Vivek Kaushal, CEO of Global Jet Capital

Vivek Kaushal is the CEO of Global Jet Capital, a Danbury, Connecticut-based aircraft financing firm specializing in operating leases for business jets. He has been with the firm since 2015, previously serving as chief risk officer and president before assuming the CEO role. Kaushal leads a team of 58 people based across the globe. According to Kaushal, Global Jet Capital clients are typically large corporations and ultra-high-net-worth individuals owning super-midsize to large-cabin new and preowned jets. The average transaction size tends to be in the $25 to $30 million range. Here, Kaushal reveals a thoughtful and grounded leadership philosophy rooted in deep humanity.

I'm a curious guy by nature and a big believer that knowledge comes through layers. You learn, iterate, incorporate, and then begin a new learning cycle. That's how I've approached my career. I took a deep interest in things that were maybe a little peripheral, but also integral to the functioning of the business. And so, over 33 plus years, I acquired those skill sets. When I moved to take the CEO role, it was a fairly seamless transition.

I like to operate a flat organization—no layers. When we get the team together once a year, we fit everybody into the same room and communicate directly with each other. My philosophy is that your strategy and your objective should be simple. No one should be confused about what success looks like.

We work with our clients to identify the aircraft they want, and then we provide a full array of financing solutions. What's different about what we do is that we provide an operating lease product. Our clients pick the aircraft, we acquire it, and we lease it back to them. They pay us a fixed rental stream over the life of the lease, and at the end of the lease they simply return the aircraft to us and move onto the next one. If the mission profile changes during the term of the lease and a client wants to upgrade to a newer model, we will work with them to make that transition as seamless as possible. 

First of all, to anyone who's looking to buy an aircraft: Congratulations. The fact that you’re considering something like this means that you’ve probably built a successful business.

Never overlook the fact that this is a depreciating asset. You likely made your wealth by investing in things that appreciate in value. Understanding that contrast, and not locking up your capital in something that's going to lose value over time, is critical. Look at other ways of financing it. Use someone else's balance sheet, like ours. Lease the aircraft so you don't have to worry about it.

Leasing alleviates the capital burden of owning the asset. It also has optics benefits because you’re no longer carrying the asset on your balance sheet. It's registered to us and not to you, so there's a level of anonymity. But truth be told, that's not the reason why most people lease. Most people lease because they like the fact that their capital isn't tied up in a depreciating asset, and that they can keep it invested in their business where it's generating significantly higher returns.

From time to time we hear from people who acquire aircraft and are not prepared for the financial burden, or who have been sold on a [mostly false] narrative that they can generate enough charter revenue to offset a significant amount of the expense. Working with the right advisor who will give you a realistic assessment of what it will cost to own and operate the aircraft—and prepare you for that through a fairly detailed budgeting exercise—is essential.

In today's world, there's so much change and you're making decisions in a very fluid environment. The flow of information and data is what enables you to make good decisions and enables your team to make good decisions. Because you can have the best people, but if you don't enable them with good data, good information, and good process, it's hard for them to succeed.

Ours is a very specialized business. At one level there's a lot of data, but at another level it's a small number of assets that we're managing. Even though it's a fairly large portfolio, it is only 115 to 120 aircraft. So you need to look at it not just at a high level, but also at a granular level, and be very comfortable with that level of detail. A.I. is just not there yet. I am very curious about it and I experiment with it, but we've not really found a use case at this point that is highly compelling.

I believe that great people deliver great customer experience, so I back my team to execute on a few impactful things, and I help them fight distractions.

In every conversation I have with my team, I stress operational excellence. We have to leverage every capability to execute, and we can't ever stop improving or having curiosity about how we can do things better.

There's good complexity and bad complexity. Aircraft transactions will always be complex: there are considerations around the plane, management, maintenance, jurisdiction, you name it. That is good complexity, because we can master it, and we can use that mastery to benefit our customers. Bad complexity comes from bureaucracy, inefficient processes, and lack of timely data. That's what demotivates people and causes client frustration.

I try to simplify things for my team, fight distractions, and minimize the things that are unproductive and don't deliver toward the objectives of the business.

I'm a big believer in personal touch. We're all human beings and we all want to be known, seen, and  heard. I try to make sure every one of my team members [receives] that. I think we have a very open door culture where we can speak about things, debate, and bring up issues constructively.

When there’s a mistake or problem, of course you have to understand what went wrong so you can fix it. But my focus is  always on how to move forward, not on fault finding. Who are the constituents impacted? Who do we need to reach out to? What needs to be done to manage the impact to the business? Not reacting to the headline, but really listening and figuring out what to do next.

I have a great deal of humility when it comes to hiring. I've learned over the years that it needs to be a team decision. When you take in views from everybody around you, you're usually able to form a much better picture of who you're hiring.

We know that every hiring decision is not going to be the right one. Every employee is not going to be the right fit. There's a very strong human side to it, and there should always be — because you're talking about an individual, their family, their livelihood. At the same time, an ineffective individual’s impact on the business can be profound. So you have to balance those two things and move with a sense of urgency, humanely, and with a lot of thought.

Change is one thing I have never been afraid of  because I learned early in life to embrace it. I grew up in India, the son of an army officer. I changed schools eight times before I graduated from high school. So dealing with change, working with people—that was just life. India is a big and varied country, and we'd move from one state to another and I wouldn't know the language. All the kids in the class would speak a completely different language that I didn't understand. But I learned how to thrive in that environment. 

I read extensively, and I love reading the philosophers. Whether you’re reading Socrates or the teachings of the Buddha, the key learning is about understanding that you are part of a bigger whole. You always have to think about how you connect with the rest of the world and the people around you. That immediately makes you a person invested in outcomes not just for yourself, but for other people. I think that's essential in a leader. That's what gives you the will to lead.