BTN's 2015 Best Practitioners Brainstorm Innovation, Risk and Collaboration

BTN named its annual list of Best Practitioners in July. Along with our Travel Manager of the Year, these four individuals elevated the practice of travel management. Their best practices and innovation initiatives have changed the course of travel management for their organizations and portend travel management trends for others. BTN sat with Travel Manager of the Year, Eric Bailey, who is Microsoft global travel and venue group lead, as well as Cisco Systems director of global travel Susan Lichtenstein, Fore founder and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation senior manager of global travel Pam Massey, BP global travel services procurement manager Lisa Stanford and T-Mobile travel, expense and card senior manager Robert Jacobsen.

When it comes to innovation, we are often directed to get executive buy-in first. Is that how each of you works, or do you find that innovation unfolds more organically?

COMMON THREAD: Innovation happens when it’s aligned with corporate strategy, whether you get buy-in before the initiative begins, or you build out the vision first and wait for its strategic time to arrive. Also, make innovation part of the job, make friends with the legal department and keep the story short. 

Susan Lichtenstein: I’m an innovator by blood. I like changing the experience all the time. In my world, if you’re innovative, if you’re bold, if you’re fast and you’re agile, then the business case builds itself. You can present that upstairs. Then you can present it to the next leader as long as the presentation gets smaller and smaller and the value gets higher and higher.

Also, we dedicate 20 percent of our time to innovation. The team, who I think is brilliant, and I’m a little prejudiced about my team—the team itself really has the freedom and the ability to have that time to be innovative.

Lisa Stanford: We’ve got some great support from our new COO that we’ve not had in the past. [He] has a very active interest in travel and decided he wanted to see a little bit more in-depth information. He sent a noncompliant traveler list to all the senior leaders in the organization. Some of those leaders were on that list. That really brought a lot of attention to the travel compliance space. That helped us with the buy-in of having a travel-reporting database that people can go in and look [at] because nobody wants to see their name on a report. The current price of oil really helped drive [this initiative], as well. We’ve not had really high-level senior leadership interest in saving money, especially when oil prices were high. The economics of what’s going on in our industry has helped bring attention to [savings].

Eric Bailey: Actually, I tried not to tell people.

Pam Massey: That was going to be my answer!

Bailey: But seriously. A lot of stuff is building it first. You build it in order to prove that it’s worthwhile. We’re now in a world where, yeah, I’m in procurement. None of these [innovation] things are necessarily core to your job, but we still need to get them done. So sometimes it sits on the back burner. Sometimes you persevere and just wait and wait until technology catches up. It helps [to have] our new CEO and [to have the focus on] “One Microsoft,” where we used to be very, very siloed. We want to bring together all the things our travelers do and all the things that Microsoft works on in terms of productivity. For me, our travelers are testers. It’s amazing what they will put up with that might not work the first, second or third time. They’ll still give the feedback. They’ll still help you.

Robert Jacobsen: I had developed this whole business case and everything [for the sustainability project]. I was all ready to meet with people and do it. The fact of the matter was I was just home lying on my couch one night and my phone rings. It’s the executive floor calling. It’s 7:00 at night. The No. 2 person in the company would like to speak to me. I’m like, “I’m home.” The person on the phone said, “No, he’d like you to drive into the office and meet with him.” I got in my Prius. It was some basic travel question. It was no big deal at all. I was like, “Phew, I can go back to my MacBook.”

Just when I’m walking out the door, he notices my Tibetan prayer beads. He’s like, “What the hell is going on on your wrist?” I thought, “Okay, this is my 10-second elevator conversation. It’s my chance.”

I told him: “I just got back from Tibet. I spent the night at the Mt. Everest Base Camp in a yak hair tent. He was like, “Oh really? That’s cool.” I said, “I had this guide who told me that the Himalayan glaciers were receding at an alarming rate. It’s really scary because that’s the water source for one-third of the world’s population.” I said, “I really feel like in the travel program, we should do something about sustainability.” He’s like, “Yeah, yeah.” I said, “Here’s the program I put together,” and explained it to him. He said, “Awesome. Do it.”

Massey: You guys have way better stories. Mine was just to see if it stuck. Then once it stuck, same thing. I said, “By the way, legal, I formed an association. Can I sign this piece of paper?” You just have to do it. Of course, mine is a little different. It didn’t really impact internally as much. What was really refreshing for me is that [a lot of times] you hear from leadership, “This is taking your time away from your coworkers. This isn’t what you should be doing.” But [this time] legal said, “We should be helping the nonprofit sector. We should be at the table. That’s our role.” That felt really rewarding that they supported us, supported me.

Risk is often a big part of innovation. How comfortable are each of you with it, and do you have advice for people who may have great ideas but are hesitant to take the next step?

COMMON THREAD: Understand the potential impact of the risk. If it’s mostly personal, just do it. People don’t get fired for taking risks if they are thoughtful about it. Get external support from key stakeholders if you need it. They can advise you. 

Lichtenstein: I like to reward a risk. When somebody on my team comes to me with an idea, builds it and it’s not good, I’m going to reward that. If they stop doing it because it wasn’t good, great. If they change it and rebuild it, I’m going to reward it again. I like to reward that risk. It’s just a behavior pattern in a company.

Jacobsen: I totally agree about risk. I had a [Global Business Travel Association annual conference] session yesterday. They asked, “What advice would you have for somebody else who wants to do this?” Take risks. People don’t get fired for taking risks. They get fired for either being jerks or being incompetent or for not doing anything at all. It’s really important, especially in a fast-moving industry like travel and technology, to take risks.

