“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” Steve Jobs

It has been fun to look back on these several weeks and relive each of the customer touch points where Azul is inspiring with the way they are molding the customer experience in a very positive way. The leader to employee connection that is needed to continue to excel in these ways is critical. Smart, capable, credible frontline leadership makes a makes this look flawless. But that is only as good as it stays aligned with the strategy, that comes from leaders further up the chain.

I suspect, like me, you’ve read a press release or listen to an earnings call and hear the CEO at a company you are familiar with say something about a priority or focus and then you turn to the frontline employee and watch them execute their daily task and it looks nothing like the same focus you just read about or listened to. Understandably, some visions take time to flow down. But often the company is so out of sync on what the focus is, isn’t clear to very many in or out of the company.

Azul was clearly in the group of fully in-sync organizations. From the very beginning of my engagement, CEO, John Rodgerson preached what he and the leadership teams focus was. All throughout my time with them, no matter what level of leader I was in discussion with, they know where their focus was; at the company level and personalized to their area of expertize. Frontline employees were equally invested and versed in the areas of focus.

These focuses were constantly measures, shared and available to all employees and easily digestible to zoom in and out of the company level to department level.  They are proud to state that they know where they are with these areas and how they are making an impact. In the customer NPS realm, there is healthy competition between work groups and locations.

What Rodgerson and team have built and are maintaining is truly a transparent and united front to remain focused and driven toward the most desired objectives.  While there are many leadership attributes and activities that are leading to this united front, I’d like to share several that impressed me.

  • Presence and engagement with employees at all levels. There wasn’t a single interaction I witnessed between a senior leader and an employee that didn’t start with warmth and end with a take away to help. After a long day of travel and employee interactions, I expected Mr. Rodgerson to enjoy the flight and catch up on emails he had missed. Instead, he spent the entire flight engaging with customers and crew and helping with garbage collections. Then in the car ride, he excused himself from conversation to ensure he looped in the right leaders to the lists for feedback items he received from the crew and customers.
  • Operational excellence is a huge focus and is viewed in the right lens for how it makes employee’s and customer’s lives more comfortable.  I’ve seen few organizations as excited and engaged around the un-sexy matters of operational performance. But they make it sexy and keep it in the proper ‘means to an end’ that it should be.
  • Leadership engagement in the analytics and deep in the feedback they are getting. Often executive groups get excited about the discovery of a new data point that resides in their passion area or gets involved in customer feedback only to twist the data to prove their point or support a change they want. Few have the discipline be truly objective and look for the good of all. Azul leaders do this better than most I’ve witnessed.
  • Deep understanding of macro and micro NPS and CX matters. Senior leaders ability to be engaged in, interested in and change champions for a variety of different matters around the customer experience was inspiring and unify for Azul.

Leadership demonstrated in deeds that always matched their words, is extremely rare in any spectrum that you look. But Azul is and will continue to reap the benefits of trust from customers and employees because that is exactly the type of leadership they are practicing every day.

This sweet Azul airport employee sums up where the team gets its joy and gives you a taste of what you can expect from your Azul experience!

“I’m made happy because you are happy!”