Richard Branson - Business Stripped Bare

‘No idea.’

‘Really?’

‘Not a clue.’

‘So why did you stay in touch?’

Gordon shrugged. ‘You turned up with a sandwich and a fruit juice,’ he said. ‘You made time for us.’

When I was twenty-one, someone described Virgin as an ‘unprofessional professional organisation’, which for my money is just about the best backhanded compliment anyone in business could ever receive. We run our companies professionally and we make sure that everyone does their job to the highest standards. But the way we make sure is to see that people are having fun . Fun is not about acting stupid. It’s the feeling you get when you’re on top of things. We try to make sure that the people who come into contact with a Virgin business end up with a smile on their face (not always easy).

Formality has its place when it simplifies things: when it lets people know what’s going on and what to do. We can’t be continually reinventing the wheel every time three people meet in a room. That said, I dislike formality. For every time it oils the wheels of business, I can point to fifty more occasions when it gummed things up, made people feel miserable and stifled communication. It says something about the state of business when people are surprised that I walk into a room and eat a sandwich with them.

The best Virgin manager is someone who cares about people and who is genuinely interested and wants to bring out the best in them. A manager should basically be a considerate person who is as interested in the switchboard operator and the person who cleans the lavatories as he or she is in the fellow managers . In my view, a boss who is willing to party with all of their people — and pay attention to their personal concerns — has the makings of a great leader.

They will earn their colleagues’ loyalty and trust, for a start. But just as important, they will make friends. Remember what I said earlier, about business being, first and foremost, about concern? Business is not something you can stand away from. So it hardly surprises me that, over the years, I’ve befriended the people I’ve worked with, and found business to do with my friends.

It saddens me how rare it is that people want to go on holiday with the people they work with. When I work with people, I really want to get to know them personally. I want to meet their families, their children, I want to know their weaknesses and their strengths, and above all I want them to know mine. That way, we can do more together.

It can go wrong. I remember there was one situation many, many years ago when a very close friend came to run a division of Virgin. We were both so happy about it. Then, a little while later, his life was thrown into turmoil and some of the other managers were coming to me to say that he wasn’t working out. I had to persuade him that he was trying to deal with too much and that he should step down. It was a really difficult moment, and it put a massive strain on our friendship. But the fact is we were friends, we dealt with the problem the way friends do, and we stayed close. Attending the twenty-first birthday of his triplets, I felt thankful that, at Virgin, we had found a way to factor friendship and decency into our internal dealings, which had saved this friendship. I know it makes us happier; and I believe strongly that it benefits our work.

Across the whole Virgin Group, we encourage people to take ownership of the issues that they confront in their working lives. In a service-led industry especially, this kind of attitude pays huge dividends. I think if people are properly and regularly recognised for their initiative, then the business has to flourish. Why? Because it’s their business; an extension of their personality. They have a stake in its success .

Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines in the US once said: ‘It’s difficult to change someone’s attitude — so hire for attitude and train for skill.’ I’ve talked a little bit about what I look for in people, but there’s one key quality I haven’t mentioned yet, and this might surprise some people: it’s discipline.

In his book Good to Great , the business guru Jim Collins says all companies have a culture but few have ‘a culture of discipline’. This doesn’t mean that people are tied to a tree and whipped if they don’t work well, or have their wages docked if they’re five minutes late. It’s not that kind of discipline I’m talking about. It is to do with having disciplined people. And we have disciplined people right across our Virgin businesses. After all, if you’re going to let people get on with and even develop their jobs, you need people you can trust.

Some people are a bit startled when I sing the praises of self-discipline, and I think it’s because they associate self-discipline with formality, with rigid thinking — with a slave-like, machine-like devotion to duty.

They have in mind an airline pilot. The pilot sits down in the cockpit surrounded by an array of complicated computers and gauges. Step by step, the pilot and his co-pilot begin their preflight checks. It is disciplined and methodical. Then, before take-off, the pilot speaks to air traffic control, and, following precise instructions, proceeds to the runway. The pilot then waits to be cleared for takeoff, keeping in contact with the control tower. After approval, the pilot decides how the plane should take off. Once airborne, the pilot does everything needed to keep the aircraft, passengers and crew safe and then, when it approaches its destination, brings the aircraft down — often in foul conditions — into the airport. The pilot operates with great discipline within a very strict and highly regulated system. Pilots are not expected to be creative or entrepreneurial. They mustn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Right?

Well, not quite.

It’s 5 November 1997. Bonfire Night — when people in the UK traditionally have bonfires and firework parties. At Heathrow, staff are awaiting the arrival of Virgin Atlantic’s A340-300 Airbus, Maiden Tokyo , from Los Angeles. I’m here waiting to board a flight to Boston on this windy and blustery morning when I get the call. Only one set of wheels had dropped down from the landing gear of Flight VS024.

Maiden Tokyo is coming in for an emergency landing.

At the helm is Captain Tim Barnby — a very modest person and one of the best and most experienced pilots in the UK. On board are 114 people — 98 passengers and 16 crew. I’m listening in on my mobile, keeping my mouth firmly shut as the operations crew and Tim run through their options. It doesn’t sound good. A four-engined Airbus landing on one set of wheels in strong crosswinds has all the makings of a major incident.

Tim can’t see if the landing gear is down or not so he flies the plane low over the tower of air traffic control to help them visually assess the situation. It just gets worse and worse: not only are the left set of wheels not down — the undercarriage door hasn’t opened, either.

Four people now stand between a plane full of people and disaster: Tim, and his two co-pilots, Andrew Morley and Craig Matheson — and our own chief pilot Robin Cox on the ground talking them in.

Tim and his colleagues brought the plane down the runway on one set of wheels. Then right at the end of the runway, he gently dropped the wing on to the ground. Fire crews sprayed the plane with foam and passengers used the emergency chutes to get out on to the tarmac. Nine people were treated for minor injuries but all the passengers got off safely. And the plane? Tim landed it so gently, so carefully, that a month later it was back in the air.

I use this example because it is more dramatic, but the lesson I want to draw from it could just as well apply to a train driver, a customer-service operator, or indeed anyone throughout our business. A self-disciplined employee will have the patience to conduct routine business routinely, the talent to respond exceptionally to exceptional circumstances, and the wisdom to know the difference between the two . In some settings, this is easy to do. For airline pilots, it is incredibly, even crushingly difficult. Pilots operate according to a strict framework, but they cannot afford this strict routine to dull their senses or flatten their reactions.