CJI magazine H2 25: Life in Seven Questions with James Lara

Fresh from the latest edition of Corporate Jet Investor magazine, we quiz James ‘Jim’ Lara,  founder of Gray Stone Advisors. Here’s how he draws on more than 40 years’ experience in aviation and executive leadership to help clients optimise the efficiency of their flight departments.

CJI: How did you get into business aviation? 

James Lara (JL): I have always wanted to fly. But more than that, my passion has been to combine my commercial business pursuits with the challenge and joy of aviating in complex environments and aircraft.  

My first opportunity to put this combination together was early in my business career when I worked for Levi Strauss & Co. As a regional production manager, I was tasked with leading five facilities, all located in the US Southwest. I quickly discovered that driving to these facilities took way too long and was quite hazardous. So, I began using a Beechcraft Bonanza to visit every facility every week. The productivity benefits were nearly immediate and sustained. This was my introduction to the value created by the effective use of business aviation, even in its most modest incarnation. The results achieved cannot be understated. It empowered me to move forward.

CJI: What advice would you give to your younger self and would you have taken it?

JL: The best advice would have been to achieve a much more balanced professional and personal life. I have always been goal-driven and performance-driven. Work/life balance was most often out of balance. Tackling difficult professional challenges yielded significant professional satisfaction for me. That required sustained focus. And that took a personal toll. As I matured, a greater balance was achieved.

Would I have taken the advice to achieve a better balance early in my career? Probably not. Professional achievement was too much fun.

CJI: What was your best business decision?

JL: I left the predictable ‘Progression Up the Corporate Ladder’ of large, public companies and transitioned to the turnaround of underperforming firms in the wholesale distribution and retailing sectors. With other collaborators, we formed a modest leadership team to focus, serially, on companies in cities throughout the US. This honed my leadership, problem solving and financial skills while providing the opportunity to continuously develop in business aviation, which we employed to keep our leadership teams tight while optimising far flung regional operations.

CJI: What was your worst business decision?

JL: Projecting my values on others. After many disappointments early in my career, I finally learned that everyone has different values and points of view. To choose others as candidates for development, I learned that you must understand who they really are. The most effective selection technique for development candidates is to listen and hear each of them, intently. If you truly listen and hear, everyone will tell you who they are. Then you can select the individuals with the appropriate competency set and highest probability of a successful outcome for the organization.

CJI: Is business aviation in the climb, the cruise or the descent and why?

JL: Yes. All three. The assessment of business aviation’s strength must be done at the individual user level. Aviation’s performance, as an industry sector, cannot be assessed at the aggregated level. The most effective method to determine if business aviation is being utilised in an adroit manner is to study the level of success that is being achieved by the user. If aviation’s value proposition for the host enterprise is not defined and/or actualised, aviation becomes nothing more than a significant cost centre. On the other hand, if aviation is utilised as a strategic tool enabling outstanding performance by the host enterprise, it becomes one of the key contributors to enterprise success.

JL: How do you relax? The most relaxing activity for me is when I am flying our firm’s business aircraft. In that environment, my mind is completely focused on my pilot-in-command responsibilities. Mentally, there is simply no room for anything else. And flying is completely different from the duties of my day job.

Following a rewarding and challenging flight, a sense of calm reflection and enjoyment are with me for the remainder of the day and evening. There’s nothing like it.

CJI: What’s your favourite aircraft and why?

JL: Without question, I am a Falcon Jet fan and advocate. Having had both the distinct pleasure and honour of flying Falcons over many years to a plethora of domestic and international destinations, Dassault’s innovative engineering, robustness and performance of Falcon aircraft never ceases to amaze me.

CJI: Tell us a secret about business aviation?

Adroitly employed, business and private aviation create this planet’s only non-renewable resource – more useable time. Today’s modern aircraft perfectly emulate the environments most valuable to the traveller, be it the highly productive executive office, collaborative Board room, rejuvenating retreat or, most commonly, all three.

These incredible environments enable us to be at peak professional performance, both while enroute and when we reach our destinations.

Gray Stone Advisors’ James ‘Jim’ Lara. You can sign for your free copy of CJI print magazine here.