KARL MOORE: This is Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, talking management for The Globe and Mail. Today, I’m speaking to Guy Hachey, who’s the [president and chief operating officer] of Bombardier Aerospace, one of the top aerospace companies in the world.
Good afternoon, Guy.
GUY HACHEY: Good afternoon, Karl. How are you?
KM: So, how do you engage your employees, because you have 30,000 people? You do it through your other leaders, but how do you do it differently than in the past?
GH: Okay, well, one of the things that we’re rolling out here within our company is called the Bombardier Way. And we try to simplify that. Like all companies, we have complex programs etc., but I try to simplify it for our people. And, essentially, the Bombardier Way breaks down into three areas and we put [together] some analogies for them to understand.
We have the mind. The mind is described as our business 
, our enterprise strategy, sort of, our vision – it is the “what” we are trying to do as a company. It’s our sandbox. So, I tell them the mind is important. I said, “Most companies have the mind but, you know, we have to have that – we have to know where we’re going to play and what we’re going to compete in.”
The second segment is called the body. And the body is, basically, the processes and the procedures, the policies, the systems, the operating systems we have in place. We have something called Achieving Excellence here, a system that we’re putting in place. It’s really based on lean principles but it’s more than just lean – where we’re actually rolling out and qualifying our employees into five [segments]. You start at bronze, you move up to silver, gold and it’s probably like a seven-to-eight-year approach to get to the ultimate, which is diamond. And, it’s very difficult to get to diamond.
So, right now, we’re a silver-rated organization. We’re trying to get to gold. Probably, it will take us another two years, maybe three years, to get to gold. And that’s for all 30,000 people; we’re all getting trained in the same approach and it’s an operating .
So, you have the mind, the what.
Then you have the body. It’s the how and it standardizes, commonizes – same terminologies. So, if we go from Belfast to Wichita, [Kan.], to Querétaro, [Mexico], to Montreal, everybody can speak the same way, has the same metrics. It’s got balance score cards, it’s got a detailed plan and then problem solving – it’s a very comprehensive “how to” we want to get established.
But, all companies have that, okay, and some do it better than others.
So, the third part of the Bombardier Way is called the soul and the soul is more of the mushy, soft stuff but it’s the most important stuff. And, basically, it’s the culture we want to have, the behaviours, the norms, and how we expect our people to behave. It’s, I guess, the collective personality of the company, the 30,000 people put together, how we come across to our stakeholders, customers, communities.
And, what I tell our people and our leaders is that, the top two, management can sort of dictate – we can sort of tell what sandbox and what operating systems. The bottom one, the soul, we have to earn as leaders – much tougher. And, if we can work on those three elements, this is what’s going to be the basis of the transformation of us moving forward the Bombardier Way.
So, it’s much more than what I said in about three minutes there, but you get the sense that that’s how we’re trying to make the transformation here in the company.
KM: Will that be different than the GM Way or the Delphi Way or Motorola Way? Will that make Bombardier substantially different than other companies?
GH: I can only tell you of the GM and the Delphi Way because those are the only other two companies that I worked at – substantially different. Our Achieving Excellence system, what I call the body, is very different than what we used to do at Delphi or General Motors. And, in particular, the soul is much more – Bombardier has a certain personality and a certain culture – entrepreneurship; there’s some values that we are driving that are very different than where I come from. And we’re making sure that we’re actually amplifying those and make sure they’re well known. So, it’s the flame that people go to and says, “This is what we are about. If you touch Bombardier, you know that you’ve touched Bombardier.”
KM: And that comes from [Bombardier chairman] Laurent Beaudoin, [Bombardier president and CEO] Pierre Beaudoin; it comes from that history. But, it’s got to be in line with what’s happening in the environment or you’re going to fall short.
GH: Absolutely.
KM: How do you keep in alignment with the changing world?
GH: Well, that’s where the mind comes in to play. So, our business plan, our enterprise strategy, was thought out. And, the enterprise strategy is something that’s going to last 15 years, I’m hoping. So, it’s a very high-level statement of what we’re trying to accomplish. So, if one of our employees asks me – “What are you trying to do, Guy?” or “What are we trying to do as a company?”– he should read three or four lines and this is what we’re about.
Of course, there’s a business plan behind that, then there’s strategic levers. And those are actually tailored to what we feel of the marketplace, the competition, what’s evolving, the trends, the environment, whatever.
KM: But the other two, the body and the soul, are something that are longer lasting – that there can be changes in the mind, the strategy, but these two will be along there 15 years from now.
GH: The soul is something that’s got to be for the long term. It’s really something that, again, is the collective personality of our enterprise. And, I keep telling our people, “When our customers touch us, when our suppliers touch us, they have to be able to differentiate that they weren’t dealing with Rockwell Collins or GM or some other company. They know that this is the Bombardier Way and it’s got to be consistent, whether they’re touching an engineering guy or touching someone in Wichita or Belfast.” And, that’s why we’re trying to converge every one and [that] makes the strength of the organization over the long haul.
KM: Not everybody would be attracted to that. Is that a fair statement? That some people go, “I don’t like that culture. I want another culture.”
GH: Yeah.
KM: So, it’s self-selecting and, if you don’t like it, you’ll leave after a while because it’s just not you. But, on the other hand, if you like it, you love it.
GH: And, I guess, what we’re finding is that the great majority of employees want this. They want to have clarity. They want to have ownership. They want to belong – to belong to something. And I keep telling people, “I’m hoping that, 10 years from now, we look back as a team and we say, ‘We were part of this evolution and now we’re the standard of the industry or in the top quartile of the industry and we did it.’ ” And, that’s what we come to work for. That’s what I come to work for now.
Of course, I want to be paid. Of course, I like the responsibility and all the things that come with the job but, what satisfies me the most is that I’m making a difference. I’m taking all the experience I’ve had over the last 25 plus years – and mistakes – I have a new beginning, I have a new opportunity. I’ve seen what happened to other industries and I’m trying to make sure that our people don’t make the same mistakes. And I share what I know and, then, to move them along to that state.
Because the competition is going to be there. We’re not the low-cost provider, okay? We do have some competitive advantages but we’re certainly not positioned to have a low cost. The Chinese will probably have a much better cost structure – the Brazilians do. So we have to have some other differentiating factors, and I believe that the power of what we’re trying to do in differentiating ourselves as an organization and as a high-performing organization – plus the products and the value proposition – is going to be that combination.
KM: This has been Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, talking management for The Globe & Mail. Today, I’ve been speaking to Guy Hachey, who’s the [COO] of Bombardier Aerospace.