Cover Story
Vision quest
How David Bassett got his 650 employees flying toward the same destination at Amerijet International
By John Nank
Smart Business | September 2007
When the employees of Amerijet International Inc. said they
wanted one of their collective goals to be becoming a billion-dollar company, Chairman and CEO David Bassett didn’t flinch, even
though that was about $900 million more in revenue than the company had.
“Companies need to set outrageous goals,” Bassett says. “Who
wants to set a goal you know for sure you’re going to achieve? You
want to set goals that are out there. A quote I’ve heard many times
is that, ‘It’s not that we aim too high and miss; it’s that we aim too
low and we hit.’ Outrageous goals make people really get into the
concept that they can be, do or create anything if they want it
badly enough.”
Amerijet, a provider of global cargo transportation services
based in Fort Lauderdale, reached about $100 million in 2006
revenue and has 650 employees in the United States, all of whom have had a say in the company’s overall mission. Bassett, who learned to fly a plane before he could drive a car, says allowing every person in his organization to have a say in Amerijet’s future has given employees a sense of
empowerment and ownership, created alignment behind a common goal and helped build a more cohesive team.
“One of the soapbox things I get on to people all the time is, look, a company isn’t buildings and airplanes and trucks,
a company is a group of people,” Basset says. “If all those people are functioning together with a very synchronous type of process, everybody understands the goal and everybody is allowed to, within reason, make that happen, it happens quicker and more efficiently.”
Bassett, who founded Amerijet in 1973, has embarked on a process whereby each employee at Amerijet participates in a
two-day training session, which is known as “vision training.” He says getting his entire company working toward a common objective has been invaluable.
“The overall benefit, obviously, is that the more synchronous a team can be, the more championships you win,”
Bassett says. “Individual effort can make you a star, but teams build championships.”
The case for empowerment
Bassett says that without a clear vision, a company and its employees will struggle to be successful, and while it is a leader’s responsibility to create that vision, leaders must
realize that doing so is a task that cannot be done alone.
“My impression of corporate America is that people believe
that the boss knows everything,” Bassett says. “The people that are supposedly executing the business plan are supposed to be people that know everything. The reality is that
most of us don’t.”
Although executives might be experts on business at a macro level, Bassett says you must keep your ego in check and allow employees with a higher level of customer interface to play a role in the direction the company takes.
“What some leaders fail to realize is that there are hundreds and thousands of employees right on the front line that are constantly in contact with the customer,” Bassett says.
“They know so much more about what the customer wants and needs than I do that it’s important to empower them and give them a voice so that you, the leader, can at least figure it out.”
A company’s mission should not be defined merely by its financial goals but also by cultural characteristics it hopes to
bring to fruition. Achieving buy-in and consensus around those things requires engaging every single person within an organization.
“Employees at every level, from the guy who is sweeping the floor to the guy that is running the company, have to feel empowered, and they’ve got to know where we’re going and
what the goal is,” Bassett says. “Everybody knows, ‘Make more money.’ That’s kind of elementary. But what else? What do we want our culture to look like? What kind of a job do I really want? Do I want to work at a place where I feel welcome and I feel a part of and I know where we’re going, or
do I want to work at a place where those things aren’t there? Every employee should be given the opportunity to grow and to be part of what the company really wants to be.”
A scalable vision
Though he has wanted to change the culture of Amerijet for years, Bassett says such an undertaking becomes increasingly complex as a company grows.
“When a company is small, zero or one to maybe 50 people, the owner or CEO can influence that group of people within reason, if he wants to,” Bassett says. “When you get to middle- and large-sized companies, it’s not as easy to do. It’s very
difficult to connect with everybody that belongs to the company. You lose the effect of a team, and you lose the effect of being able to move forward, grow together and allow employees to be empowered.”
Last year, Bassett decided to bring in a consultant to assist in formulating Amerijet’s global vision and help shape what
the company would look like in the future. Bassett, along with the rest of his officers and directors, participated in a two-day session during which each attendee had an opportunity to offer suggestions and help influence Amerijet’s direction.
Bassett says while leaders might initially have some apprehension about a complete overhaul of their company’s culture and mission, if each person is given equal voice and the ability to check one another, the result is a collectively
agreed-upon and concise vision that is well within the bounds of common sense.
“People that are part of this, in that initial group and those
subsequent to that, all know what business we’re in, so it’s not a debate of, ‘Let’s go sell shoes’; it’s a question of, ‘What
could we do to enhance our business? What do we want our business to look like? What do we want our environment to look like?’” Bassett says. “That was the beginning of what we now call our vision training program.”
