Tan Sri Tony Fernandes

A great Malaysian Indian entrepreneur was born to improve and lead Malaysia’s low-cost government service airport, Air Asia On April 30 1964. He is Dato’ Anthony Francis Fernandes, who is also known as Tony Fernandes.

At the age of 12, Tony Fernandes was sent to study in England. However, his family could only afford to send him there, as the flights back to Malaysia was costly. From there, the dream of creating and owning a cheap international carrier was formed.

However, he first worked as an accountant before joining the Warner Music International. The Warner Music International played an essential role on making and changing him into a good leader and strategist. When the music industry failed to adjust to the internet, Tony Fernandes decided to take a daring step and take over Air Asia, a Malaysian owned lost cost airline which was failing in business by mortgaging his house and pooled all his savings. He managed to turn AirAsia, a failing government-linked commercial airline, into a highly successful budget airline public-listed company.

He introduced the first budget no-frills airline, AirAsia, to Malaysians with the tagline "Now everyone can fly".

He was also instrumental in lobbying the then-Malaysian Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad in mid-2003, to propose the idea of open skies agreements with neighbouring Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore. As a result, these nations have granted landing rights to AirAsia and other discount carriers.

 

In 2002, from only 2 planes in the hangar, Air Asia has 86 aircrafts and is transporting about 30 million people around the world. For his contribution to the aviation, he received a Tan Seri from the Malaysian king which was the highest honour and he also received the Commander of the Legion d’Honneur award from the French president. And all this happened because of a childhood dream that Tony Fernandes had.

There are 3 tops leadership traits from Tony Fernandes.

1. Walk the Talk

Fernandes adopts a 'walk around' management style. He believes that if one sits up in his ivory tower and just looks at financial reports, he is going to make some big mistakes. For a few days every month he works on the ground or in the cabin crew. He says he has learned a lot from working on the airline himself. He makes business decisions based on his own experiences, observations and feedback from his crews.

In the hospitality industry, a great leader must walk the talk. It is critical that he is seen with his employees and learn from ground experience. Staffs will then be appreciative of their leader and be motivated to do their best. Tony Fernandes realises the importance of his employees and valued them through his style of leadership management

2. Employees Orientated

Fernandes says that to him, employees come first before his customers. He believes that in having a happy workforce, his staffs will look after his customers anyway. His company is said to have a culture department whose sole job is to organize parties. He has been known to search out new staff in queues. He looks for people who are driven, who have ambition and who are humble.

With all great businesses, employees are the vital human resources that drive the core of daily’s revenues and profits. Being invested in his or her employees will portray a leader as caring and understanding, more like a family in a business rather than just a worker and boss relationship. As it is widely practiced in the hospitality industry, take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers.

3. Anti-hierarchy

Fernandes encourage people to speak up and get “every brain in the game” by relaxing formality and breaking down walls (literally — AirAsia executives sit with other Allstars in an open floor plan). A good example is how his office is constructed. It is smack at the heart of the company, with no walls and no doors. Everyone sees him and he sees everyone. He is Tony to everyone and he is in his polo shirt and with his famous baseball cap. Management sits on one huge stage in an open space office, where the chief pilot has a corner desk looking at the operations team, which is right next to the flight attendant team, which is right next to the reception area, and where there is no call center but an online chat customer service team.

The hospitality industry is very much a people to people interactions basis. Therefore, having a hierarchy or chain of command sometimes make it difficult for effective communications. With everyone treating one another as friends or team members, the work produced would be more productive. Everyone gets the chance to share their thoughts and opinions on how to increase revenue and reduce costs.

 

For me, Tony Fernandes is really a brilliant leader. His way of leading people is definitely different from others leaders.  He adopts a "walk-around" management style. He believes in working with the employees. He is a humble boss where he always claims that he learns new things about the airlines everyday.

There is a famous quote from Tony Fernandes, "employees come number one, customers come number two. If you have a happy workforce they’ll look after your customers anyway." This is really true indeed. If I am an employee of Tony Fernandes, I would feel being appreciated by my boss where he believes that employees are always the main priority. I will being motivated  and even work harder for the company as well. 

As the Group CEO of AirAsia Bhd, Tan Sri Tony Fernandes is probably Malaysia's most recognizable corporate figure with his trademark baseball cap. "People recognize me because of this cap I am wearing, but if i take off this cap, you will see me just another Indian guy!" said Tony Fernandes. I like the the way he remains humble and stays down to earth. 

Others than that, he is really a hero of the Malaysian airline industry, changing the way the region travels and opening up our skies to limitless possibilities. So I would like to choose him as my target entrepreneur for writing this blog.

His personal credo is, "Believe the unbelievable. Dream the impossible. Never take no for an answer."