When Louise Cottar and Andrew Dixon started packing to spend four weeks in each other’s homes, you could be forgiven for assuming they were each preparing for a jolly lovely month-long holiday. Louise is chief executive and co-owner of Cottar’s Safaris in Kenya, and so Andrew was headed to a traditional yet luxurious tented camp in Maasai Mara, while he is the co-founder of two Indonesian barefoot island escapes, Nikoi and Cempedak, so Louise had signed up to experience private island seclusion, about 50 miles from Singapore.

Both make clear that there was a genuine business imperative behind their “CEO swap”, which took place earlier this year. The idea came about through their shared membership of conservation network, The Long Run.

“I initially thought Louise was joking at the time,” explains Andrew. “We were hosting the Long Run Annual Members Meeting on Nikoi and I was freaking out because I was showcasing my property to 50 of my cohorts who I have a lot of respect for. I went back to Louise at the end of the five days, and checked, ‘did you mean what you said about a job swap?’”

He was open to the idea, having witnessed the benefits of staffing exchanges between The Long Run member properties, involving local employees who might be travelling with a passport for the first time: “It opens their minds to another world, another experience, another standard, another way of doing things,” he says.

Andrew Dixon

But with this being the first CEO-level exchange that they knew about, they made sure to get terms of reference agreed at board level, so there was a framework that other Long Run partners would be able to follow.

Louise too was not just in it for a taste of the Robinson Crusoe lifestyle: “Sending a menopausal woman to a hot island is not that Desert Island Disc moment for me,” she quips. ‘It was work for both for us. There’s an appreciation for the context in which you find yourself but you have to ask yourself, does this [exchange] help me grow? Does it support the other person in their journey, and does it help the organisation? If you can’t do all three, then it’s a holiday.”

In fact, both were working two jobs while they were away, having retained CEO duties such as signing off cheques and payroll for their own business while they were on the exchange. But with both Louise and Andrew relying on their senior leadership teams to run the daily operations, they could focus their time more on the strategic vision, and they wrote each other detailed reports once the experiment was complete.

“We’ve been quite brutally honest with each other,” says Andrew. “It’s been really refreshing to have someone look at your business with fresh eyes.”

Cempedak

The exchange has inspired both CEOs to make changes within their respective businesses. For example, Andrew pointed out that Cottar’s was missing a trick by not showcasing high-quality local Kenyan tea, and his idea of adding a wine cellar for intimate dining experiences has also been actioned. “There wasn’t anything in Andrew’s report that wasn’t spot on,” says Louise.  

Meanwhile, Andrew has been evaluating how he can replicate Cottar’s guided safari experiences in his island setting.

“The guides are ingrained in your experience at Cottar’s and at Nikoi and Cempedak we’ve always left guests more alone, which a lot are looking for, but how can we bring in a guided experience to talk more about our environmental and community work? Obviously, it won’t be the same as Cottar’s because we’re a marine setting but I’ve come to see there’s a lot more opportunity for us to build on that.”

As well as making product changes, immersing themselves in each other’s business has also inspired leadership changes.

Louise was impressed by her first staff meeting involving Andrew’s employees. “It was really concise,” she explains. “Everyone had notes, they were on it. And then at the end of the meeting, they all looked at each other and said, ‘happy working’ and that was their greeting to everyone. I thought that was phenomenal leadership that all the team wished each other happy working.”


Louise Cottar

“Oh I can’t claim credit for that,” interjects Andrew. “They juiced it themselves. That’s Indonesians, they have this lovely warm sense of hospitality, which actually I think the Kenyans have even more so. They were a delightful crowd to work with.”

“There were a lot of similarities between our business cultures,” he adds. “Helping the community, helping conservation, it builds a stronger culture that you realise and people do feel that we’re not just there extracting profit. We are trying to do good around us, and that builds a stronger business. I really believe that.”  


Stepping away from the daily grind gave Andrew and Louise the breathing space for reflection and fresh perspectives. The unique experiment helped them both identify opportunities for growth, but it also gave them an opportunity to enjoy the guest experiences that make each of their properties so special.

For Andrew, it was sharing the “extraordinary” wildlife viewing experiences at Cottar’s with some friends, and sampling the lodge's signature canvas bush bath, featuring bubble bath, champagne and a wildly romantic view of the safari plains.  

Cottar's Safari

Louise picks ‘jetty jumping’ with her daughter, a rite of passage for visitors to Nikoi: “Ultimately, this is what our businesses are about,” she says. “Creating those lifelong memories.”

Both would enthusiastically recommend the experience, with a few caveats to bear in mind. As well as those terms of referencing – ensuring they don’t have the ability to go rogue and hire and fire each other’s staff, or sell each other’s businesses – they signed non-disclosure agreements on account of viewing each other’s financials. They were also happy to proceed given the overarching commonalities between the businesses, and having known each other for 12 years through The Long Run network, they trusted each other completely.


“These are the key dynamics that made it work,” says Louise. “You need to be prepared to hear some tough truths about your business, which can feel like our baby, our child. And there needs to be that level of honesty and commitment that you want to help them do better.”