A two-day navigational program for business aviation leaders

Do you want to give your business aviation team the means by which to chart its course for the future?

As a business aviation leader, do you...

… think that your aviation team could benefit from having a clear sense of where it is headed?
… wish your team could better articulate the value that business aviation delivers to your key stakeholders—be they the
aircraft owner, corporation or host organization?
… want to clearly define your future, to ensure that you're all headed in the same direction?

Introducing "The Way Forward™

Facilitated by Gray Stone Advisors, The Way Forward™ is a two-day offsite experience, which brings together your aviation organization's functional leaders and focuses on defining your path ahead. The objective is to help you achieve the next level of operational excellence in all ways important to you and your host organization.

Your functional leaders will emerge with a new arsenal of tools and techniques to help your organization become better, more tightly aligned performers. You will also obtain a new, agreed-upon navigational direction and frame of reference with which to operate. All in just two, intensive days!

Past leaders have benefited from this experiential process in numerous ways, including:

• Gaining a better standing with their reporting executive and corporate executives by speaking the language of business.
• Significantly reducing strife within the aviation organization.
• Increasing recruiting and retention opportunities.
• Lowering their overall operating costs.

Additionally, The Way Forward™ can benefit your organization by:

• Providing a clearly focused operating plan, clear accountabilities and expected outcomes for the year ahead.
• Defining clearly “what leadership looks like” in your aviation organization.
• Creating a more positive, supportive culture and enhancing unity.
• Helping your leaders become stronger candidates for promotion.
• Enabling you and your Leadership Team to start “leading” more and "doing" less.

Who Should Attend

The aviation director, director of maintenance, chief pilot, scheduling & dispatch manager, business manager and any other influential and/or informal "influencers" within the organization. The program accommodates up to 12 attendees.

Key Outcomes

• Alignment with the host organization - Working alongside you and your leadership team, Gray Stone will learn about your culture and the strategic objectives of the corporation (or host organization) to ensure that the initiatives defined by the aviation organization are completely aligned with those of corporate. We invite the aviation director and reporting executive to provide the keynote comments at the onset of the offsite.

• Strategic repositioning of perceptions - One of the most significant benefits of this process is that your business aviation organization will become more integrated, strategic business partners. The end goal is that your organization will be perceived as a “success enablers” of the parent company rather than a cost center.

• Leadership development - Throughout these two days, Gray Stone will work with your leadership team, both individually and as a group, to help hone many leadership techniques, skills and tools. Each of these will be immediately implementable upon their return to the flight department. All of these skills are pragmatic, applications-oriented approaches that will enable your team to achieve new levels of excellence.

Deliverables - At the conclusion of this intensive, two-day offsite, your team will:

• Craft a Vision Statement. In a single inspiring sentence, this statement will express where the aviation organization is heading and its reason for being.

• Create the Mission Statement. This describes how the Vision Statement will be actualized, defining how aviation will create quantifiable value for the host organization.

• Establish Values. These are the behavioral norms that serve to guide the team’s actions and provide principles that address what needs to get done.

• Define Leadership Competencies. Clearly articulate what leadership looks like and what’s expected of each leader in the aviation organization.

• Define a One-Year Operating Plan. Establish a prioritized list of vital organizational initiatives and actions along with clear accountabilities, a deliverables calendar and requisite resources required.

Cascading The Way Forward Throughout Aviation

A follow-on program provides the opportunity for every member of your aviation organization to participate in a one-day version of The Way Forward™, leveraging the work of the leadership team. This session invites the active participation of every aviation team member, acquainting them with the processes that their leadership team used during their offsite. It helps create buy-in, understanding and alignment throughout the entire organization. Each one-day session is designed for 12 participants. Consecutive one-day sessions of identical content may be arranged for larger business aviation organizations.

Client Testimonials

Business aviation organizations of all sizes are reaping big benefits as Gray Stone Advisors helps teams "define their future" and develop a game plan for success. See what they have to say:

“I liked their approach. They didn't come in as the experts with all the answers about our flight department. Our team has a better understanding of the issues and Gray Stone's methods as facilitators had the right process to extract the information from us and turn that into an action plan.”

“[Gray Stone Advisors] are pros and very passionate about what that bring to the table. I was amazed at what they were able to draw out of all of us. The process was very well done!”

“They’re expert facilitators and have keen insights into both aviation as a whole and the business world. From the day-to-day workings of a flight department to the critical interaction that takes place between aviation leaders and the corporate executives, Gray Stone Advisors knows how to 'dig out' what's vital to your operation and set a course toward actionable items you can take back to your team. This was the best leadership seminar of any kind that I've ever been a part of.”

“The process … was extremely effective. From the initial opening of being uncomfortable with establishing 'I'm in,' followed by two days of brainstorming, capturing an inconceivable amount of information, to the refinement of the final product speaks volumes for Gray Stone's ability to deliver an outstanding service. I look forward to a lasting relationship.”

“The Gray Stone team came highly recommended from other aviation professionals. They did not disappoint and exceeded my expectations! We will continue to partner with these very talented individuals as we go forward...”

“I found it amazing how [Gray Stone Advisors] were able to pull all of our different ideas together into one. At the beginning I was skeptical and wasn't sure where it was going to lead. By the end it all made perfect sense. I am ‘all in'."

At Gray Stone Advisors, we will:

• Serve as your unbiased, experienced, outside facilitator, carefully guiding you and your team to set the vision, mission, goals and results that are needed by your team.
• Provide you with our highly effective mentoring methods, which will enable your aviation leadership team to become more aligned and work together more fluidly with their people.
• Deliver (upon completion) your newly defined vision statement, mission statement, value statements, leadership competencies and time-phased operating plan, including notes, a summary and go-forward recommendations.
• Use valuable information and results gleaned from the Current State Assessment (if this process has been completed for your organization) to set the next “flag on the hill.”