Denmark
Reijnen became Satair’s CEO. “Moving to Satair in Denmark was similar to when I became CEO of Dutch Space in the Netherlands. It was a somewhat independent subsidiary, but still part of Airbus and subject to all Airbus policies. I built bridges between Satair’s culture and customers to the Airbus company,” he says. “This is very similar to what I’m doing now at Airbus Helicopters-North America, where we are a separate legal entity with two regions (U.S. and Canada). Although we are North American, we are part of the larger Airbus. We need to take the best from both worlds; we serve the North American market as a local North American company and at the same time utilize the experience and large global resources of Airbus.”
Reijnen is proud of the culture he and his team created at Satair. “I’m particularly proud of
the global culture that spans
from Miami to Beijing. It is a mix of Airbus culture and Satair’s legacy culture; it’s an environment in which people are very happy to work.”
Surprisingly impressive is that Satair
ultimately became a growth story, despite Reijnen’s reign there coinciding with COVID. Annual revenue increased from about $1.6 billion in the beginning of his stewardship to $2.7 billion last year, when he left for Airbus Helicopters-North America to lead over 1,100 employees.
The Reijnens when they left Denmark United States of America
Reijnen has just moved to Airbus Helicopters headquarters in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metro area. (His family hasn’t even joined him yet from Europe because his daughter’s school year has not concluded.) Although he’s very early in his new role in a new industry to him, he already sees how his experience at Satair will directly help Airbus Helicopters throughout
North America. “The whole
industry is experiencing large supply-chain challenges and it’s something that will not be over tomorrow morning, but will carry far into 2024. Taking on this challenge is high on my priority list and is a high priority for my group. My experience during seven years at Satair was all about supporting worldwide airlines with spare parts,” he says. “My challenge in coming to Airbus Helicopters-North America is to listen very carefully to our customers’ expectations for the helicopters they have in service; and try to meet their expectations in light of ongoing supply-chain challenges.
That will not
always be easy, but we must certainly try. We need to get closer to our customers to understand their asks from their perspective as the ones actually operating the helicopter. (Reijnen says that one of his strengths is his ability to understand the perspective of others.) Innovation, technology, and data systems can help drive customer support in the field.”
Reijnen sees another priority. “We also need to make our company and our products more eco-friendly and more sustainable. Society is asking for that and rightly so, not only from our industry, but from all on a global level. The aerospace industry has an important contribution to make in this regard, and we at Airbus want to stand strong and have a pioneering role in making our industry more sustainable. We cannot do it alone, but we want to be a leader.”
14 Jan/Feb 2024
To lead, Reijnen expects his team to follow his example. “My personal values for myself are trust, teamwork, and transparency. These are my three values and what I ideally expect from my team that direct reports. I tell them this is what I expect.”
He not only tells them his expectations, he also gifts value-enforcing reading to his direct reports. You are the Team: 6 Simple Ways Teammates can go from Good to Great is the book he gave them this past Christmas. Of course, he’s read it, but Reijnen may not have found that book’s title as amusing as the title of a management book he was gifted by a colleague: Who Moved My Cheese? “I found that funny because we Dutch are very fond of cheese,” Reijnen remarks.
Reijnen also has a fourth fundamental trait he expects: “Accountability. It’s important to really take ownership of a topic and drive it to the end.” Yet, while his team’s values are uniform, that doesn’t mean that every member is the same. “For me, ‘team’ does not mean a group of equals. For example, look at an American football team. They each have different roles and personalities, but in the end they need to play together as one,” he says. “My team needs a level of diversity, including diverse personalities; we should not be identical and all equal. On my last team, I had a member who was introverted and took a glass-half-empty point of view, yet all the rest of us were glass-half-full types. I could have been tempted to tell him to quit being so negative and quit bringing us down, but in essence he was helping bring us back down to reality. His contribution really helped us as a team. We win together and lose together as a team.”
Based on Reijnen’s travel record of racking up wins, expect another W in North America.
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