Over the past year, every employee of Amerijet has been asked to complete the same two-day training, and Bassett
has sat in on every single session. Each employee, regardless of his or her position within the organization, is given the same opportunity to help mold the company’s vision that
was given to the executive group. Bassett says that despite the wide range of responsibilities and roles held by the participants, the sessions’ outcomes are fairly consistent.
“When they walk into the classroom, whether it’s a group of sales guys or it’s a group of linemen who move cargo, they go through the exact same training that the officers, directors
and I went through,” Bassett says. “At the end of those sessions, I stand up in front of them and say, ‘For the next two hours, you people in this room are now the board of directors. You get to choose what it is you want this company to
look like. Here’s what we’ve said the global vision is, so if you want to add to that or talk about that or, more specifically, how do you want your department to react in connection with that vision?’”
One of the attendees to the first vision training session, Amerijet’s Vice President and CFO John Nash, says that, in this case, the word “vision” carries special significance.
“What that really means is that you can accomplish anything you envision that you can accomplish,” Nash says. “At the heart of this is going through the whole program and
training people how to be positive and how to accomplish the goals that they want to accomplish. The direct effect is that it leads to people being empowered. We are literally reaching to every employee in the company, saying, ‘You’re
very critical, we value everything you’re doing, now how are you going to help us grow to the next level and beyond?’ Of course, along with that growth, they’ll be growing professionally, as well, within the company. It’s a big commitment
on our part to do this program, and we have seen tremendous results throughout our company.”
The payoff
Bassett says the culture of a company, as well as the leader and employees within it, benefit tremendously from involving an entire organization in creating a clear-cut and recognizable vision.
“When you know where you’re going, you’re excited about
getting there,” Bassett says. “Your whole attitude about work
is different. You’re interested in being here and executing
what you have to do, and we have spread this throughout the
whole company.”
Nash adds that while programs like Amerijet’s vision training certainly create benchmarks for a company, they also
allow for individual growth and help create a collegial and
collaborative environment.
“When you leave that program, it gives you a better feeling
about yourself and it also gives you a better feeling in terms
of the company,” Nash says. “We constantly reinforce not
just what the company wants — obviously we have goals
that we’re trying to achieve — but at the same time, there’s
personal development and team-building going on and many
other things along this line. It starts taking on a life of its
own, and it has really tremendously changed the culture of
the company.”
Employee attrition can be incredibly costly, and Bassett
credits his employees’ opportunity to contribute and grow
within the organization for Amerijet’s high retention rates. If
an individual is leaving for a job that will make that person better and improve his or her position, Bassett says,
“Godspeed,” but he says that Amerijet has had almost no
turnover because of an employee’s unhappiness.
“They come alive because they feel like they’ve been given
authority to do something,” Bassett says. “They feel they are
contributing and being a part of that team and that has a
huge impact. If you stop and think about it, when you take a
new job, you want to know what you’re going to get paid
because you’ve got to pay your rent and have money to buy
groceries and go to the movies. But more importantly, do you
feel wanted? Do you feel important? Do you feel like your
job is worthwhile? I don’t know too many people who hate
their job but get paid so much that they won’t quit. It’s usually the other way around.”
Because Amerijet’s employees played such a large role in
creating its vision and goals, Bassett says the vision training
program has also created a level of responsibility to act in
accordance with those principles and has given individuals
ownership of their roles within the company.
Additionally, Nash says in creating the vision, the company
also created a blueprint by which those individuals at the top
of the corporate ladder can lead.
“The whole senior management is very much committed to
this culture that we have, and once you get a company culture
to a certain point, it really becomes the overriding, guiding
principles to the company,” Nash says. “In many respects, it
guides what you can do and what you can’t do. A lot of times
we will sit back as a senior management group saying, ‘We
can’t really do that because it violates our value system.’ When
you get it to that point, you know it’s really working because
it’s keeping people focused on the right things.”
As a leader, Bassett says it is imperative that you hold yourself to the standard that you worked so hard to create.
“If you’re going to step out there and you’re going to make
a commitment to a vision, to a process, and you’re going to
create a culture, you better be very careful that you’re prepared to live with it,” Bassett says. “The cornerstone of leadership is trust. If you’re not trusted, you can’t lead.”
HOW TO REACH: Amerijet International Inc., (954) 320-5300 or www.amerijet.com
