One hell of a ride
The Canadian Craig Dobbin built the world’s largest helicopter company
His view on management
“I’m not an expert on anything” he explained. “Whatever the job, whatever the challenge, somebody can do it better than I can. True entrepreneurs surround themselves with professional managers who share their vision and put form around it. Not only can you not do it all yourself, it’s not necessary, and it does not make sense. I believe in being a good casting director of people who work together and share together”.
Handling pressure
“It’s been a good week” Craig Dobbin might comment to his personal secretary late on a Friday afternoon. Then his face would cloud over and he’d say, “Get Keith Stanford on the phone and ask him for my financial summary. That’ll fuck up my weekend”.
A capacity to take huge financial risks
“The hell with the contract”, he grinned. “Let’s buy the buggers out and we’ll get the contract that way! We’ll start with Toronto [Helicopters].”
“One morning, shortly after the deal to purchase Toronto Helicopters was completed, Craig Dobbin strolled into Robert Foster’s Toronto office. “Robert” he said “I want you to get on a plane, fly to Calgary and buy Okanagan Helicopters for me.” “But Craig,” Foster replied, “you don’t have any money.” Dobbin shrugged and said “That’s your problem.””
On the importance of relaxing and have fun
“Over time, Dobbin introduced initiation rites for first-time visitors [to his fishing lodge]. Steve Hudson’s [a pilot] initial visit to Adlatuk involved a helicopter flight over the ocean in search of an iceberg drifting down from the Arctic. When a suitable iceberg was located, the initiate was given his instructions. “They handed me a hammer and an ice bucket,” Hudson explains. “My job was to jump out of the helicopter onto the iceberg and fill the bucket with chipped ice for our drinks back at the fishing lodge”.
Icebergs, Hudson discovered, are very unstable and riding one in the North Atlantic with a Super Puma hovering a few feet over your head is like trying to keep your balance while walking across a trampoline. “It was a lot of fun for the guys in the helicopter,” he says, “but not so much fun for me, trying to knock enough million-year-old ice of the berg to fill the bucket.” Back in the camp, the ice chilled several glasses of Jameson raised in a toast to the new crew member.””
A genuine interest in people
“When he talked with you in social situations,” one business acquaintance recalls, “he was focused totally on you. He wasn’t looking over your shoulder or around the room, searching for someone more important. He was really interested in what you were saying. Everyone sensed this about the man and was drawn to him”.
Dobbin’s humanity
“Dobbin’s business acumen rarely overrode his humanity. On a flight to his fishing lodge in Long Harbour with a group of friends, Dobbin asked the helicopter pilot to set the craft down for a washroom break. The pilot chose an open area adjacent to a shack and tower where a provincial wildlife officer was spending the summer on fire-watch duty. The officer, a grizzled veteran of wildlife work, kept the group laughing for some time with his stories and anecdotes, and the short rest break extended into an hour’s impromptu entertainment.
“How long have you been here?” Dobbin asked the old timer as the group was about to board the helicopter and resume their journey. “Ten weeks,” the officer answered, with about another ten weeks to go before returning home. “Anything you need?” Dobbin inquired, and the man said he was out of sugar; it would be nice to have something to sweeten his tea, but he would get by.
An hour later, when everyone had disembarked at Long Harbour, Dobbin instructed the helicopter pilot not to shut down the aircraft yet. He entered the cookhouse and emerged with a two-kilo bag of sugar, ordering the pilot to fly it back to the wildlife officer they had met.
“Are you kidding?” the young pilot said. “I’ll spend about two thousand bucks in fuel alone to fly it there.”
Dobbin gripped the pilot’s arm. “Son,” he said, “that sugar will mean more to that old fellow than two thousand bucks will ever mean to me. Now get going.””
Title: One hell of a ride
Author: John Lawrence Reynolds
©2008
Editor: Douglas &McIntyre
ISBN: 978-1-55365-491-9
Du haut des airs: la vérité sur Air Canada
Robert A. Milton managed Air Canada during the most tempestuous period of the history of air transport.
I translated the quotes from the French version of the book.
“It is all right to say to a Crown corporation to operate, starting tomorrow, like a private enterprise, but it’s like saying to a dog to walk on its hind legs from now on. The dog can succeed, but it will need time to adjust to this new idea”.
“Rod Eddington, the British Airways CEO, made everybody laugh when talking about the resistance to change of middle managers. He said: “As it is said for staff reductions, turkeys have never voted in favor of Christmas”.
“The most efficient system in the world can only work properly if the people who apply it want it to work”.
“No air transport society has ever succeeded in reducing its activities, except in the context of a restructuration under judiciary supervision”.
“One day, as I was walking through the department of technical operations, I looked around and noticed that some people were working in a cubicle fitted out along an outside wall. There were many windows in the wall, but they were all covered with brown paper. I was curious to know why. Was the outside view so terrible that nobody wanted to look through the windows? Or was it so beautiful that it could distract the employees? I checked and the view had nothing really special. It was not more beautiful nor uglier than the other views from the building.
When I asked for explanations, I was told that the employees working along that wall belonged to a group where the salary level did not allow access to a window. But, for different reasons, it had been necessary to position them near a wall with windows. A bureaucrat of the organization had been afraid, I suppose, that making an exception to the rule would lead to anarchy, and he ordered that the windows be covered to correct this unacceptable situation. Useless to say that the brown paper disappeared a few minutes after I received the explanation”.
“Quite often, people who progress slowly in their career without having to take decisions inevitably end up by having to take one. At that moment, they freeze like a deer being blinded by a car headlights, and they get knocked out”.
“If someone puts one finger in my eye, I react by putting two fingers in both of his eyes”
“The VISA Aerogold card is nothing else than a money making machine for the CIBC. It represents 20 to 25 % of the market capitalization of the bank”.
“It is necessary to respect the rules of the game, but to play in all seriousness by using all the tools that are available to you”
Here, Robert Milton quotes a former Minister of Transport of Canada: “He raised the governance problems and the airports inability to control costs, to show interest in customers and to build only the needed infrastructure, instead of the luxurious installations that are now appearing all across the country”.
“In the future, I see Air Canada recognized as one of the six best airline companies of the world, with connections in all regions of the globe and with an interior service representing a smaller, but all the same important part of its total income”.
Title: Du haut des airs: la vérité sur Air Canada
Authors: Robert A. Milton and John Lawrence Reynolds
Édition: Libre Expression
©2005
ISBN: 2-7648-0128-9