Such, indeed, was his state of mind as he sat at the head table at the Sun Valley party, soaking up the applause. For all his composure and his aw-shucks-it-was-nuthin' grin, Kuolt was a man who had just been shot out of a cannon to land in the troubled margin between exultation and consternation. He was not happy.
"Horizon has reached a great transition, a critical turning point in its life," he said as we headed back to Seattle. "It's not a baby anymore. It's a teenager, and it's struggling, like all teenagers do." We were sitting in the tail end of a private plane. Kuolt was dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and his long, cattle driver's raincoat, which reaches down to his ankles when he stands. Yosemite Sam.
"I think I first noticed it around late 1984 and early 1985," he continued. "What happens is that your growth rate is so high that -- when you finally pause to take a look at what's going on around you -- you realize, 'Christ, I have not got the foundation I need underneath this thing.' You have to stabilize, get the systems and operations down better, the planning and control down better. You know, for a while you think you've got it made, and then you find out that things are kinda unraveling. You find that your management team is not pulling together as it should. And a lot of times we, as managers, have to take a look at ourselves to see if we're not part of the problem."
The symptoms were clear. Here, high above the newly formed dome of Mount St. Helen, Kuolt was describing the onset of the Complex. And as we talked, I could see him struggling with it.
He would say, for example, that, in the beginning, he intentionally avoided people with a lot of major airline experience because the "old traditional airline thinking is so screwed up." Then he immediately went back, adding, "but I probably should have brought in a little more than I had." He'd say he was happy at the airline, and then counter with, "but that's when things are good. When they're bad, there's nothing that can be much worse."
Or, "Overall, the first year or two I think we did everything kinda right." And then, "No, I would say we could have done a lot better job, had a lot more planning."
Or, "I drive my people. You've got to understand that. I work them hard, unmercifully." And then, "I'd probably change that today, because you strain the limitations of the people that are putting everything together, and I guess, if anything, I would have gone a little slower."
He said his management team held a planning meeting without him, "but I know what was going through their minds. They want to run an end play. . . . They're out there fishing for an opening. A palace revolt is all it is, a palace coup." Then, "When my senior people get together and want to have their own planning meeting without me being there, then I kinda know that maybe I'm not leading as well as I need to."
He'd say, "I'm quick to let go when I know the competence is there." And then, "But the competence has got to be so high that maybe I gotta lower my standards just a little to allow that person to take hold. I've got to work hard at letting go."
It was an altogether curious experience, listening to Kuolt think out loud. At no time, however, did I get the sense that he really expected anything to change. Rather, he seemed to be dealing in resolutions and possibilities that might happen at some point in the distant, unspecified future. It made me sad to watch him -- a kind of faltering hero figure, his usual blustering bravado now broken in places by moments of quiet self-doubt.
Nor did it seem to help much that he had been through the experience once before. Indeed, his plight was probably worse this time around, if only because the airline business is less forgiving than campgrounds of an entrepreneurial management style. Horizon, for example, depended heavily on makret share; Trails did not. Cost control was crucial at Horizon; at Trails, it was much less important. Horizon's business is technically complicated, involving route structures, flight schedules, and maintenance requirements; Trails's business was straightforward by comparison.
During Horizon's start-up, Kuolt and his team had been able to overwhelm these differences with sheer energy, largely because the business was, at that point, still drawn to human scale. But as the company grew, it began to demand more premeditation and greater control. Inevitably, the old ways -- the family-style initiatives -- were put to the test and found wanting. So, for that matter, was the impulsive, peripatetic style of the company's founder.
As usual, no one knew this better than the management team.
When a founder is in the throes of Kuolt's Complex, everyone within reach is affected. In the case of Horizon Air, many of the company's managers found that they shared their boss's symptoms. They remember, for example, the early days of the start-up with a keen sense of loss at their passing. "Have you ever talked to someone who grew up with a big family in a 2-room house?" says Dianna Maul. "You know how they say, 'As crowded as it was, it was great.' That's what it was like here. Now we've got a 10-room house, and everybody's spread out, and things are a little more distant, colder."
