Today I will be talking to Matthijs ten Brink, the chairman of Transavia Airlines, a company that’s over 50 years old, but still very relevant today. We will be talking about his view on leadership and the way he puts human beings at the center of his company and society.

Great to have you here. We’ve known each other for a few years now and I think you know I’m a fan of the way that you lead your company. What do you think is your view on leadership? I think the most important thing is that you really try to leave your ego at home.

So it’s all about humbleness and put yourself at the service of the organization you’re leading. And understanding that you’re one in a row of leaders and that you’re supposed to leave the organization better than you found it when you came in. It’s about, some people call it stewardship.

You have the honor to lead the company for a while. You do your best. And you leave it behind in a way that it can continue on its journey. So how do you leave your ego behind? I don’t. You’re trying. Because…

The funny thing in the circumstances you normally become a leader, certainly still in this time, is by being perceived as the smartest boy or girl in the class. And by knowing something better than anybody else. And that’s not what leadership is about.

Sometimes it helps. And certainly in times of crisis, let’s say you have a different type of leadership and then it helps that you understand what’s needed. But in 99% of the time, it’s not about having the answers.

And that’s the hardest work. It’s not about you. It’s not about you. You have to say that to yourself about every other five seconds. Because sometimes you do know the answer. And sometimes people actually confirm you in your ego. Saying, ah, you’re so smart. So it’s…

It’s a bit of the tension that on one hand it is about you in bringing a new style of leadership. And on the other hand, leave your ego at the door. So how does this work in daily life? Because you have to make certain decisions as a leader. So it’s not always up to the organization or your teams. No, you try to…

prevent that as much as possible and on the other hand you have to show and let the organization know that when the time is there you’re ready to take that decision and you’re ready to lead and you’re ready to take responsibility but that’s as much as possible you leave that responsibility to others in the organization so you have certain leaders who who try to escape always responsibility

And they call that the Napoleon way of leading. It’s just wait and sooner or later the problem will solve itself. Not always in the right way, but it is the balancing act.

between daring to lead, taking responsibility in the other hand, leaving as much as possible the room for others. So how do you do this with an airline company? You’re in a capital-intensive industry, so you’re long-term oriented, and at the same time you need to remain flexible, especially in the world of today. How do you combine those two dynamics?

by trying to separate as much as possible in setting, in the people involved, in timing, the types of decision you have to take. So we’ve tried to solve that by separating three processes. One is what we call run and optimize. It’s the daily operations of the airline.

Two is change and innovate. It has a horizon of, let’s say, a year. But it’s all about innovation and changing or inventing new processes.

And the third one is strategy development, which has a horizon of, let’s say, two, three, perhaps five years. And even there we found that we may have to create a fourth process, which is about looking five to ten years ahead. Because certain developments, the impact of environmental pressures, changing consumer behavior in that sense, new economic models,

which is not about growth anymore, but it’s about other criteria. That’s not likely to happen in the next five years, but it will happen. And the changes that they will bring about are so drastic that if you start not preparing today, you’re still too late. So you might need actually a fourth horizon. And then

that requires more scenario thinking. So it’s not about, okay, this is the point at the horizon we’re going for. It is like, okay, it could be A, B, C, D, and what does it require from us in a scenario A, B, C, D. And within the organization, you think in those three horizons or maybe even four horizons. Yeah. The organization is aware with which boundaries they can decide upon. Yeah.

So we’ve tried to combine the traditional functional organization, which is very typical for an airline. So you have flight operations, you have aircraft maintenance, you have what we call in-flight services, which is everything that happens in the cabin. And we tend to call those the factories. And there’s no sense to…

drastically change those factories. You do try to change the behavior of the people within those factories, and you do try to introduce new working methods like lean or other things, but in a sense, the factory remains within their boundaries.

But what we have tried to do is to create an integral way of looking at things and an integral way of allocating resources. Because in our industry, and even more so because we consider ourselves as a budget airline, scarcity is the name of the game.

So by design, our ambitions are always higher than our resources are able to provide. And we try to learn our people to work in that environment of scarcity. And that requires integral thinking, that requires portfolio thinking and portfolio choices.

And that we do within the horizons, like I said, the daily operations within the year and then looking a bit further ahead in strategy development. So how much time do you spend on the day after tomorrow? We just had a conversation. I think in a good week it’s at least 40% of my time. In a bad week it’s at least 20%.

