Jim Ziegler ’79 looks for the upside in every down situation, enjoys riding his motorcycle and singin’ the blues, and, as vice president and general manager of Bombardier in Wichita, he knows when he has to make that tough business decision.
"When you’re skydiving, you’re falling at 130 mph. This has an effect."
"The 2003 Bombardier Annual report includes the statement, ‘Strong companies know when to get tough on themselves.’ This refers to recognizing the realities of current and future market conditions and then taking the tough actions to change or adapt the business to match these realities. Of course, it is a much tougher situation when dealing with a retracting market."
"When you are downsizing the business, the tough thing to deal with is the personal situations of many employees who can be affected by these decisions. This has been the single biggest issue affecting Wichita, where the city and the majority of its population are tied to an industry where these downturns can have such a dramatic impact."
"Flight: I can’t even begin to think what our world would be like without this essential mode of transportation."
"Just think what the world would look like if we didn’t have the ability to fly. It would affect how we transact day-to-day business as well as how we spend our leisure time."
"Our ability to receive and transfer goods, transact business in multiple locations within a single day, the chance to see places that you would never be able to see are only a few examples of what flight provides us."
"This is a very special year for everyone in the world — the 100th anniversary of flight."
"I believe there are always positives in every situation. Sometimes it is hard to find them, but they are there."
"When faced with an economic downturn, as we are today, it forces businesses to re-evaluate how they do business and where they focus."
"When times are good, it is easy to focus on growth and not on process and infrastructure improvements. By re-valuating business processes and focusing on efficiencies, it better positions the company to take advantage of a market turnaround when it comes."
"Balancing work and family is one of the most difficult challenges. First of all, there is no way that I could possibly do what I do without a tremendous wife (Denise ’79) to keep our family together. Without her support, it would be impossible."
"I can’t emphasize enough that it takes the whole family working together to make it all work."
"When I am home, I try to balance my time between family and personal time. Everyone has to have their own space and time to relax. For me, relaxation is music, golf or riding my motorcycle."
"My family likes to travel, and we try to slip off together several times a year to enjoy ourselves and new experiences."
"I have always had a love for music, and I love to sing. I performed in high school and a little in college. However,it wasn't until four or five years ago that I decided to get back into the swing of things, and it really happened by accident."
"I found out that many of the executives who work with me had music in their pasts as well. We decided to pull a few of us together to do a few songs for one of our sales meetings. Trust me when I say it was pretty ugly. But it must have been good enough because we started to get requests to perform."
"Things just kind of took off, and today our band, 2DRINKMINIMUM, has had the pleasure of playing our brand of blues in many different venues, from our customer events to employee picnics, local fund raisers to aviation industry events in California and Florida."
"I never would have guessed that we would be fortunate enough to have these musical experiences."
