Name: Avis Budget Group CEO: 'It's Important to Look Forward, Not Backward'
Uploaded: 2020-01-03
Duration: 6 min 9 s
Description: Larry De Shon reflects on his tenure at the company, and gives valuable advice to his successor.

Avis Budget Group CEO: 'It's Important to Look Forward, Not Backward'

Leadership

Larry De Shon reflects on his tenure at the company, and gives valuable advice to his successor.

Larry. You have said that the next five years there will be more changes. Avis, that there has been over the last 70 years of its company's history. What do you think is going to be the key thing that's gonna drive all that change? We should be afraid of disruption. We should really embrace it, embrace those who are disrupting and find a way to partner with them. And that's what we've done with the number of the disruptors. And mobility is how can we actually work with you to find an opportunity for us and for you? Consumers are gonna consume ability differently in the future than they do today. And just satisfying the current use cases won't be enough. There's going to be multiple other use cases, as we've already seen with car hailing and car sharing. So do you look at uber and lift as, ah, competitive threat or partners? We actually look on. The customers were actually in business with looked way rent cars to lift drivers, and that's starting to build a week after week after week. And so on one hand, it may be a disrupter that's actually perhaps impacting some of your business on one end, but on the other end its weight actually get. This is from them as well. So give us a snapshot of a vis his future. What is it gonna look like? How are we gonna describe it? Let's say, five years from now we'll be offering more mobility solutions to consumers than our current offerings that we have today. And two, we're gonna leverage what we do really well, we've been doing well for seven years, and that is Fleet Management of the service today. We're already providing a Fleet Management service is for Waymo. We provide Fleet Management Service is for via we're doing peer to peer truck Reynolds with such Thomas vehicles is important for us because that's going to be the future we have to learn. Now, how do you manage a fleet of Thomas vehicles? And that's why the relationship with Waymo is extremely important. What were you gonna call Avis? It's not gonna be a car rental company anymore. Transportation companies that mobility its mobility company on. So what we want to be able to do is provide mobility solution for consumers and how they want to consume whether that's a monthly subscription. Whether that self service, whether that is a car for a lift driver, Harper Amazon, last mile driver. We want people to be able consumer the way they want it. As you look at this whole new world of mobility, what are going to be the characteristics that are gonna differentiate between who are gonna be the winners and who will be the losers? We have a workforce that really embracing it. They want to leverage technology to take off their plates, the things that they don't really want to do, where they can actually add more value for consumers and do things that consumers really need their help to do. The destruction that's happening, I actually think, is pretty exciting. It helps just really think about the business in a very different way. You've been with Ava for 13 years and before that, 28 years with United Airlines. As you look back, what is the most important leadership lesson you learn through all those years? I think its integrity and transparency, communication, courage, the job is very difficult and there's lots of ways to get through the day, so it's important that people understand what you're really looking for. Whenever we update the strategy, we go out to the entire work force. We make sure that everyone understands where they connect to the strategy so they can really embrace it. What, you've been here at Fortune CEO Initiative conference and what's the most interesting thing that you picked up leadership lesson this past couple of days? I think of you as you take a look at how the workforce is changing. One of the statistics that came out today that was really fascinating was millennials will be about 50% of the workforce in just another year, possibly five or six years, 75% of the workforce. And, you know, I actually not had focused on that. And so if you think about a company and what we offer to attract new employees of the company and what is that they really find important as faras work like balance benefits on those types of things, I think that there's some work that we need to do to make sure that we're really irrelevant employer. You're going to be leading a bit by the end of the year, and the search is on for a new CEO. And given all of the changes that a this is going to be going on reinventing itself, what are the leadership qualities that you think that the next CEO needs to have in a time of extreme transformation and change, which is what the industry's going through? You've got to have someone that that can lead through that door lead to that transformation, and that means communication. That means clear direction. That means clear strategy and leverage what we do really well, as an organization, I think we'll be successful. Certainly Avis will be going through a dramatic change, and leading through that transition has its challenges. Any way that you can say the do's and don'ts when you're in that position as CEO, you know every job I've ever gone into. I really don't care much about what happened in the past. I think it's really important that people don't look backwards and forwards and people don't want to rehash the past. The past is not really relevant because everything's changing so much in the future. So I think someone coming in who could really just pick up and move forward and not worry about you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Why this? Why that Let's just move forward and find, you know, the new waste. Actually drive the efficiencies in the business and capture on the new mobility opportunity. And then there's the people challenge, you know, hiring new people with different skill sets that are gonna work in this new world and figuring out how to get the current employees on the same page to deliver on that vision of the new CEO, right? Yeah. WeII, operating 180 countries and 30 over 30 of those. We operate corporate Lee, and we have partners that operating in the other 150 we have a very diverse workforce all over the world. And that takes a special kind of leader that can actually relate and communicate and aspire to all those different cultures. Millennials are gonna be 50% of workforce in just the next couple of years. Then you have to think about how you recruit how you train, how you re skill. Uh, that kind of work force. And are you offering the types of benefits and so forth that are really relevant that were forced? Its asked what would be the best advice you would give him the next. You enjoy the right, just relax and enjoy it. It's a great company. It's a great work force. We have great customers. It's an exciting time. It's not a time to be afraid. The time to be excited and embrace it, embrace the change. It's a great job for the next person.