Irakli Litanishvili, Head of the Aim of Emperor Group of companies, pondering on the everyday life during the last three months
In the midst of COVID-19 pandemic Zoom became a lifesaver for those who did not agree to have their heads buried in household chores and continued to work actively with colleagues and partners. And now, surprisingly, you began to discover in your interlocutors completely different qualities disguised in the everyday routine realities. Our everyday life excluded simple communication on completely neutral topics. In our numerous interviews, we are like stamping under a template what is to be hidden, stereotyped questions, but communication can be different. We’ve also prepared a bundle of “why and how” for our guest today, but then we decided that his story should be told in the first person. So, Irakli Litanishvili, Head of the Aim of Emperor Group of companies, pondering on the everyday life during the last three months.
Self-isolation sets clear goals every day
Paradoxically, necessary self-isolation helped me to solve a problem over which I racked my brains. During last year I tried to work on myself, cut off unnecessary questions and create a format within which the whole team could be self-sufficient. Working over a cup of coffee in the office, chatting lively is a good thing, but often it transforms into a state when abstract conversations on everyday topics don’t lead to a result. Instead we get a lot of dialogs and very few actions, which means few effective solutions and, consequently, lack of a final result.
And this is what necessary self-isolation gave me. Every morning I address my questions to our team and give a clear time lag. You do not see a person, but you understand that this is the result of his or her autonomous work. The employee may come to the office during his working hours, go about his business, but the final result clearly illustrates his ability to effectively complete or not complete the given task.
Corrections of mistakes
I was able to use the self-isolation time fruitfully - just stopped a little, evaluated and started to work, taking into account the new reality. You must admit that the good can always be made even better, and correction on mistakes is common to any business. I have freed up a lot of time to review how these or those mechanisms are arranged in the company and learned how to make them more effective.
We already worked remotely
Everyone is talking about the features of remote work. And what exactly is it? After all, our whole business is essentially remote work. We are in constant contact with our customers, partners, airports representatives and government bodies, and all existing issues are resolved remotely. And what is the peculiarity of the current situation? There is no peculiarity at all. The question is different. All people feel a need to be within society, to be within a family. And when your percentage is shifting, a certain tension begins, which, by the way, is not always negative.
About mice and the universe
For some reason, the well-known experiment “Universe 25”, or how paradise became hell, now comes to my mind. In the 1960s, scientists placed several mice in ideal conditions, where they ate well, reproduced themselves and divided into subgroups at the beginning. However, later on, their interest in life was replaced by apathy: to food, to reproduction, to conflicts. In the end, the mouse inhabitants of the ideal world gradually died out completely. The current crisis has given us the opportunity to revalue our capabilities and priorities. In fact, we also found ourselves in an isolated “box”, and it depends only on us what version of us will return from it.
We realized the real values and it must be treasured. I just revalued and rethought once again that you need to cherish what you have – for me this is my family, my favorite business, team and friends, and so on. Yes, of course, we miss certain things that we love in our usual life, whether it's a cup of coffee on the terrace of a cafe or a movie visit, but such a reboot was simply crucial. After all, we do not realize that there are things much worse and dreadful than the current situation - war, famine, global cataclysms. As for the crisis, it always comes and goes. I think that in the next few years we will value and relate to the team and family, to customers and partners in a different way.
About vitality
While our office works remotely from home, the Aim of Emperor group of companies continues to operate. I am sincerely glad that we have kept the entire team. And the business model itself has proved that it is working and stress resistant.
About human nature
Recently, you can hear about a sharp decline in demand for charter flights. This is cunning. Using the example of our charter brokerage companies, LL Jets and Quantum Via, the first quarter of this year was the best in the last three years. We have earned consolidated as much as for both 2018 and 2019 combined, I mean the quarters. What does it mean? When people need to fly – they fly. And most importantly, people want to return to Russia. It doesn't matter whether they have an American passport or a European one, most found it necessary to return home, though not all 100%, but the vast majority of our customers. Apparently, at some point, when it becomes really hard, people are ready to return home for any money. At home, as they say, even the walls help.
Now we have a whole pool of new clients, who didn’t even think to fly charters before
By the way, during the period of total closure of borders, we met a completely new layer of customers. These are people who didn’t even think of flying business jets before. They considered the business jet a kind of luxury story, although they used the services of the first class of regular airlines. But, so to speak, "life made them fly charters". Just kidding, in fact, life opened up new opportunities.
The society is reconsidering its attitude to business jets, especially to small and light ones. Against the background of potential, for example, “jet sharing”, the possibility of traveling becomes even more affordable, because you do not take the entire plane, but only a place at the price of a business class of a regular airline. But only time will tell whether this takes root or not.
We are on the verge of a new transformation
It is clear that over the year a certain proportion of customers who appeared in the wake of the “corona crisis” will fade away. But most of them will definitely return to business aviation services, having learned its advantages. And it will be a new segment of customers. For them operators will create and launch new innovative projects, and we will witness new tools for sales, business and cooperation. The market will use other instruments in the aviation segment, a new style and world order of the industry will be created. I am sure that sooner or later something ultra-innovative will certainly appear on the market, which will allow the industry not only to centralize many processes, but, most importantly, to accelerate them. Perhaps these will be new tools of sales, doing business, some kind of collaboration that will give impetus to an even greater speed of interaction with the client. And maybe it’ll be something completely different. Anticipating these changes, we are also working on an innovative project. But I will talk about this a little later.
Good luck to all of us in the comfort of our time! Take care of yourself and your loved ones!