The 21st-century corporation: A conversation with Brian Chesky of Airbnb
21st Century corporations are emerging in the era of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Cloud computing etc. which equip the companies to deal better with the challenges posed by enhanced exposure and risks. The pandemic has created an unprecedented risk of business continuity all across the sectors. Hospitality industry is one of the worst affected one due to the ongoing pandemic crisis.
In the present edition of “The Hub” we have captured the conversation of James Manyika, Senior partner who chairs the McKinsey Global Institute with Brian Chesky, Co-founder & CEO-Airbnb, one of the leading companies in the industry. The conversation brings out the challenges the company has faced and placed efforts in turnaround the company amidst crisis. Eventually it also floated a successful IPO to figure out learning that may be adopted & implemented by other companies. Readers may also absorb the learning and use it to practice as they might find appropriate in organizations.
Conversation started with impact of the pandemic and how did Airbnb manage to survive and bounce back. Commenting on the current economic situation, Brian stated that crisis are defining moments and in such situations leadership need to speed up the decision making process instead of slowing down. Also, since things are changing at a faster pace, the amount of communication also needs to be amplified to communicate such changes. These are also the testing times for a leader, who need to stay optimistic, adhere to the principles of the organization and act swiftly and diligently to deal with such crises.
Situations like these also means taking hard decisions like revisiting priorities, restructuring of business and laying off people. However, the process needs to be dealt in a more humane manner, as shared by Brian wherein he wrote to the employees being laid off sharing how important their contribution was in building the company and also, providing them support in finding new jobs. One of the important decisions in this whole process is to strike a balance between the depth and the generosity of such cuts.
After some tough decisions, the company saw some early indications in mid-May about the recovery as after prolonged lockdowns, people wanted to get together with their friends and family. The company developed enhanced cleaning protocols and also set aside a sizeable amount to support the hosts to meet these standards. This was a tough and yet the most sensible decision as the hosts is the lifeblood of Airbnb. The business of the company comes with an inbuilt adaptability. The recovery was further supported by this model where travelers have wide choice to pick hosts that suits their demand in terms of location and budget.
The Conversation also include the letter that was written by Brian and other co-founder to the investor before launch of IPO which emphasize on the broad future plan of the company and the strategies to implement the same. Company’s effort to align interest of all stakeholders instead of trading-off some stakeholders for others, treating service providers as partner and support them with funds specifically created for this purpose, approach to transform the company into a multi-decade company were also part of conversation.
