Gautam Thakkar of Unifi Aviation: Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A CEO

An Interview With Doug Noll

Don’t underestimate the power of communication: Effective communication is vital in any organization, and as a CEO, you need to communicate with your team, employees, customers, and stakeholders regularly. Clear and concise communication will help cultivate strong relationships and promote a productive work environment.

As a part of our series called ‘Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A CEO’ we had the pleasure of interviewing Gautam Thakkar.

Gautam Thakkar, a seasoned executive with over 25 years of experience in the software technology and services sector, currently leads as the CEO of Unifi Aviation. With a diverse career spanning IT, Business Process Outsourcing, mergers and acquisitions, and various industry verticals, Gautam has lived and worked across Asia, Europe, and North America. He also serves on the boards of several private equity and public enterprises, offering expertise in SaaS and platform-led services. Under his leadership, Unifi Aviation has been recognized for its strong refugee recruitment efforts, providing employment opportunities for individuals from Afghanistan, Somalia, and Ukraine. Gautam’s ability to foster innovation and drive growth has earned him a reputation for navigating complex business challenges and delivering exceptional results.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

Like many others, my career has been a bit happenstance, and I didn’t set out aspiring to be a CEO, but I did have a lot of ambition. I was a strong performer, found myself at the place at the right time, and took risks that paid off.

I graduated with an Industrial Engineering degree, and I was surprised how much it helped me early in my career (and still does today!) when I was part of a consulting company or when I was one of the first employees of a startup Business Process Management (BPM) company. I eventually became the CEO of that company, and it had more than 30k employees globally when I left. My stint in consulting grounded me to be very solution and customer-oriented. Being a part of that startup meant I was wearing several hats, doing everything from sales, solutions, transition, H.R., and operations across different industries before I took over as the CEO. That set the stage for me to leverage my experience in any industry. I was a CEO of a 3rd party insurance administrator, which I also helped transform. When I got a call about joining Unifi. I was sure it was a mistaken identity because I didn’t have any aviation experience. However, given where the company was, the owners of the private equity believed that someone from outside the industry who had experience building a foundation and scaling a business was greatly needed. They wanted to bring unconventional thinking into, what is, a very traditional industry. It’s been my best decision, and now I have a front-row seat for this next era of aviation and travel, which I can help shape.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

Last year [2022], I visited our operations at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and met about two dozen Afghani refugees working for us. One of them was a man named Naweed Rahimzada. Naweed was a United Nations security guard at Kabul Airport when the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan, and he fled for his life. He came to the U.S. and hardly knew any English — he only had some distant family when he came to Seattle and started his life all over again. Hearing about his journey and what he’s doing to support his family back home really moved me. I had Naweed join a senior leadership meeting to share his story with my team. Through Naweed’s effort, we have hired more than 40 refugees in Seattle. I have to call out his manager, Alex Hilario, who identified his potential, hired, mentored, and supported him and the group Naweed helped hire. Today, Unifi Aviation is recognized for its strong refugee recruitment — we have people from Afghanistan, Somalia, and, most recently, Ukraine who have joined our operations. I’m so proud that we are playing a role in helping them rebuild their lives.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

This isn’t funny, in the classic sense, but it’s certainly been a lesson on the importance of language and word choice and was a key learning for me. For example, working with clients to develop solutions to help improve their operations and profitability very early in my consulting career, I often used the phrase, “I feel…”. So I kept saying, “I feel if you did this,” or “I feel this is a good solution,” etc.

After a session, one of my managers pulled me aside and explained that clients are not paying us to “feel” but rather to “think.” I got the message loud and clear. It was an insightful moment and one that I’ve passed on. I’ve shared this story with my kids, one of whom just started her career in consulting.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

It may feel trite or old-fashioned to say this, but it’s hard to do what I do if I don’t have a partner supporting me. I have been traveling my whole career, sometimes for weeks at a time, and it would have been impossible to do this had it not been for my wife. There is no question that she took on the more considerable responsibility when it came to parenting while I was on the road. What she did was much harder than anything I’ve done, so I’ll always be grateful to her.

Professionally, I have had the good fortune of working with some brilliant and gifted people who taught me a lot. However, one individual who believed in me and challenged me stands out, and how we met is a pretty fun story.

I’m an avid, active squash player and have played that sport my entire life. In the early days of my career, I played squash at my local club in India when this Englishman was also looking for a game. We had a great match and started playing regularly with each other. It turned out that he was the CEO of Proctor & Gamble in India.

Neither of us liked to lose, and we used to have fierce, competitive, and close matches on the squash courts (with a lot of intimidation and typical trash-talking), but at the end of the game, we would share a cold beer and have great conversations. We talked about his career path and business and my aspirations. Along the way, those discussions left a deep impression on me. It’s fair to say that, somewhere in those conversations, he shaped my thinking and the type of leader I am today.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Most of our readers — in fact, most people — think they have a pretty good idea of what a CEO or executive does. But in just a few words can you explain what an executive does that is different from the responsibilities of the other leaders?

