(the following was originally posted November 24th, 2008)
Family Village Tribe: The Story of Flight Centre Limited
Three focal points drew my attention:
1. Turn “bad” situations to your advantage. Each time the rest of the travel industry experienced downturn, Flight Centre used this as an opportunity to expand and advertise. When the markets recovered, they captured greater market share and quickly recovered their losses.
2. Let people own things. There is a level of emotional equity in doing this. When someone is responsible for the success or failure of something, they are more likely to work hard to ensure it is a success.
The key point of the book is the principle of family, village, and tribe. By aligning the size of teams and their structure within the Flight Centre organisation, the founding partners attempted to exploit the social structures and instincts developed by humanity over the millions of years prior to agricultural societies.