Airbus Leadership Expectations Flashcards
Learn continuously - Take charge of your own development and continuously grow your self-awareness
I am intrigued to learn and grow, it is in my DNA. The single most important criteria for me to decide where to go next professionally is: growth opportunity:
Before I moved to Miami to take the role of Commercial Director Services, I applied for different jobs as it was time to me to move. I was lookig for a new professional challenge and I was ready to leave Toulouse behind and discover another place. After having passed several rounds of interviews, I had a luxury probelm. I ended up having three very intersting job opportunities proposed me:
1. Becoming a CSD for Europe region, which meant staying in TLS
2. Moving to Australia to be working with Quantas for a year and then bring back that a/c knowledge to Airbus, an exchange programm that was organized by customer services at the time
3. Moving to Miami as Commercial Director Services, creating a completely new life professionally & personally!
As I was not only looking for a temporary but more permanent next chapter of my life, I chose the latter. Not only was it change in mindset moving from support to sales, but also moving countries and cultures. I gave up all securities that I had to live a new challenge with an at will contract. I figured if anything I am still young so when if not now!
Act with Integrity - Ensure ethical and compliant behaviour and practices
Ethical behaviour: We recently had a few aircraft which became available as one of our customers got bankrupt and they were not able to take delivery of their linefit aircraft. Hence, those are generally offered to a few selected customers. However, in this case the selection of the customers by our top managment / colleagues has from my personal point of view not been done in a very ethical correct way. One of my customers who suffers currently a lot from PW engine issues is Volaris. They are part of the Indigo Partners group. It had been decided top down that we should offer the a/c to LATAM and the biggest competor of VOI which is VivaAerobus. And in parallel, my sales colleguas from Cebu Pacific, also an IP airline, already went ahead and offered them without prior alignment within the IP group. The best ethical way would have been to offer a/c to the IP group and then they select to which a/l these would go. Now I was in a situation where we have an ethical duty to offer the a/c to VOI even though knowing that basically there is no way to sell it to them as they are already sought for other customers. I offered the a/c and Volaris, hoping that they would not be interested due to complex modifications required to align with their FAA standard for cabin configurations, but unfortunately they were very interested in this additional capacity. Long story short, we did what was ethically right, to offer the a/c to Volaris but in such a twisted context that as we needed to comply with top mgmt guidance, needed to get back to them afterwards apologizing that these a/c are not available anymore. Obviously, that caused understandingly huge frustration on the customer side.
Act with Integrity - Display values that people want to follow
Connect & Collaborate:
Cross functional collaboration btw regional and lessor services sales to benefit Airbus as a whole instead of thinking about regional objectives. Avianca Cabin Project. While the initial deal was signed with LATAM BU, additional a/c have been added on both sides, directly with our Leasing services sales team under lessor responsibility as well via Avianca as under LATAM BU. I have set up frequent touchpoints to align our offers internally to be able to send out same information to our respective customers (airline and lessors). I got the positive feedback that they never collaborated so closely with the regions on a deal!
Be Balanced - Quickly address and solve proactively complex situations and operational conflicts
From dry to wet lease: I have made quite an evolution on how to cope with stressful situations in the past few years, which helps me to quickly adress and solve problems as I am able to step back a view the situation with a calm mind.
Let me tell you about a recent situation that I manage to solve quicklly. We have a three party video call scheduled with a customer and a lessor, the main objective being to introduce the lessor to the airline as they have availability of aircraft for dry lease. Unfortunately, the original call which was schedule for Monday was postponed once to the afternoon same day by the customer and then completelly cancelled on very short notice. So I needed to reschedule, which I managed to do for Wednesday. 40min prior to the call, the lessor dropped out due to an emergency constraint that just came up. You must know that the customer is actually the Mexican military who are mandated by the president to launch the Mexican Government airline. And all the high level Generals were planning to attend the call. Luckily I had also in the recent days exchanged with another lessor who offers wet lease solutions and we actually presented both solutions to the customer as consecutive way to launch the airline: Phase 1: wet lease and then Phase 2: Transition to dry lease. I contacted the lessor who offers wet lease solutions and he was able to jump in on quick notice as I have built a good relationship over the last week with them. The meeting went great. Is was a huge success.