The most important aspect of my job is to shape the company’s strategy, vision, and culture, lead from the front, rally the organization behind it, and, most importantly, execute it. I need to be clear when I answer questions about what we are trying to accomplish as a business and how we are building the right culture to get there. Creating a vision that everyone can get behind and is passionate about is vital. That starts with me.

The leadership team at Unifi is the most diverse team I have ever led, and it’s amazing how this very different group of people is upholding a shared company culture and executing our business strategy. It was a process where we took the time to get to know each other and appreciate different points of view. Given we did that work, our diverse cultural and professional backgrounds are one of our greatest strengths. We are leveraging it to build a great company we all want to be a part of and help grow.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a CEO or executive? Can you explain what you mean?

There is still this big myth that CEOs must have all the answers. The reality is that I don’t always have the answer, or maybe I don’t have the correct answer. I rely heavily on our leadership teams to help get it right.

Their views may be only sometimes aligned, and there are several instances when they may even be at opposite ends of the spectrum regarding the decision to take, so I think this is one of the most challenging parts of my job. I have to take a balanced view and weigh each argument. But, unfortunately, this also means that in those situations, someone is usually unhappy about the final call I make.

What is the most striking difference between your actual job and how you thought the job would be?

The most significant difference for me came from the global pandemic’s challenges to the travel industry. I joined Unifi in 2021, and we were having conversations I (or, for that matter, anyone in any industry) had not anticipated. Airlines and carriers were returning with full schedules as people wanted to travel post covid, but Unifi, like many of our clients and other industries, did not have the workforce to support that surge in demand. Even if someone had anticipated this, it was a complex problem.

The workers hesitated about returning to some of these heavily affected [by the pandemic] industries. And it’s fair to say there was no magic formula to address it because no one had experienced anything like this. I remember reflecting on the challenges of supporting clients and growing our business while short-staffed. Given the added pressures, I was also concerned about the well-being of our employees on the ground. Additionally, our H.R. and technology infrastructure was not very strong as we were beginning to build the foundation of those parts of the business. We had to reprioritize quickly and address the here and now while diligently working to ensure we were building for the future. It’s fair to say that is not how I thought Year 1 would go!

Do you think everyone is cut out to be an executive? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful executive and what type of person should avoid aspiring to be an executive? Can you explain what you mean?

Everyone can do what they want if they set their mind and put in the work. There may be some truth that specific individuals are “born leaders,” but I also know many people can grow into it.

The attributes that helped me along my career were passion, ambition, the ability to communicate clearly, and willingness to take risks and chase responsibility. I wanted more on my plate. If I focused on that and did a good job, the compensation and “titles” would follow. Above all, to be a successful executive, you need to surround yourself with people who are great at what they do, share similar values, and challenge you. For instance, I run into executives who claim to “know it all” and are slow to admit to their mistakes, which sometimes impedes leadership growth. Demonstrating vulnerability, in my opinion, is critical to the learning process and a key to really being successful.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help create a fantastic work culture? Can you share a story or an example?

Work culture comes down to defining, demonstrating, and staying true to a company’s core values. Establishing our core values for Unifi early on was important to me. I wanted it to be simple, easy to remember, and easy to define. So, our team came up with Passion, Integrity, and Empathy — our employees refer to it as PIE, and it’s truly become our north star.

In a large company like ours, with more than 23,000 employees, these employees needed a way to connect with each other. We wanted to engage with the employees on the front line and support them, so we worked on creating a technology platform to enable that engagement, and we kept our core values at the center of this mission. It pushed us to create something with them in mind that served their needs. In my many meetings with our frontline employees, the two most asked questions were: How do I find my paycheck easily, and what’s the best way to apply for PTO? Today when they access Unifi’s mobile platform, they can access paychecks, request time off, manage their shifts, communicate with each other, and much more that was not easy to do earlier. Importantly, it also allowed us to listen to them and their feedback. So, to build a positive work culture, it’s critical to understand what is essential for our employees and communicate with them often. More often than not, effective communication through the use of technology will help accelerate the culture we want to have, which typically takes a long time to build

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

The honest answer to this is I can always do more. But I am lucky to run an organization employing thousands of frontline employees, and we have a tremendous opportunity to continue to do right by them. When people come to Unifi, we want to make sure they earn a living wage, gain new skills and purpose, and go on to achieve more extraordinary things. I meet people who came on as ramp agents and, within three to four years, are in supervisor or manager roles. Their success tells me we are doing something right. There are two things I personally champion in my position. The first is around diversity, and the second is around leveraging technology. Diversity and inclusion within organizations create opportunities for underrepresented groups, and our success will be proportional to how diverse we are as an organization. And second, if we leverage technology, we can drive innovation and create products and services that will enable and help our employees to improve their experience of working with us.

