Aman Bhutani believes in trying to do one thing better than the day before. It’s how he measures his success as president of Brand Expedia Group, which includes consumer-facing brands Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, and more.
“Our brands are focused on helping travelers get on with the greatest gift of travel — making memories — by helping travelers quickly and easily find the products they are looking for,” Bhutani said.
He was named president a year ago, after serving as Expedia’s senior vice president of worldwide engineering for five years. In that role, he established a “test and learn” culture and oversaw the integration of companies like Wotif and Travelocity.
We caught up with Bhutani for this installment of Working Geek, a regular GeekWire feature.
Current Location: Bellevue
Computer types: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch).
Mobile devices: iPhone, iPad.
Favorite apps, cloud services and software tools: Trello, TED Podcasts, 2048.
Describe your workspace. Why does it work for you? Physical workspace – Open floor plan sitting close to the great people that inspire me. Digital Workspace – These days mail clients are my IDE.
![Aman1[1]](https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Aman11.jpg)
Your best advice for managing everyday work and life? Learn from every day, and do one thing better today than yesterday.
Your preferred social network? How do you use it for business/work? For work, I prefer face-to-face storytelling. Outside of work, I bounce between social networks and would not say any one of them is preferred.
Current number of unanswered emails in your inbox? 85 + 415 flagged.
Number of appointments/meetings on your calendar this week? 28.
How do you run meetings? With patience. Patience is about getting a group to make themselves more efficient over time versus having a single set of rules for running meetings.
Everyday work uniform? T-shirt, jeans, Expedia sneakers
How do you make time for family? With a lot of help from my family and all of us adjusting for each others’ needs. To make progress in an absolute sense, I set myself a simple target and then measure it until it becomes part of my life fabric. The current thing I am measuring is how often I do math with my daughter.
Best stress reliever? How do you unplug? Watch classic Japanese films.
What are you listening to? My two-and-a-half-year-old son trying to talk over my seven-year-old daughter.
Daily reads? Favorite sites and newsletters? News sites, but no particular favorites.
Book on your nightstand (or e-reader)? Biscuit’s Big Friend.
Night owl or early riser? What are your sleep patterns? Both. Lucky.
Where do you get your best ideas? There are always those moments of epiphany where you just think of something. Putting those aside, my best ideas have been those that have stood the test of time. In most cases, those ideas remained nearly dormant within me for years before I consciously started refining them, exposing them to others, and watching them form.
Whose work style would you want to learn more about or emulate? Jiro Ono, renowned chef of Sukuyabashi Jiro – also celebrated in the film Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Jiro is a shokunin, and his simple goal is to come in every day and make better sushi than yesterday. My goal in life is to come in every day and be a better person than I was yesterday. I believe that will make me a better leader.
