We have chosen Tan Sri Anthony Francis Fernandes as our choice as he demonstrates FIVE (5) chosen entrepreneurial traits that highlighted initiative, ability to learn from mistakes, decisive, ethical consciousness, and foresight to assist him to be successful in his venture.
Tan Sri Anthony Francis Fernandes was born on 30 April 1964 at Kuala Lumpur to an indian father Dr. Stephen Edward Fernandes and kristang mother Ena Dorothy Fernandez. He was educated at Epsom College from 1977 to 1983 and then he graduated from the London School of Economics in 1987. He is the founder of Tune Air Sdn. Bhd., who introduced the first budget no-frills airline, Air Asia, to Malaysians with the tagline “Now everyone can fly”.
He worked very briefly with Virgin Atlantic as an auditor, subsequently becoming the financial controller for Richard Branson’s Virgin Records in London from 1987 to1989. In 1991, He was admitted as Associate Member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and became Fellow Member in 1996. Upon his return to Malaysia, he became the youngest managing director of Warner Music (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. and he subsequently became the South East Asian regional vice-president for Warner Music Group from 1992 to 2001.
In 2001 Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad advised Fernandes to buy an existing airline Air Asia, the heavily indebted subsidiary of the Malaysian government-owned conglomerate, DRB-Hicom, was losing money. Fernandes mortgaged his home and used his personal savings to acquire the company, comprising two Boeing 737-300 jet aircraft and debts of US$11 million (RM40 million), for one ringgit (about 26 US cents), and transformed it into an industry player. One year after his takeover, Air Asia had broken even and cleared all its debts. Its initial public offering (IPO) in November 2004 was oversubscribed by 130 per cent and now Air Asia has been named “The World Best Low Coast Airline” in the annual world Airline Survey by Skytrax for five consecutive years from 2009 to 2013.
What is his entrepreneurial traits that assists him to be successful entrepreneur? Here is the list. Tony Fernandes is an entrepreneur who has the initiative trait. Fernandes practice ‘walk’ management style so that appropriate decisions can be taken immediately by the experience gained in the workplace. For example, For a few days every month he works on the ground and He says he’s was learned a lot from working on the airline himself and told that If he just sit up in ivory tower and just look at financial reports, he must almost going to make some big mistakes because he told, one day “When we moved from the 737 to the Airbus, the Airbus is slightly higher off the ground and my guys said we need belt loaders. It would have cost us about a million US dollars and we used to just put the bags manually into the cargo hold on a 737. So Fernandes turned the idea down. But on his next stint working alongside staff, he says he almost ‘broke his back’ loading the plane and finally fernandes was realized that he made the decision instantaneously and without the experience he could have made a very wrong decision that damaged a lot of people and destroyed the morale of the organization.
Another entrepreneurial trait that assists him to be successful entrepreneur is ability to learn from mistakes. For example, nowadays most organizations made big mistake by create too much bureaucracy which could impede the growth of the business because if the bureaucracy is too tight then the close relationship between the employee and the employer is also difficult to shape and its impact is organization will face problems to achieve its objectives cause there is no good communication between employers and employees. Therefore, he did not want to repeat the mistake made by most organizations and finally he was decided that no bureaucracy involved in his office and all employees are free to access his office if there is anything important to be discussed and needed an urgent solution. He also told that any contribution of ideas for the benefit of the Organization also well accepted and the management rewards these outstanding ideas. Besides that, many organizations fail to achieve organizational goals because they are only concerned about profits without conscious employees, but he did not repeat the mistakes that they do. Fernandes says that to him “employees come number one, customers come number two and if employer created a happy workforce for employees, then they will look after your customers anyway.”
Decisive also another entrepreneurial trait that assists him to be successful entrepreneur because when problem was occur in his business, he really brave to face all kind of problem and try maximum to solve problem quickly. For example, when confirmation came from Indonesian authorities that the air asia plane had crashed, Mr. Fernandes’s message was clear: He isn’t going anywhere, and the carrier will make good on all its commitments to its passengers’ relatives, including compensation payments. Its shows that fernandes not running away from any of his obligations even he was facing big problem.
The fourth trait that give strength to him to success in his entrepreneurship is ethical consciousness. There are two values that Tony have for Air Asia. The first one is never give up. He would always mention that never give up even things are so difficult. The second value that he also mentioned that he will fight till death for his staff because his staff is the one that brought him there. Without his staff he is nothing. For an example, Tony said, spending time with people will create a great team. If you have a great people they will attract more great people. Great people will attract with great people. At some companies, especially when the HR run by Red Brain or Purple Brain, they don’t really care about people come in their organization. They believed in their structure and system. But Tony is different. Being a Blue Brain man, he value people so much. He tried his best of recruiting the best talent person. He knows who is the talented people-might be through his experience. But clearly he don’t employ people only because of their years of experience in different organization, because year of experience doesn’t mean anything if you don’t deliver a result which bring successful to our company. He is more on result oriented, because the industry is though. As we has discuss before, we can see that Tony has a high level of ethical or morality competence because he always think about his employee safety. If he doesn’t have the ethical competence and think that money is more important than his employee, he would not made decision to give comfort to his employee and spend time with them.
The last trait that bring Tony as a successful entrepreneurship is because he is a foresight thinking man. According to Tony, his secret of success is come from his thoughts that always mention “Dream The Impossible.” For an example, if he is not a foresight, he certainly will not make a proposal or decision to buy the football team. So if we look, there is no connection between AirAsia with football because football is a totally different world from others. But this is what shows us that he is a man who looking away or foresight. According to Tony, “I have lived a great life. I dreamed of owning a football club. Now I own a F1 team, build cars and own an airline. It’s Roy of the Rovers stuff.” Now Tony is also an owner of a football club named Queens Park Rangers Football Club (usually referred to as QPR) is a professional English football club in White City, London.
As a conclusion, I believe Tony Fernandes is a brilliant leader. His way of leading people is definitely different from other leaders because most bosses who will only give out work to other people, Tony will go out every month and make sure he experiences how the workers do their work. Tony Fernandes was a leader, and yet he is also counted as the team itself. For a leader, it is quite hard for them to connect with their staff on a personal level. The way he deals with different situations and problems in his company is really good and bring lots of success. Other than that, the culture and values practiced by AirAsia Berhad have brought the industry to a next line. He encourages a workplace that satisfies and motivates employees to continue striving for excellence. The selection and recruitment process have positively shown employees passion and dreams in retaining in the organization. Hence, to be an effective leader, the leader should be very aware adapting and finding the best approach to any situation. 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?’. ‘Tony Fernandes’ the best entrepreneur ever.
The Heroes 