Fantastic. Here is the primary question of our interview. What are your “Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A CEO” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

As we all know, no playbook would help prepare anyone to embrace the role of a CEO. However, there are a lot of learnings, and it is unique to everyone. These are mine.

1. Don’t underestimate the power of communication: Effective communication is vital in any organization, and as a CEO, you need to communicate with your team, employees, customers, and stakeholders regularly. Clear and concise communication will help cultivate strong relationships and promote a productive work environment.
2. Managing your team, who are also executives and leaders, is about managing their expectations and aspirations. You need to keep their goals in mind when you talk to them and balance that with the company’s needs. It’s great to have high performers on your team, but sometimes their goals contradict the organization’s goals, so it’s a delicate balancing act, and you must get used to making tough calls. But leveraging their strengths is as important as investing in their growth and development.
3. It’s not just about the bottom line: As a CEO, it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers and the financial metrics. However, a good CEO understands that building a solid culture, investing in employees, and contributing to the community are as important as hitting revenue targets. A CEO’s decisions impact the company’s reputation, and we are only as good as the close of a business the previous day. So, it’s good to enjoy the wins, but there is no room for complacency, even for a day.
4. There is minimal downtime when you are CEO. There is always something happening, people to talk to, and fires to put out, which can feel nonstop. Early in my career, there was downtime after a successful project, but once you are the leader, you enjoy the moment, celebrate the win, and move on to the next goal. Personally, as well, I’ve been a weekend Dad a lot and missed important moments of my children growing up, so there are things you give up doing a job like this.
5. Finally, being a CEO can feel isolating. There is that burden when one initially assumes the role. You realize you make the final decision based on as much information you have, and sometimes it’s limited. You have to adjust mentally and emotionally for this aspect of the role.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I think several “quotes” influence us over different periods of our lives, and each of them is relevant for that time. If there is one that has held true over the years, especially in a competitive environment, it’s that “You are only as good as you were at the end of yesterday.” It brings home the fact that we can’t become stagnant. I am part of a great company, and we do everything in our power to keep our employees safe and ensure we perform for our customers at a high level. We may even perform at very high levels for months, but it takes one safety incident or a poor performance day to knock us down. Consistency and resilience will ensure that we don’t take anything for granted, and while I want us to enjoy our wins, we can never lose sight of what we need to do next or what we can do better. Even in our personal lives, it’s so easy to take things for granted, so we must work on them daily.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, V.C. funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the U.S. with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them

Well, the person that most inspired me, Steve Jobs, is unfortunately not around. What he did was game-changing. And what stands out most is that he was brilliant yet flawed, as we all are. His life experiences helped him create technological innovations that changed the world. I would absolutely have loved to meet him. I was, however, fortunate to dine at the same table as Madam Secretary Madeline Albright well before she passed. She was incredibly brilliant, and that 60 minutes with her is something that I absolutely cherish. It was a bucket-list experience for me and a not-so-humble brag.

Finally, having been born and raised in India, I grew up on a staple diet of Bollywood films and cricket. There are two names I would love to have 1–1 time with: the acting legend, Amitabh Bachchan and cricket icon, Sachin Tendulkar. I met Bachchan very briefly when I was a kid, but I watched all his movies growing up. With Tendulkar, I watched him play one of my favorite sports with so much grace, keeping the hearts of a billion Indians on edge every time he walked up to bat. A million questions for each, but I’ll settle for an hour of their undivided attention, anytime.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

About the Interviewer: Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA was born nearly blind, crippled with club feet, partially deaf, and left-handed. He overcame all of these obstacles to become a successful civil trial lawyer. In 2000, he abandoned his law practice to become a peacemaker. His calling is to serve humanity, and he executes his calling at many levels. He is an award-winning author, teacher, and trainer. He is a highly experienced mediator. Doug’s work carries him from international work to helping people resolve deep interpersonal and ideological conflicts. Doug teaches his innovative de-escalation skill that calms any angry person in 90 seconds or less. With Laurel Kaufer, Doug founded Prison of Peace in 2009. The Prison of Peace project trains life and long terms incarcerated people to be powerful peacemakers and mediators. He has been deeply moved by inmates who have learned and applied deep, empathic listening skills, leadership skills, and problem-solving skills to reduce violence in their prison communities. Their dedication to learning, improving, and serving their communities motivates him to expand the principles of Prison of Peace so that every human wanting to learn the skills of peace may do so. Doug’s awards include California Lawyer Magazine Lawyer of the Year, Best Lawyers in America Lawyer of the Year, Purpose Prize Fellow, International Academy of Mediators Syd Leezak Award of Excellence, National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals Neutral of the Year. His four books have won a number of awards and commendations. Doug’s podcast, Listen With Leaders, is now accepting guests. Click on this link to learn more and apply.