Inspiring Story: People who have changed the world - Tony Fernandes

Tan Sri Anthony Francis “Tony” Fernandes is a Malaysian entrepreneur. He introduced the first budget airline – AirAsia to Malaysians, with the tagline "Now everyone can fly". Tony Fernandes and his partner Dato Kamarudin acquired struggling AirAsia in December 2001. They succeeded to turn AirAsia from a failing government-linked commercial airline into a highly successful budget airline public-listed company. Initially Tony Fernandes came from music business, he don’t know anything about airline industry and everybody laughed at him. When people think this is not possible, he transform the negative sounds into passion and a lot of hard work. Perhaps they don’t have prior airline experience therefore they managed to transform AirAsia into one of the fastest-growing and most successful low-fare airlines in the world. He created the myth and he also make most of the Malaysians dreams come true.

Tony Fernandes said: “In AirAsia we consider ourselves basically a dream factory…We deliberately decided that we wanted a company where people can pursue their passion and we wanted to make use of all the talent that we have in-house.  The culture that we have stems from the fact that we want openness and we want people to be creative and passionate about what they do. In order to do that, we’ve got to inspire them.”

Every one of us have childhood dream but how many people still remember the childhood dreams? How many are now working on it and how many already achieved it? Brian Tracy quotes - “All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.” Tony Fernandes also have childhood dreams, he dreams to running an airline, owning an English football club and Formula One racing team.  He never give up and now he achieved all his childhood dreams. He living in his dream and he achieved it, managed it very well and make it profitable. Just like AirAsia’s motto - ‘Dream the impossible, believe the unbelievable, and never take no for an answer.’

When I am still a child, I thought we are not able to go overseas travel frequently because it’s expensive. However, AirAsia helps me to achieve my dreams more easily and cheap. Tony Fernandes established AirAsia with the company mission of “Now Everyone Can Fly”. He introduced AirAsia’s low fares make it possible to bring families together, enable people to explore and have new adventures. Now everyone able to plan for overseas holiday with the low fares, they can travel anywhere that AirAsia fly. Apart from to make customers’ dreams come true, Tony Fernandes also encourage their employees’ to pursue their dreams. In AirAsia, Tony Fernandes continuing inspire people to pursue dreams and passion, he tried to introduce this in the management philosophy.

Jack Welch said “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” Tony Fernandes is a real leader, he influence others, and he use his capability to grow others. From Tony Fernandes’s inspiring story, there are some key point we should learn from him:

1. DREAM BIG – Don’t underestimate yourself and don’t be afraid to be a big dreamer. For sure all the goals and dreams are very difficult to achieve but we should believe our dreams and work hard to make them come true. We might come face to face with failure, and that can be rather frightening, the process is painful but the results will be sweet. Facts have proved that, it is ok for a little boy to dream about an airline company, a football club and a formula 1 team as Tony Fernandes show us that such dreams can come true as long as we have passion, work hard and believe ourselves that we can do it. Tony Fernandes said “I don’t care about failing because I do not want to sit down in my older years and say, ‘How come I didn’t try? In conclusion, there is no right or wrong for a person to aim high because the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

2. OPEN DOOR STRATEGY: “Open Door” is the culture of the workplace in AirAsia which ties all the employees, help them enjoy their work and deliver their best level. This culture advocate on transparency and transparency is essential at all levels in the hierarchy to avoid conflicts and unnecessary disagreements. In AirAsia, Tony Fernandes removed all unnecessary organizational levels and make it easy for the employees to meet the management. He encourages effective communication between the employee and the management. This makes employees do not feel left out at the workplace as they know there is someone to support them always at the time of crisis. Adopted open door strategy allows employees to seek boss’s help and freely discuss things with them for better clarity. This is one of the successful keys of AirAsia under the management of Tony Fernandes.

3. TURN OBSTACLES INTO OPPORTUNITIES: Tony Fernandes said “It is always a good time for marketing. Even when times are bad, you should market your company and services. Don’t be afraid to do that even if you are a small brand.” Tony Fernandes always respond quickly and smart, he knows how to seize the opportunity and turn bad thing into opportunities and helps AirAsia to gained company image. For example, when first Bali bomb attacked, everyone cancelled their flights. However, Tony Fernandes came up with ‘Love Bali’ campaign, giving away 10,000 free seats and the seats were snapped up in like under one minute. People who grabbed the free seats spread the news and that’s why Tony Fernandes said “the best advertisement is your customers”. In conclusion, life is full of opportunities to make bad thing into better things.

AirAsia - We'll take you there

List of references:

• BRIAN, M. (2010) ‘Flying On A Budget’, Forbes Asia, Vol. 6(Issue 14), pp. P58–65.
• SINGHAL, M. (2013) ‘AN AIRLINE FOR THE PEOPLE’, Business Today, Vol. 22(Issue 19), pp. P24–28.
• Anhthien (2012) Tony Fernandes -- ‘dream the impossible’. Available at: http://www.chrisfharvey.com/2012/11/tony-fernandes-dream-the-impossible/ (Accessed: 25 April 2016).