Take Ownership - Recognise your mistakes and use them as an opportunity to learn
“Delivery Team Visit, or rather the organization of such, to MEX:
The Airbus delivery team was supposed to come to Mexico strengthen the realtionship and meet the team locally. My role obviously is to ensure that the meeting meets customer expectations and I know that the customer usually expects an agenda proposal from Airbus. I was conveying that message internally and got a lot of headwind from the FCM along the lines, the visit is for them they should let us know their expectations and things to discuss. For you to understand the situation, the FCM is a rather strong minded outspoken person which I must admit are all traits which are highly valued in the FCM job to get things done. She was very much sure about how things should be done and run so I decided to let her run the show. It was a conscious decision from me, so that she can learn by doing. Only that on my level, the VP Fleet reached out to me prior to the visit letting me know that next time we’ll need to manage both of us again because the ways things were managed was not acceptable as a few days before the agenda was still not clearly defined and no meeting invitations had been sent.
In summary, the story is about me taking ownership of my mistake which was letting her take ownership of the organization of the visit. “
Be responsible - Embrace Airbus duty to conduct responsible and sustainable business dynamics
For me Sustainable business dynamics - means prioritising long-term value over short-term wins. Really finding this WIN WIN solution which in my point of view is only possible with an open book policy and transparent approach requiring a solid foundation based on mutual trust. In particular, in my current job, in order to elaborate this foundation of trust it is essential to elaborate and nourish relationsships at all levels with the customer continuously and not only on an transactional level when there is an important campaign on-going. As an example, mid of last year Aerolineas Argentinas realized that they are far behind their peers in terms of defining their own strategy towards net zero and they reached out to us. For now, you probably know, that that was music to my ears. As they were really at the beginning of their journey, I coordinated with the teams to organize a complete one day workshop covering everything Sustainability - our journey, the decarbonization roadmap, sustainable services and providing benchmark information of what other airlines are doing who fly in and out of Buenos Aires. The team was super thankful and we have since then been in frequent contact to progress on various topics. E.g. Community Impact - Discovery Space, Decent Profile Optimization etc. It is a two-sided success story: on one hand regarding collaboration on sustainability which on the other hand naturally leads to strengthening our foundation of trust.
Be responsible - Ensure Health & Safety standards are maintained
- Self Defense Training & Active Shooter
- Protection equipment when visiting an airctaft
- First Aid Travel Kit
Be decisive and deliver - Take responsibility for creating value in operations and deliveries
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Be decisive and deliver - Use your scope of decision-making autonomy to ensure implementation
“For me that means identifying that someone who can add the highest value to make it happen. In the example I am going to give to you that someone is me. So, let me give you the context. It is a recent example, meaning from my current job as Commercial Account Director. One of my customers Volaris came to us requesting a lower FFS hourly rate on our long term training contract with the AMTC. In the Services Sales team, the person responsible for Training had just left so we did not have someone to manage the negotiation. Within the GAM team we decided that me taking on this additional role would make most sense, even though I did not have a lot of experience in Training Services I did however in negotiation and I have the closest relationship with the customer. In principle, with the team we elaborated that we could agree to such lower rate if we would extend tthe contract duration by 3 years and if we would enlarge the scope to also include wet training. There were a lot of bumps on the road and many lessons learnt on the way but we successfully closed with the team the training contract representing 12m OI - to put things into perspective, usually the anual Training OI is around 16-17m USD. I believe that was possible because I managed to quickly dive into the world of Training Services and learned on the go, making it possible for me to embrace one of my core values which is growth.
Other examples: Invite or not experts to present services whenever needed.”