And I think that this might be 10 or 20 times more than the average CEO. Yeah. How do you do this? That’s a whole process. When I came in, in the organization, it was 100% focused on the daily operations because there were so many things going in the wrong way. We were in crisis mode, loss making.

But step over step, by gaining more experience, by building your team, by developing your organization, you’re able sort of to cut yourself loose from the daily operations. And that’s hard work because also there people tend to look at you and ask for guidance and decision making.

And you have also, you’re seduced all the way to sort of have an opinion and your opinion is easily translated into kind of a guidance.

So when you’re at the coffee machine and people say, oh, what do you think about this or that? And I say, oh, I think we should do this. Easily in the next meeting, that person translates, oh, Matthijs wants that. Before you know it, you get that back somewhere and say, no, I’ve never said that. Yeah, yeah, but at the coffee machine. Okay, you asked my opinion. Yeah.

So you really have to be careful. But it’s a long process. And what accelerated the process actually was a trip I took last year to Nepal. I’ve been away for a month without any contact with the company. And that really makes yourself extremely humble because when you come back you’ve found

Everything is still running. It’s still running. It’s still there. Actually, things have improved even. Some of the things you started, they just went ahead. Some of the things you started stopped, and maybe for a good reason. People blossomed. But it’s a real compliment to yourself when you’re able to leave the company for a month. At first, it’s a bit confrontational.

And then you start to realize, okay, maybe it has something to do with the way I build the organization and build the team. So I sort of deserved this month off. But I really would wish that to any leader with a similar role is take that time off and step away from the company and see what happens. And don’t then try to push yourself back in

but redefine your own role. And I’m still in that process, but together with the team, I’m really trying to redefine my role. So where do I add the most value for the organization, given my strengths, given what the organization requires? We’re, again, in the middle of the process. And by making those kind of conscious decisions together as a team,

you allow yourself to spend maybe even more than 40% on the day after tomorrow. And how do you do this on the average working day? What do you do to spend time on the day after tomorrow? How do you create the space inside of your head?

First of all, I have full control over my agenda. So we do have a what we call central business support center, but I don’t have a personal assistant. So I consciously plan my day with space in between certain types of meetings, conversations in a certain order.

So I also try to be there as much as possible when I have a difficult conversation with somebody or a coaching meeting with one of the colleagues that requires energy. So I have to make sure that before and after I don’t have similar meetings. And I have time to walk around. I have time to talk to people. I have time to read articles. I read a lot of articles.

I take days out of the office like today. I’m here this morning. I’m somewhere else listening to a speaker on the day after tomorrow, this afternoon. So it’s also by allowing yourself to go outside, meet other people, let yourself be inspired. And what is your biggest obstacle in creating the space for yourself? Because you said 20 to 40 percent, but…

Does it always flow like this? No, not always. It could be something that happens in the organization that puts the organization and yourself a bit in a crisis mode. Then your personal involvement

is more required, and sometimes it’s actually from a content side not even required, but from a stakeholder perspective. Your stakeholders, either being at your supervisory board, your shareholder, the group we’re part of requires your attention because protocol requires the CEO himself is involved.

Sometimes it doesn’t really add any value, but it’s just a symbol of your role that helps. So I think overall that is the stakeholder

field is is pushing your back into the organization is pushing you to the day-to-day which is strange because in the end i think the main role of a ceo is is looking further ahead yeah and it should be in anybody’s interest but those same people tend to be a bit more micro management focused

And it’s just how it is? Do you accept it like this? No, no. It’s by explaining to them what you’re doing. It’s taking them alongside your journey. I do that very consciously. So we actually also, together with the team, are very proactive in stakeholder management. And

We always go a bit further than, let’s say, our stakeholders actually know. So we test a bit a new step we’re taking in our organization, in the different roles we have, in a different way we work. And only after then we say to the stakeholders, we’ve changed a bit. This is actually how it works. We try to inspire our stakeholder fields in what we’re doing.

But in the end, it is a bit also, it is what it is. And part of my role is also shielding the organization and making sure they can do what they need to do in the way we think is best.

And I try to keep away the stakeholders, to appease the stakeholders. And that’s fine. That’s part of the job. And sure, in my dream, you would like to be free of any stakeholder, but I don’t think that’s reality. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, you have stakeholders somewhere. You have always people financing the things you do, or shareholders, or whatever. It’s part of the game. It’s part of the game.

