BIG NAMES
As long as I’ve given it everything I can to try to avert the disaster,
whatever the disaster was, if it happens, then I’ll sleep well at night
and move on to the next project or the next challenge. So, I’m quite
fortunate I’m not the sort of person who does get stressed.
Joe: Okay, that’s great. Do you ever get bogged down by the things
like phone calls, meetings, emails, and things like that? Or have you
literally structured yourself to where that just simply doesn’t happen
to you?
Richard: Well, I certainly get my fair share of emails. I have a good
team of people who go through them and try to deal with as many as
possible. There’s still a couple hundred a day, which I just have to deal
with. I will either confront the most urgent ones early on in the morning
and then some of the least urgent ones may take me 5 days or 10
I SHOULD THINK AS MUCH
AS 25 PERCENT OF MY TIME
IS SPENT ON MARKETING
WHICH IS MOST IMPORTANT
IN ANY BUSINESS.
days to get them answered. I am a believer in trying to treat people
properly and trying to respond and making sure that I find the time to
be courteous as much as it’s typically possible. I’ve met entrepreneurs
who’ve surprised me, who literally dump all of their emails.
They’ve made a lot of money and they don’t feel it necessary to answer
them. Personally, the kinds of people who would be writing to them are
people who might be trying to build businesses or charities or need
advice or need help. I don’t think that’s the right way of going about it.
That’s a slightly immoral approach to life.
Joe: You’re touching on a lot of things that open up really the core of
who you are. So, my question to you, if you could identify it, why do you
think so many people admire you, love you, respect you? I always hear so
many positive and encouraging things from people that you work with.
26
You’ve created this amazing culture at Virgin. From everything I’ve read
from you and heard from you, the people stay around. How the heck
do you do this, and how can our readers do the same things in their
own organization?
Richard: As I said, I love people. I’m very fortunate to have been
brought up in that way. Some people are just brought up in a way
where they’re not so good with people, and it’s more difficult for them.
I was brought up by parents who would lavish praise upon me and who
would look for the best in me. About the only time, they would ever
criticize me would be if I were about to walk across the road and get
run over. They were really full of encouragement. I know that it worked
for our family. And for the 50,000 people who work for Virgin, we very
much try to make sure that the kind of people who run our companies
are the kinds of p eople who, again, look for the best in people and
lavish praise upon people, and spend as much time and attention on
the switchboard operator and the cleaning lady as they would on their
fellow directors. I think that if you’re the chairman of a company, it is
important if you’re going downtown to a city, that if you’re having a
party in that city, that you invite all of the staff in that city to that party.
You’re not just inviting clients or fellow directors. If you do invite all
your staff to the party in a particular city, you get out and you spend
time with them. You have a little notebook in your back pocket, so that
if they’ve got ideas, even if you’ve had a few drinks and you’re propping
up the bar, that you make sure that you get out that notebook and
you scribble those ideas down, so the next day you can actually do
something about it. The absolute key is being a good listener. Get
out, party, have fun with your staff. Don’t worry about making a fool of
yourself. Most importantly, actually do something the next day about
the kinds of things which they will tell you. In one evening, I suspect,
if you’re a good listener, you’ll have 20 or so things that your staff will
have suggested to you. At least 18 of those 20 will be valid things
to follow through and deal with. If you get all of the little details right
in your company, and it’s often the small things that actually niggle
people, if you get all of those little details right, then you’ll have a
happy company and a successful company.
Joe: The last stat that I heard was you have 50,000–55,000
employees and you’re doing something like $25-billion a year in
revenue. Is that still the accurate number?
Richard: That’s roughly right, yeah.
Joe: That is a ton of people and a lot of things that require attention.
I also heard that you didn’t really know the difference between net and
gross, which I thought was amusing as hell. But nonetheless, what are
the top 2 or 3 keys to managing or leading an organization as large as
yours, if you can even identify those.
Richard: Obviously, you have to be a good delegator. We’ve got about
350 different companies. If I hadn‘t been a good delegator when I only
had one company, I would probably still only have one company. You’ve
got to try to find people who are better than yourself to delegate to.
You’ve then got to stand back and give them a lot of freedom to make
mistakes, as well as to make good things. You should give them a
stake in the company so that they can run it as an entrepreneur, and
you’re not going to then lose them. Even worse, they could end up
going and competing with you. So, they can hopefully do extremely
well by staying with you and working with you. Being a good delegator,
I think, is the most important first step.
Joe: You have 350 companies, roughly. How do you break them up?
What’s the structure? After they get to a certain size, do you spin it off
as a new company? Do you report to 350 people that lead all of these
companies? What does the structure of Virgin look like? I’m just trying
to get an idea of really how you do it because I think it’s just so darned
instructional to all of our readers, from the mom-and-pop operations to
people that are running very large, multi-million-dollar organizations.
Richard: We have a very flat structure. So, each of these companies
has quite a lot of say in actually making quite big decisions. We
are protected against one company going completely haywire and
bringing the rest of the Virgin group down. Each of these companies
stands on their own two feet. They have a brand, which they’ve got
to protect zealously and make sure it doesn’t get damaged. If God
forbid, something dramatically went wrong with the company,