I really love the concept of discounting. It’s incredibly powerful at changing the way an industry works and consumers behave. Turning convention on its head. I think discounting was a very powerful and positive business model for my business. In big companies cost cutting is seen as negative. ‘grrrrrr’ you know, ‘take 10% out of there’ every time budget comes around ‘grrrrr, take 10% out’ and it just feels like taking. But if what you plan to do is to find a slightly better way to run the mouse trap and you can lower your unit costs so that you can lower your prices, and by lowering your prices you generate a lot more business. It’s just so virtuous. If you can explain that to your employees it never feels like you’re taking anything away. It feels like you’re building when you’re lowering costs. And building is good, building means more jobs, building means higher profit share. And it’s making sure that everything you do in the company supports that. So not giving people big pay rises and instead sharing profit, because if it all comes in they were part of it, but if it ain’t coming in you’re in a position where you’re paying higher wages. It’s just being consistent. Sam Walton’s story ‘Made in America’, the book, is great. It’s a small paperback and what comes through is that it was very positive setting up. It wasn’t about screwing suppliers, which is how a lot of the discounting world works.
I’m really not an entrepreneur. I was trying to figure out what I was. And I think I’d describe myself as a maverick and I think that’s why I’m doing the Olympic job. I’m just not standard issue. When I was at BA I wasn’t standard issue either. What did I have, seven jobs at BA, and six of them didn’t exist before I was in it. When I worked that out I wondered if I should tell people that. Is it good or bad? I don’t know. It’s sort of odd. But it is what it is.
I’m waiting for inspiration. And I haven’t been inspired and I don’t feel the need to re-do starting up an airline. That’s not to say I won’t work in business again. That’s why I was available when the Olympic job came along.
No idea. I’m not one of these people who has any idea what I’m going to do after my current adventure. But whatever it is it’ll be so big.
No, no. I trust BA. I feel that they have amazing engineers. They know those planes inside out. And if they feel it was time to retire it was time. They have the safest airline and the best safety culture. You wouldn’t want the cost of taking care of Concorde make airlines feel they have to cut corners. And I know BA would never do that. I really trust them. When I was a general manager in America I used to hear Bob Ayling and Sir Colin Marshall answering questions all the time about Concorde, in 1995-6, and they were saying it would be in service until about 2004. I agree that they haven’t sold to Branson or anyone else because if it’s time for them to be retired, it’s the time. It’s not about who should be flying them. It’s an extraordinary plane. There are so few of them. And every part is custom-made. So every time a part needs to be replaced it has to be manufactured. A Concorde could be out of commission for months while they make it. It’s prohibitively expensive to do well. And if you’re not going to do it well you shouldn’t be in the air. It’s a no-compromise issue. But it’s probably not the answer you were looking for.
It was very tough. And I’d also been working for two years and still didn’t have my deal. So all I was doing was busting a gut, not knowing if I actually even owned any of it, because I’d been silly enough not to get the deal done before starting work. And that’s a characteristic of me, I trust people. ‘You say you’re going to do a deal, what’s more important, sitting around for three months and negotiating or getting on with the business? Let’s get on with the business.’ I have to say, I’ve become a little harder headed in the way I work. I’m not quite as trusting with people as I used to be. But I don’t think it was a bad thing, just risky.