leader case 1

Richard Branson Shoots for the Moon’

The Virgin Group is the umbrella for a variety of business ventures ranging from air travel to entertainment With close to 200 companies in over 30 countries it is one of the largest companies in the world At the head of this huge organization is Richard Branson Branson founded Virgin over 30 years ago and has built the organization from a small student magazine to the multibillion-dollar enterprise it is today.

Branson is not your typical CEO Branson's dyslexia made school a -struggie and sabotaged his performance on standard IQ tests His teachers and tests had no way of measuring his greatest strengths—his uncanny knack for uncovering lucrative business ideas and his ability to energize the ambitions ot others so that they, like he, could raise to the level of their dreams

Richard Branson's true talents began to show themselves in his late teens. While a student at Stowe School in England in 1968, Branson decided to start his own magazine, 'Student' Branson was inspired by the student activism on his campus in the sixties and aecided to try something different Student differed from most college newspapers or magazines it focused on the students and their interests Branson sold adsertismg to major corporations to support his magazine He included articles by Ministers of Parliament, rock stars, intellectuals, and celebrities Student grew to become commercial success

In 1970 Branson saw an opportunity for Student to offer records cheaply by running ads for mail-order delvery The subscribers to Student flooded the magazine with so many orders that his spin-off discount music venture proved more lucra tive than the magazine subscriptions Branson reciu the staff of Stvaent for his discount music business He built a small recording studio and signed his first artist Mike Oldfield recorded ‘Tubular Bells at Virgin in 1973—the album sold 5 million copies Virgin records and the Virgm brand name were born Branson has gone on to start his own airline (Virgin Atlantic Airlines was launched in 1984) build hotels (Virgin Hotels started in 1988) get into the personil finance business (Virgin Direct Personal Finance Services was launched in 1995) and even enter the cola wars (Virgm Cola was introduced in 1994) And those are just a few of the

highlights of the virgin Group—all this while Branson has attempted to break world speed records for crossing the Atlantic Ocean by boat and by hot air balloon

As you might guess Branson s approach is nontraditional—he has no giant corporate office or staff and few if any board meetings Instead, he keeps each enterprise small and relies on his skills of empowering people s ideas to fuel success When a flight attendant from Virgin Airlines approached him with her vision of a wedding business Richard told her to go do it He even put on a wedding areas himself to help launch the publicity Virgin Brides was born Branson i dies heav on the creatu ity of his staff—he is more a supporter of new ideas than a creator

of them He encourages searches for new business ideas ci ervwhere he goes and even has a spot on the Virgin Websi te called Got a Big Idea

In December 1999, Richard Branson was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Millennium New Year s Honours List for services to entrepreneurship “ What a next on Branson s list’ He recently announced that Virgin was investing money in trying to make sure that, in tne not too distant future peovle from around the world will be anle to go into spacc / Not everyone is convinced that space tourism can become a fully fledged part of tne travel industry but s ith Branson behind the idea it just may fly 1 Would you classify Richard Branson as a manager or a leader’ What qualities distmguish him as one ovei the ther

2 Describe the relationship between Branson and his followers.

3 Identify the myths of leadership development thai Richard Branson s success helps to disprove