CEO VISION W
hen CW Lee became CEO of Incheon Airport in September 2008 he knew he would be the envy of many, as he was joining an award-winning gateway with state-of-the-art facilities.
After all, back then, Incheon had just won the top honour
in ACI’s Airport Service Quality (ASQ) survey for the third successive year and less than four months earlier had opened its new Concourse A and third runway. The new concourse was the key component of its $3.6 billion second phase construction programme that raised the airport’s capacity to 44 million passengers per annum.
“I think each CEO has their own way of leading. I like to think of mine as being like the conductor of an orchestra who gets the best out of his musicians.
“I actively encourage input and participation from my team as I wish to collect ideas and wisdom. We operate a hands-up culture, which is based on considering many thoughts and ideas during the decision making process. “I do not come from an airport background so rely on my management team to provide me with the knowledge I need to make key decisions on topics such as the best technology to adopt or what new facility we need to introduce in the terminal.
I was lucky to inherit a very good and successful airport. I had three predecessors. Dong-suk Kang built this airport, Woo-hyun Cho, very much stabilised the airport and Jaehee Lee really drove the airport forward by focusing on service quality.
Lee remembers: “I was lucky to inherit a very good and successful airport. I had three predecessors. Dong-suk Kang built this airport, Woo-hyun Cho, very much stabilised the airport and Jaehee Lee really drove the airport forward by focusing on service quality.
“The challenge for me was to make sure that the success continued as the Korean people were used to Incheon being the best airport in the world, and when you are number one, the prospect of becoming number two in the world was no good.” However, Lee says that he was confident that he would be able to oversee the next successful chapter in Incheon’s short history after meeting his senior management team for the first time and being impressed by their “passion, pride and enthusiasm”. “I inherited a service orientated culture and determination to win and believe that I have nurtured, encouraged and developed this through my management,” notes Lee.
“My strength is knowing that I don’t know all the answers, but have a strong management team in place that does.” Lee believes that the new, less bureaucratic corporate culture he has helped foster at Incheon Airport over the last few years has made his management team more dynamic and ‘global’ in its outlook.
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Indeed, his dislike of negativity and desire for the airport to be run in a similar slick way to a top multi-national company, means that he only encourages ‘positivity’ at Monday’s executive meetings, where agendas and meeting materials are banned.
“I only want them to bring their heads and their ideas,” explains Lee. “We talk and share information. I want to know what each and everyone of them achieved over the previous week. I want to hear good and not bad things. If they haven’t achieved anything good they cannot talk. This encourages positive thinking and actions.
“When we started these meetings nobody talked very much. Now I cannot stop them talking! We are a very
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