Pioneer the future - Challenge the status quo for practical improvement and simplification
“I have two examples for you, one focused on my personal way of working and one focussed on the GAM team.
Starting with the personal one:
1- Do you ever get overwhelmed with too many emails in your inbox hardly being able to cope with it? Well, I have. Obviously, there were may factors driving it amongst others Gmail offline not working so during the business trips I could not as I used to work on my mails for quite some time.
Have you ever heard of the term Zero Inbox? It actually means what you think is means. Reaching ‘no email’. It is actually feasible. I implemented a strategic way of managing my inbox and it literally takes me 30min each morning to go through my emails. Now, I can focus on the actual tasks rather then getting distracted and stressed due to a flooded inbox and I am up to date! It is also very rewarding to see ‘No emails!’ your inbox.
2- GAM Team way of working - There are many information and tools where information is stored on the account. I created the ““GAM Roadmap”” which basically is a masterfile, a one single reference document, where you can find everything you need on the account: The links to the Global Account Brief, Global Account Strategy in SF, the Campaign ID cards, the customer organization, the event planning and GAM team activity on a monthly basis. Saving a lot of time and effort as everyone knows where to look to find information.”
3- LLP Landing Gear Guarantee - back to back contract with landing gear supplier
Focus on customer - Inspire teams to build a culture of collaborative innovation
”
I am going to give you an example of collaborative innovation in the frame of a sales campaign.
With ARG we are in a sales campaign for A330neo’s as they have a rather old ceo fleet and are thinking about gradually switching to newer generation aircraft. We are literally waiting to receive the RFP. One pain point for them to define the RFP was that they couldn’t decide on the business class seat. And the type of seat obviously drives the Cabin configuration and subsequent performance and econmic analysis. So I identified the bottle neck: selection of the BC seat. To give you a little bit of more context, they are currenlty operating lie flat BC seats and we have been discussing with them over the last years on retrofitting their ceo’s with full flat business class seats. Last year they integrated two additional ceo’s to their fleet with full flat BC seats. So the natural and easy choice would have been to retrofitt the remaining fleet with this full flat BC seat. Unfortunately, the CEO did not like the seat as it is rather narrow. So far for the context. Talking to the EVP Fleet and listening to his concerns I realized the only way for them to be able to take a decision, while lifting his burden instead of pushing forward, was to support them in the selection process. So I came up with the idea to do a BC seat show in the mock up center TLS which is usually only done after the PA has been signed. So the innovative part of this idea is to collaborate with the dedicated teams such as the BFE manager who are never at that early stage in a campaign involved. The seat show was a great success, with all suppliers coming with their respective seats for demonstration and ARG CEO, CCO and EVP fleet able to test all of them. In summary, we managed alltogether to lift customer experience and accelerate the campaign at the same time.”
Focus on customer - Understand and share how own activities contribute to strengthen customer relationships and quality of deliverables
“If you manage to actively listen to your customer, you are able to anticipate their needs. What better way is there to strenthen the customer relationship then to anticipate their needs?
We had an opportunity to sell a white tale aircraft to AZU when I was responsible for Services Sales activities in Brazil. While the sales director was planing on simply including the current spec of this aircraft into the proposal, I pushed internally for elaborating a delta spec of the white tail aircraft towards AZU current spec. Like this we anticipate the work that the customer would need to do to assess what effort would be required to harmonize this particular aircraft to their fleet. I was already working on it with the team, it was almost finalized, when during a meeting with the customer, he actually asked for it. So we were able to provide it in record turnaround from customer point of view.”
Focus on People - Display leadership and coaching behaviours that will empower people to drive their own development
“Being aware about peoples needs and identifying their unique gift to ensure they can bring the highest value to work. Airline Marketing Manager on one of my accounts is used to only accompay the GAM leaders on their business trips. She is a very driven person and very responsible. The development need identified and also discussed with her manager is to develop more autonomy and for her to strengthen the relationship with her customer counterparts. I encourage her to take leadership and meet people with the customer intentionally alone to discuss specific topics. We stay aligned but she learns to grow her presence and autonomy in front of the customer.