And as long as it doesn’t take the overhand, it’s fine. So what do you feel is the next step in the development of your organization? Because it continues to develop and grow. I think we… Two things. We’ve done a number of…

what we call interventions on leadership, on structure, on culture, but it’s been mostly on the level of top and middle management. What we haven’t done enough is what I tend to call the emancipation of

all other people in our organization. And we have labeled that as personal leadership. And we have created programs where we take small groups of max eight people in quite intensive, how do you say that, guided, facilitated groups and meetings.

And what we do is we learn them, we teach them to, first of all, work together in different ways. But we also teach them how to deal with complexity. And I think one of the main drivers of what we do is, there are actually two things. One is we believe in the good of people. And two, we embrace complexity.

And to teach people to deal with complexity, and first you make them feel very incapable, they feel helpless, because in those groups they try to tackle certain existing problems in the company. A nice example is cockpit cleaning. So the pilots in those groups, they said, now one of the main obstacles we have, the cockpit is always dirty. Okay.

so how are you going to solve it how easy and that’s how they start and then they found okay there’s so many

parties involved in that chain and there are so many restrictions also from a regulatory point of view that it’s actually much more complex than they think. And they first have to go back and tackle certain smaller problems before they can actually learn to go and tackle bigger problems. But you make them responsible. We make them responsible, but we help them.

Step by step we help them in their behavior, in their competencies, in their capabilities. And in the end they actually tackle quite relevant and big problems without any help. So those groups continue to exist and then we take one or two out of one group and we let them start a new group. And we start another group and another group. And in the end,

Everybody should be part of such a group. There will be coaches in the organization to help them when needed. In the beginning, they will all go through the same phase of three to six months, quite heavily facilitated intensive training. And in the end, we let them go. And I think that’s, again, as I call it, emancipation will be the last sort of existing gap of where we try to go.

It’s like the stone, you’re pushing up the hill, pushing up the hill, and sooner or later you tip it over the hill and it starts rolling down. That’s where we want to be. We’re still pushing. It’s still hard work. It’s still more energy in than out. But hopefully sooner or later we will find it.

It starts rolling by itself. And this, I think, is the last missing link. And when you look at the way you develop your people and your organization, how does this translate to the market?

I think, as I said, as it’s based on the philosophy of people are good and intrinsically want to contribute and want to develop themselves and want to become better at what they’re doing. And second, it’s embracing and dealing with complexity. I think that’s exactly what’s in a

Yeah, cutthroat competitive environment as the airline business and certainly when it comes to budget flying is required. It’s a complex world out there. Certainly when you start adding a longer term perspective of the impact of the environmental pressures, when you start adding other economic models, it’s a complex world out there. And the other hand, it’s continuously about cost.

So if you have an organization that, without any management layers, without too much added expertise roles, can actually continue to develop itself and improve business, by design you cut down on cost.

and you keep up with your environment. And a complex context. Because there’s no way that somebody, not me, not anybody else, is intelligent enough to deal with the complexity by itself. By him or herself. There’s no way I can oversee everything. So I can lead the process of trying to understand where the world is going to, and what does it mean for Transavia,

But it doesn’t mean that it’s all in my brain. So I think it fits well with what we’re trying to do and what our market requires. It’s what we call the state of anti-fragility. It’s an organization that’s able to profit from external change and where people…

can contribute to the max. That’s a bit where we’re moving towards. And that’s why you can survive in a highly competitive, low-cost market. Yeah. How does the client look at you, the people who fly with your airplanes? I think overall what they find is a…

extremely human type of organization where they feel they can be who they are. They’re welcome. We really try to be an organization where everybody fits in. Either when you work for or with Transavia or you fly with Transavia.

And I think that’s also what we get back. We should not take that for granted. It’s hard work and you should continue to develop that. Where we have points to gain is all our operational excellence, our functionality.

And I believe the world will more and more move to what a Belgian guy we talked to is calling digital, a combination of physical contact and digital, where his statement is that the more people spent in the digital world,

in a virtual reality world, the more they want to make the difference when they actually have physical contact.

And the nature of our business, having people two, three hours with their undivided attention on board, gives us an excellent opportunity to really create something unique in that small environment, in that closed, small environment. And the whole digital journey is more hygienic in that sense. It should be top-notch, but you will never be able to make a difference. The difference is where you actually meet people.

