Dee Cooper, Product & Service Director of Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., who has worked for Virgin Atlantic 14 years already, tells us how her team understands the competition, about their innovative ideas and about the peculiarities of creative leaders.
1. What is the process of implementing your ideas into work?
The way I grew up is because I wasn't an airline person, I've been working for Virgin Atlantic for 14 years, this is my 15th year, I probably don't still think of myself really airliny, but obviously I am, I've been there for 15 years. My background is creative, I have industrial design degree, I've worked for IBM, I've worked for toy companies, I've worked in graphic design, brand design, things like that. When I came to this industry, I felt sort of clean in my thinking and I didn't understand why something cannot be done. Even in my interview I said let's put fish tank aboard of the aircraft. Fish makes you relax and it's nice to look at. And there are obviously reasons why you don't put fish tank aboard of the aircraft. But my naivety and the fact that I was looking at it from a consumer point of view is why I suggested that.
2. How does your team see the competition?
A lot of people are good at doing that at Virgin Atlantic, we see the competition as the ground, we don't see the competition as the other airline. We see the competition as the best restaurants, the best hotels, Apple computers, Nokia phones, BMW cars or Porche cars and that's what we look at and compare ourselves with what they do. We look at their latest innovations and take them and apply in the airline industry.
3. Could you give any example of that approach?
We were talking about text messaging. We were the first airline to put onboard the on-demand hi-fi seatback entertainment system, so the customers can turn it off, fast forward, etc. as apposed to to having to wait the movie to start as you always had to do with traditional old fashioned hi-fi systems. At the time when we were developing this hi-fi system we wanted to implement Windows there, so the customers were able to make Word presentations, Excel documents and to have everything that is on your computer. But first of all, the technology didn't yet do it and it slowed down the system and you wouldn't use it as a customer. But all you actually wanted to do really you wanted to send a message like "The plane is late. Please, don't come and pick me up yet, I'll ring you when I'm there". Or you want to say "I'm really happy that happened before I got on the plane". These are sort of last minute messages, you don't need to send them the whole e-mail because you have already sent them the whole e-mail or you would have done that before you got on the plane.
4. What was the main target of it?
That's what we're trying to do right at the beginning and we are looking what's going on somewhere in the world as opposed to the airline industry to compete against. Whether it's what guides us to the future and what are the big issues which consumers are going to have in the next 10 years that will influence what we should be doing as an airline. And that's really pays dividends to us working out where we should invest or simplify. Because text messaging is a much simpler solution than Windows and Word.
5. Where do the ideas come from in your company?
A lot of heritage came from us being non-airline people and saying: "Right, that is what you will want! You'll want text messaging!" Why can't you have a seat that goes completely flat; why can't you have the check-in experience when we drive you as much as we can to security control. Because it's much better when you view as a customer, so you don't have to walk through the airport. I think that's how we always thought. A lot of our ideas turned to our original question, came from us being non-airline people and looking at the world, looking at the future designers, inventors and working out how do you apply that to our product, how do you make it better to our customer experience. We do have ideas, we do have the staff with ideas, and sometimes staff comes with a lot of problems with what doesn't work, and in fact you can learn a lot from that as well as to how to make their jobs easier.
6. Is the creative leadership approach different from the one of the other leaders?
I think we probably get our hands a bit dirtier and more detailed than other leaders. But there is a lot that is in common, being counted, talking to people, setting a clear vision - this is valuable no matter where you work, you just should be able to do that. And often creative managers can't talk to people, that's one of their weaknesses and they do it by being very aggressive or very strict and they often have people that move around and deal with such occasions: I don't want to upset anyone. I would say that we probably have more in common with other leaders but there are few things like the attention to detail and getting right in, understanding the problem - that is probably unique to creative management.
