancy things around, especially in this industry. I could fly probably every second week to a conference about airline management and the future of travel and the digitalization of the buying experience in the airline. I don't do it. I want to focus on this success.
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B
So in summary, what would you attribute your success to?
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I think I would say it's commitment, passion and enthusiasm.
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And if you were to advise a young leader, what would you say?
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Be committed, be passionate and be enthusiastic.
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B
I can tell that's great. Okay, do you have one more tip that you can give young leaders?
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Yeah. I think one thing is your position in a company or in the society is mainly given to you by a decision that is not always yours. So you are nominated into a managing or a leadership function, but the way you live it will make you a leader or not. It's about how you express and how you live that position. I'm a big believer of inspiring people. I'm a big believer of accepting that the fact that the job of the leader is to set the vision, the direction and make everything possible so that the teams can go into that direction and realize that vision. But it's not you that will do the job. You're enabling people to do the job. And I think that's also something I took from one of my mentors when I was a young leader and I tried to apply it today. But this, if I do it well or not, you need to ask my teams.
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B
But if you qualify your style of leadership, what would you say? I'll go test it out afterwards.
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My style of leadership, Passionate, demanding, rewarding, recognizing and honest. I'm setting a vision, I'm setting a thing and I'll keep to it, I'll stick to it. I'm not changing things. So probably if you ask some of the people I work with, they might tell you that I'm very straightforward. Sometimes I lack a little bit of diplomacy, but that has the advantage that they know where I want to know how I want to go there and that I trust them. There is a lot of empowerment and trust to the people I work with. I think this is also something that would characterize my leadership. Trust and accept that at the moment you empower people, at the moment you give them the trust, you must live with the idea that they will do mistakes and that you in your function will have to live with the consequences of that mistake. And that's okay. As long as you learn from your mistakes, it's fine. But it's not easy to accept that. You set a trail, you set a path, you tell your teams we want to go there and you guys, it's up to you how you get there. And then if they do mistakes, then it's your job to, to take over.
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B
So one more question. What would be your vision for Swiss and the French speaking part in, let's say three years, in two years of.
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Today, the vision is that we will be the very strong number two airline in Switzerland, French speaking Switzerland, that we will have gained enough market presence so that passengers and consumers wanting to fly out of Geneva will systematically consider Swiss as a solid and viable alternative to our competitors.
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B
Okay, is there any last item or something you want to say that I didn't ask you?
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A
Nothing else than just keep on flying Swiss?
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Yes, that's right. Thank you so very much. I very much appreciate your time.
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A
Thank you for listening to the excellent Executive Coaching Podcast. You can subscribe to all Future podcasts@excellentexecutivecoaching.com join us each Wednesday to learn more about the latest trends in leadership techniques and bring your coaching to the next level. To learn more about Dr. Burris CEO mastermind, use the contact form@excellentexecutivecoaching.com.