But then you’re probably a frontrunner when you look at the market. Yeah. We’re not a frontrunner on other aspects and we really need to shape up. Given our relatively small scale, we have to find different ways to keep ourselves accessible. Accessible in the sense of how you can book, where you can find us, brand recognition, but also accessible when it comes to price.

So that requires a different way of working than our main competitors. And so far we’ve been actually quite successful because our cost levels are the same as our competitors, while they are 10, 15 times as big as we are.

So how do you look at sustainability? As an airline you do pollute, and for now it’s the way it is, and at the same time it’s hard to cut back on flights. I myself travel a lot. I try to take the train whenever possible, but I still fly a lot. So how do you look at the sustainability issue?

Obviously, it’s the main challenge we have and we face in the future. It is a short-term component and that’s all about reducing your footprint as much as you can within a given context. So it’s about aircraft replacement, it’s about bio or synthetic fuel, those kind of things. But I think

Our responsibility goes further than that.

And how that will play out, I don’t know. That’s the big unknown. And that’s where I’m forcing the organization to think forward and not be too defensive in saying, ah, but as long as there’s demand, okay, we fulfill the demand and it’s not our problem. We have a responsibility given the unique relation we have with our passengers in

entering into a fundamental discussion and dialogue with our customers on how they are using air travel and whether we will position it as kind of a guilty pleasure

Okay, it’s fine, but if you fly, then do something else not, or don’t fly 20 times a year, only fly when, I don’t know how we’re gonna do it. It has to be really authentic, so I don’t wanna do it

in the way some of the bigger brands are doing it, big advertisements, and then below there’s something, okay, too many drinks is bad for your health, or blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, I don’t think that will work. What will work, I don’t know. But we have to use our unique relation because people have kind of a, I wouldn’t say a love affair with Transavia, but they like the brand.

they like our people and our organization, and how do we use that to start the conversation and to start the dialogue and to make people aware of what they’re doing. So it’s about brutal transparency on what you do and what the impact is. It’s about awareness in the bigger context. Okay, then…

You have to make choices in life so you can’t be a carnivore and fly 20 times a year and drive a car or whatever. You have to make choices somewhere. And again, how it will play out, I don’t know. But I think our responsibility goes beyond what we’re doing today. And I’m really trying to understand also how to build an organization that’s dealing with

a lack of growth or even can deal with shrinking the organization and shrinking the footprint. Because I think our economic models will evolve towards that. And whether we will have a donut economy or something else,

More and more non-financial considerations, welfare, the quality of air, whatever, will play a role in our economic models. And we need to be aware of that, and we need to be ready when it’s there. And we might actually be a frontrunner when it comes to that.

And again, don’t ask me how that will work. I don’t know. We’re in the middle of inviting scientists, politicians from all kinds of colors in that discussion to help us understand.

So my role is more and more becoming the guy who starts to ask the uncomfortable questions. Because this is a really uncomfortable question. Absolutely. This is about the heart of what we are. This is a very existential question. Is what we do acceptable? Yeah. And you have a major problem when half of your customer says, okay, I’m going to do 50% of my flights next year. Absolutely. Yeah.

And in the end, my role is to make sure the organization is continuing. Maybe not in the traditional way we’ve done in the last 53 years,

But legally my role as managing director or as CEO is the continuation of the organization. So I cannot say, oh, okay, because I believe in the environment, let’s stop flying. And then there is something which is very much in our DNA, and that’s the accessibility of air travel to everybody.

One of the main reasons our founder created Transavia was, and that was in 1966 when flying was a bit of an elite thing, it was very costly. He wanted to be the guy that made air travel available to normal people. And that’s very much, you see that back in our DNA. So while we do believe that, let’s say, the polluter pays,

It should never be in a sense that in the end only people driving a Tesla can also fly. It should not be, again, only available for the elite. And how do you do that? So that’s why I’m against a flat tax on tickets. I’m not against making flying more expensive, but it should never be in a way that it’s only available to the likes of me. Yeah.

And how do you do that? Should we have all our own CO2 budget and everybody can make a choice? And you cannot sell your budget, otherwise, again. So it’s interesting how we’re going to deal with that kind of thing.

Yeah, but I think it’s awesome that you’re having the conversation and you’re starting the conversation. Yeah. I think that’s the main, that’s the only thing I can do now is to start the conversation both within the company and around us and trying to understand what it will lead to. And I think there we could actually be an example for other organizations because we’re so in the middle of this debate and for us it’s so existential that if we’re able to build

define a new role for ourselves and do that within our responsibility, I think we could be an example for many other organizations. So this has been my own personal agenda. When are you happy when you leave the company behind you and it’s time for the next leader to step up? When are you satisfied with what you realized?