Lisa, you took a big financial risk in terms of the airline contract that you signed. There was a lot at stake there. How comfortable were you with taking that risk?

Stanford: I rely heavily on the consulting arm of our travel management company. When we were evaluating what data we would need to present during the RFP process, they were invaluable in getting that data for me. They also were very good about making sure I understood the risks of this particular [airline contract] offer: what it could cost me in the long run if I was not able to perform or make sure that our travelers were doing what they needed to do. Also, when I made the commitments to deliver the program, I had the buy-in from the operations team that what I put in place could be implemented and executed against what I negotiated.

Collaboration is another important element for innovation. How did you work with internal colleagues, industry peers and your suppliers to realize your ideas and vision?

COMMON THREAD: Once you build a team, be consistent and work on a schedule. Push each other, and don’t be afraid of being outsmarted by a peer. Invite internal and external experts to advise when the team gets stuck. Enjoy the process of creating something new and take the opportunity to build better relationships with your supplier partners. 

Bailey: A lot of people [at Microsoft] really have the technology ability. What I was able to bring is the travelers. I can deliver some of these things to travelers and have people try it out because there was truly just a concept [before that]. Now, we could actually see how it worked. And sometimes it didn’t work, and you have to be open to those ideas, too. There have been some fantastic ideas that didn’t work, but they often lead to some really cool things that do work.

Stanford: It’s really important not to have just a single lens. You have to have input from the different departments that are within your travel review. I could have just gone out and put [this airline contract] deal in place, but if I didn’t have the buy-in from the operations team to make it successful, we could have gotten hurt. We’ve done some incredible things to make sure we’re making those contracts successful. I couldn’t have done it alone.

Jacobsen: I initiated the gamification and sustainability project with a team, but I had to build that team and bring it together. It was a collaboration not only with Travel and Transport but with our charitable partner [The Eden Projects] and Delta. We all formed a working group. We had calls once or twice a week, regularly scheduled calls. We continued to meet and adjust the program. It’s really awesome to be able to spend time and collaborate and not just argue over a few percentage [points] here and there. It’s really cool.

Massey: [Fore] has a call once a month. It’s always consistent. The new president is doing something I really like. We used to have a formal agenda and we would go through all the committees. Everyone would say “nothing, nothing, nothing.” We’re not doing that anymore. Now, we review the three things that this group is doing this month. It makes people accountable. The group needs an answer. Then, the second half hour is what are you doing? What are you doing? That is such a rich conversation. Everybody talks. It’s keeping the energy up.

Lichtenstein: I like that.

Massey: My advice for someone who would want to start a group like Fore would be to be careful not to go stale. You can end up talking to yourself and becoming a talk shop. Think about bringing in external voices, experts. Again, bringing value to the group and keeping it fresh, meeting regularly and being really consistent.

Lichtenstein: [For our hotel program,] once both sides really distilled what we needed, we were able to build a program that not only saved me more money than I’ve saved in a very long time in the hotel program because I was already at the best negotiated rates, but increased spend in each one of our partners. Together, we made a partnership that wins all the time. We determined that we do everything better together.

What is each of you doing next? How do you find your next best practice or innovation?

COMMON THREAD: Don’t limit the search for the next best practice to companies like yours. Look beyond the obvious and reach out to peers that are doing cool things. Very importantly, push suppliers to think differently, and be willing to tolerate an iterative process before you find success. 

Lichtenstein: That’s my whole conversation now. When I have a conversation with one of my staff or my boss has [one] with me, it’s “what are we doing next?” No more conversations about what we did. In turn, my partners during the quarterly reviews get a half hour to tell me how great they are and what they did. An hour and a half has to be about what we’re going to do next. Because I can run a report and tell you how I did. Imagine that. I spent an hour and a half with all my partners talking about what I’m going to do and holding them accountable.

Bailey: I try a lot of different things. I’ve never been like, “Hey, let’s write out the requirements document ahead of time.” I found that you never can do that—not for the really innovative things—because you don’t know what it’s going to look like on the other side. My team says that I do need to have project plans for other things, and [we] do business requirements documents and things like that. But that type of planning can really stifle your imagination because you’re trying to imagine what something is going to look like but you couldn’t possibly know it.

Massey: We’re trying to change the [travel] policy. We’re excited because our new leadership wants to provide a travel program that really does the right thing and is traveler friendly. In the past, I’ve always gone out to my NGO group and said, “What do you guys do?” But Gates Foundation is a thousand times bigger than these guys. They haven’t even thought about it. So we’re going to talk to Google, talk to Microsoft, talk to Amazon. In this case, we don’t identify with our fellow NGOs, so we have to recognize that and look to best practices at some of these other companies that are for-profit.

Jacobsen: It’s great to compare best practices and to look at companies that are outside of the traditional “like size, like industry.” The last thing I want to be also—and I’m sure the rest of you [this]—is the same. Just do the same thing that everybody else like you is doing. If there’s one expression I hate, it’s “that’s just the way it’s done.”

Stanford: What can actually serve you is to recognize the signs that something you’ve been doing isn’t right. Maybe you’ve just been doing it and doing it. Don’t be afraid to test that. You can test it and say, “You know what? Yeah, that’s crazy.” And then you know what you need to change next.

This report originally appeared in the Aug. 24, 2015, edition of Business Travel News.