As a leader it is crucial to be able to adapt your way of working to each individual needs to be able to make a team work. In several occasion I needed to act as a bridge what seemed to be two completely different worlds. It is all about contract negotiations under NY law for several different services sales.
On one side there is the Contract Mgmt in TLS, they are very used to their own way of working and very competent on French law. Ono the other side, we have an US Lawyer working for the legal department who has a lot of character and can be perceived as aggressive, she is however super smart and gets things done. I realize that many people cannot handle her and feel her communication is not appropriate. I get along very well with both sides and tend to find myself in situations where I become the bridge btw different teams of people, to achieve the highest possible quality of work. Coming back to my values, it is all about Connecting with people to understand what is their unique gift is and then ensure they can embrace it.
My successor on my previous role as Commercial Director Services: I did a step by step handover explaining all on-going campaigns and working on business cases in detail together so that he can quickly dive into the different subjects. We organized within the first two months the first meeting with the customer on various services campaigns were for some of them we had some experts joining us. It does not always make sense to bring experts, and it is the job of the Commercial Director Services to be able to cover a wide variety of topics. Knowing that my successor cam from one part of the services business but had no experience on the other business lines, it was important for him to get up to speed quickly. I carefully selected the situations for him to find himself thrown into the cold water to learn and grow fast. Fell fast (with a safety net), learn fast.”
Give Purpose - Inspire people with enthusiasm and create trust through proximity
“I am going to start to give you one specific example for you to be able to understand my character better: I get excited about things!
In my previous job as Maintenance Economics Manager - I was a.o. responsible for the Operational Interruption Cost Model - which basically is a very complex Visual Basic programmed model. Within weeks I completely dived into the PAGES of codes which makes the model run and I was tasked to improve it. I actually completely redesigned the layout, the calculation methods and input structure and made it much more user friendly. And whenever you are programming something it often is a try and error. And it is rather tricky to figure out why a code that you thought should work is not. And a lot of times it is because there is a bracket missing or a simocolon not at the right place. So I rember being completeley focused and immeresed in the programming when suddently I managed to find the error and make it work. And I was pretty much expressing my excitement in the open office and got very confused looks. I guess that excitement is not something usual at work. I am actually able to transmit excitement and enthusiam!
Launching something new with enthusiasm
1. An opportunity came up with Azul to provide a turnkey solution incl. complete cabin and system retrofit up to embodiment to reach full harmonization with AZU spec for an A320. At that point in time Lyfecycle services which incl. the embodiment part have been strongly pushed by the Business Line. We did however never never sold such a turnkey solution. I got the team nominated and super excited about this opportunity and we were able to answer in record time to the demand with a contract template ready. Still long after, when I meet some of the team members, they tell me that they really enjoyed working with me on the project.
2. IPM - Power by Event contract
First time ever we actually contractualized FHS - Power by Event with a start up airline in Brazil called Itapemirim. We elaborated a completely new service from concept until implementation. Most importantly, we had fun doing it! I have a lot of energy I I believe I am able to transmit it to the team to get everyone excited about something.
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Connect and Collaborate - Foster network and cross-functional collaboration to enable effective sharing and teamwork
“AZU A350 FHS - success through GAM approach
The Situation with the customer was very critical, they just requested to exchange the complete commercial team.
In this situation showing to the customer our willingness to make things work and provide a positive story was essential. Internally, however we needed to convince the BU to be able to provide competetive prices not looking at only the A350 FHS opportunity but to consider the overall business with AZU incl. our A320 and A330s under FHS contract. Together with strong support from the GAM team to be able to pass specific messages on the overall relationship status, services sales view to achieve that the BU looks at cross programm, the customer as a a whole and not campaign limited plus the strong trust we had on operational level with the customer led us to close this 28m USD campaign.
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