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 His autobiography, "Losing My Virginity," is a best seller,
and many other books by the long-haired businessman have also
been commercial successes.
In his latest book, "The Virgin Way," he expounds on his
leadership philosophies.
Branson, 64, spoke to Reuters about hiring people, start-up
companies and grooming the next generation of leaders.
Q: Why did you write a book about leadership now?
A:. This is my 50th year as an entrepreneur, having
started in business at 14 years old. I have had 50 years of
being the boss and the leader, and I’ve learned a lot. I am
always encouraging people to write books, and I had not written
a book about leadership. While this is all relatively fresh in
my memory, I thought I would give it a go.
I like to tell stories rather than provide a list of do’s and
don’ts as with other leadership books.
Q: How do you balance track record against personality in
hiring?
A: In an interview, you’re trying to figure out the
genuine person, which is quite difficult for both sides. When I
am looking for a leader, it is incredibly important that the
candidate is good with and genuinely cares about people, and who
will sprinkle magic dust on a group to get them to excel and
believe in what they’re doing,
If you pick the wrong leader, you can destroy a company very
quickly.
Q: How do you groom the next generation of leaders within
your companies?
A: We have had people who used to clean the floors at our
recording studio wind up running it. If you put personality
quite high on your list of priorities, you can teach most people
on the job. In our airlines, 99 percent of our cabin crew do not
have work experience with another airline. We hire based on
their personality and then train them at Virgin. They don’t come
in with bad ideas from other airlines. They come in with a fresh
approach.
Virgin Atlantic was run by somebody who had not worked at other
airlines before and came up the ranks of Virgin through
marketing. As much as possible, we try to promote from within.
Occasionally, we will bring in new blood from outside, and we
did that recently with both of our airlines and it has worked
really well.
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If it is a choice between an internal and external candidate, and
both perform equally well in the interview, we will hire the
internal candidate. Otherwise it is demoralizing for people
internally.
The principal skill that we’re looking for when running a company is
someone’s ability to delegate and build a great team. We don’t want
someone who wants to do everything themselves.
Q: When do you exhibit the leadership to exit businesses?
A: I am not very good at retrenching at a company and am apt
to hang on longer than I should, which really is unwise. The extra
money that you lose could be better put to starting something
afresh. The jobs lost by retrenching could be created much more
quickly if you spent money starting something elsewhere.
Virgin Megastore is a good example. It was so much a part of Virgin,
and we kept on thinking there must be a way of reinventing the
selling of products. But as months went by, people kept on buying
music online, and we eventually bowed out.
In battles, if you are a general in an army, there are going to be
occasions where you have to cut your losses. Over the years, we have
fortunately had more successes than failures. Apart from the Virgin
Megastores, we have not let things run too long. That was one where
I was definitely mistaken, but in other situations we have managed
to move quickly.
Q: When do you decide to stick it out with a start-up
business despite lack of initial profitability?
A: If a company is building turnover (revenue) month by
month, then generally profits should come. If you’re not managing to
increase turnover monthly and people are not excited about your
product, then the business is unlikely to work.
(Editing by Leslie Adler)
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