Now, I think when certain things are set in motion, we’ll be so intrinsically part of the organization, so much embedded in the DNA and in the core of the business, that it will continue. And sure, any new leader will…

put his or her different actions and we’ll take the organization where it’s required at that time. But hopefully that whole focus on learning and developing will be so ingrained in the organization that it will continue. So it has really become part of the culture and it’s not because of you. Yeah. And are you going in the right direction, do you think?

Yes, definitely. And always slower than you want. And it’s by making mistakes, by falling and getting up again and doing it in a different way. It’s also by hiring people who can take the baton and start running with it. And you have to accept they might not always run exactly in the direction you had in mind.

That’s also part. So in a way, the letting go has started. In a way, you have to make yourself obsolete. And it doesn’t mean that there is no room for a leader or a CEO anymore, but not for the one you are. So the minute you start, you should start working on your exit.

And actually, it’s one of the elements we’re bringing in, not just for the CEO, but for everybody who comes into the organization. And we call that the employee journey. And part of the employee journey is you start and you leave. And the minute you start, you have to start thinking about how you will leave. It doesn’t mean you have to leave within the next two, three, five, or ten years, but you have to be very much aware of your own development and

How your own path is aligning with that of Transavia or no longer. And that’s okay. Accepting that is okay. It’s, in the bigger scheme of things, you’re only just a small piece. What are you most proud of so far?

I think two things. First of all, it’s nice to look back that when I started, the company was really heavily loss-making and we had two consecutive record years. So it’s nice that financially we’re in safe waters. And again, in our industry, safe is a relative word, but for now we’re in safe waters.

And we created buffers that will help us get through the next crisis. So that’s one, very practical. And two is to start the journey towards a really learning, anti-fragile organization, to use the word again, which is, again, not yet, but an almost unstoppable movement.

It’s so much fun when you walk into the organization and you see people talk. It’s so normal and so okay to talk about your own development and to talk about your own failures and to talk about your own mistakes and you talk about your own fears. It’s so normal in an organization. And it becomes so normal that I forget how unnormal it is in other organizations to have these real conversations

conversations. I actually have more real conversations within my organization than with my own friends. That’s a very good sign. Or not such a good sign. But it’s interesting. And really,

digging down to where it all started, to the core of why you do certain things, how you can change the pattern of your behavior. It’s amazing how normal that have become. Yeah. I love this. Yeah. Yeah, you can be proud of that. Yeah. And at the same time, you realize really good financial results. And in a way, you have it all.

Yeah, and again, you have to realize it’s never, again, never finished. You’re never safe. You never know what happens. There’s always a black swan out there which you haven’t considered. So there’s always the fear in the back of my mind that I haven’t done enough. Yeah. And so there’s always the search, what I can do more? Where, where, what have I missed? Yeah. So that’s a bit the uncertainty which is still driving me. Yeah.

I can imagine, especially with the organization, which is 53 years old, and you have to bring it to the future. You feel responsible for many things. Yeah, you feel responsible for those 2,500 or a bit more families that rely on you. And if you take all the suppliers around us, it’s actually even more. And they really look at me and the team to make sure they have a future.

And that responsibility weighs heavily on your shoulders. Does it feel as your purpose to do what you are doing? No, I think the purpose is becoming bigger than that. I think with my own development and my own search, it’s evolving around how can we

in society also deal with the complexity. I’m very worried about the level of debate we have on any type of topic in politics these days.

And because I think populist politicians tend to look at simplicity on the wrong side of complexity. They try to deny the complexity and they go back to the old days when everything was simple and you had simple nation states and the king was the leader and everything was better, which is not true.

And there’s no way we can go back to those times. You really have to deal with the complexity of the world of today. And yes, you have to go through the complexity to really understand what’s happening and to make it simple again and translate it into actions. Sure you have, but you really have to take time to go through. So I really miss the nuance in the debate. And

My purpose is to show that even in an industry like ours, in a cutthroat, dynamic industry, in the forefront of the environmental debate,

you can have a very nuanced view on things. And you can actually deal with complexity at all levels in the organization. So it will help Transavia, but it will also hopefully be an example which I want to take and use, and I don’t know in what way yet, and teach other people, inspire other people to do it in a similar way. Awesome. Thank you.