He may be 'far on the far end' of the type A personality, but the Ryanair boss is probably too driven to care, writes Kathy Sheridan.
The word "audacious" threatened to become the most hackneyed in the English language this week when Ryanair swooped on Aer Lingus with its €1.48 billion takeover bid, followed by much spluttering of gin-and-tonics down the golf club. The tone, however, suggested that what the commentators actually meant by "audacious" was that they had been caught out. In short, neither they nor any of the highly remunerated financial shamans saw it coming.
Meanwhile, those outside the business loop, accustomed to hear of Michael O'Leary being revered as a demi-god in such circles, wondered quite what was so "audacious" about it. The Government floats a respectable, reasonably profitable airline that carries around eight million passengers a year. Another highly profitable airline, which transports six times that many passengers, likes the price and makes a bid for it. The truly staggering element is that while many in the know brooded on potential swoopers such as Emirates or British Airways, Ryanair - now "a ravenous cuckoo in the Aer Lingus nest", to quote Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins - never crossed their minds. So was the bid the final blow in a long-term strategy to exact revenge on Ryanair's oldest and most supercilious foe, a once-powerful enemy whose outrageous pricing strategy - in the words of a previous chief executive - was "to charge as much as we can get away with"?
"I don't believe so. It was purely a cold business decision. It makes perfect sense", says Siobhán Creaton, author of Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe, her 2004 book now updated and set for a whole new audience. "Ryanair had the cash. Its board is made up of sharp, smart cookies who thought, 'look what we could make of that business if we took it over'."
So why are people stunned?
"I suppose it's because Aer Lingus had such a stranglehold for years," Creaton says. "It's more of a psychological thing . . . A lot of people had this attitude, 'a little outfit like Ryanair trying to do this to a big airline like Aer Lingus'. But they don't get it. Ryanair is in a completely different league."
Informed circles might have known that, one would have thought. Nonetheless, if O'Leary was a demi-god before, temples may now be raised in his name by men and women busily modelling themselves on him. They will have their work cut out.
"Michael O'Leary is unique," says Prof Tom Begley, dean of the UCD School of Business. "Other folks would be showmen; many, many businessmen would be as focused on business as he is; quite a few are known for not treating their employees particularly well; and a lot of them are as driven, maybe, as he is. But not many are as charismatic as he is.
"Most business people would be leaders because they had done a nice job of managing various units on the way up. Jim Collins says in Good to Great [a guide to effective business] that leaders of most leading companies would tend to be rather quiet and self-effacing, focused on the company in the long term as opposed to the short term. The broad range of business people tend not to be of the charismatic, 'follow me, troops' type over a long period of time".
However, Prof Ivor Kenny, who has published a trilogy on leadership, is utterly dismissive of charisma as a prerequisite for leadership.
"The charismatic leader's style can be superficially attractive," he says. "But charismatic leaders are unreliable. You do not know until the final act what their real purposes are." He believes the key to O'Leary's success is simple. "Michael O'Leary has accomplished what he has because he is an extremely astute businessman and manager and with total focus on what he wants. The defining characteristic of a classic entrepreneur is someone who sees the opportunities and seizes them. O'Leary is one of those."
Then again, there are those who simply do not perceive him as an entrepreneur, according to Creaton.
"They would see his skills as lying in management," she says. "It was Tony Ryan who had the vision of the low-cost airline, and O'Leary who wanted him to close it down in 1988. Even with GPA, Ryan had shown great vision in his business plans. Whether through arrogance or something else, he seemed more of an ideas man than a manager, while O'Leary is an accountant, the one who cuts costs and brings discipline into the business."
But O'Leary is also "far on the far end" of the type A personality, Begley reckons, which probably contributes to that almost fanatical focus. "Hurried, harried, impatient, highly driven, hugely competitive and highly achievement-oriented," says Begley. "The type who doesn't take time to stop and look and see the debris they're leaving behind, to test the field to see what effect they've had on people. It's very much the put-the-head-down-and-charge - and if someone is in the way, you run him over. If your goal, say, is to minimise costs, you will run over anyone - unions, wheelchair-users - who threaten that. It's the logic of efficiency."
IF THAT IMPLIES headlong trips into risky territory, Kenny tends to dismiss the growing myth of O'Leary, lone maverick.
"Successful leaders have courage, but they don't take daft decisions," he says. "They're extremely cautious. What you need in business is the 'let's go'. The other thing you need is the 'hold on a minute'."
Kenny points out that two-thirds of the heads of business organisations in the western world fail and the primary reason is their inability to build a team. So Michael O'Leary is a team-builder? "Of course O'Leary has that. No one will succeed in business unless they're capable of building a team".
Kenny has noted that O'Leary has "another need, which is for carefully controlled publicity. All the fireworks happen in environments which are totally within his control". Such men also have a "peasant shrewdness . . . an ability not only to understand what people are saying but what they mean". They also have "an enormous ability to listen", though that may seem odd in O'Leary's case.
"He's hooking it on what's inside his own head and where he wants to go, and if he finds he's not getting anything from the conversation, he seals off," says Kenny. "If you're Michael O'Leary, that can be enormously rude. But you're just taking up air space. They tend to value people by their usefulness to them."
It all fits perfectly with the style of O'Leary's mentor, Tony Ryan, who once told a senior manager that, the world is made up of "fuckers and fuckee and in our relationship, you are my fuckee".
O'Leary's savagely aggressive management style, foul mouth, control freakery, meanness, and "stuff 'em" approach to staff and customer care are nonetheless a puzzle. His business formula, famously moulded on the highly successful Southwest Airlines model, is a long way from the latter's fun, "love-bomb" approach.
"He runs the place by kicking people in the head," one source told Creaton. His attitude towards officialdom of every hue was summed up in one paragraph in the Guardian, in an article predicting a swift end to his bid for Aer Lingus: "Other victims of his wrath, which have included the European Commission ('morons'), BAA ('over-charging rapists'), British Airways ('expensive bastards'), and travel agents ('fuckers') will probably not be sad to see the wings fall off his audacious attempt to take over Aer Lingus".
IT ALL RAISES the question of whether such a ruthless approach to blameless humanity is absolutely necessary for success, particularly given the suspicion that he still sees himself as a man of the people, or as he puts it, a "jumped-up Paddy".
It is hardly related to a difficult upbringing or deprivation. He comes from a family which has always been, and remains, close. Remarkably, in Kenny's extensive research, a common thread he found among leaders is that they all had loving parents.
Another, more pertinent aspect of his business model may also be coming under scrutiny as his horizons broaden and competition increases. Attention is focusing on on the "add-ons" that turn a €1 single fare into a figure at least 20 times as much when all the "ancillaries", such as the "wheelchair charge" and pre-paid luggage fee, are added. In the year to March, the airline increased its "ancillary" revenues by 36 per cent to €259 million for a business that made total after-tax profits of €306 million.
But the key point to remember about Michael O'Leary's personality type is that he will not be going away.
"They don't change and they don't stop," says Kenny. "Making money for him is not an end in itself. For some, it's a goal; for an entrepreneur like him, it's a measure."
Many business people stop when they make a particular amount of money, says Begley. The numbers "who want to go beyond that and for whom their only interest is grow, grow, grow, are fewer than 10 per cent". O'Leary is a phenomenon, in other words. Meanwhile, says Begley, "I would guess that Michael O'Leary is loving what's happening now, because it's turning into a three-ring circus and he is the ringmaster".