The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:31:48 · Alan Joyce, Vidit Agarwal
[00:31:48] S1: I think at that stage, I didn't have any view about where I was going to end up. I didn't want to go to university because I wanted to go out and earn an income. I was very focused on just helping my parents out. I knew they were struggling. And I think, lucky enough, I had a father and I have a teacher that encouraged me to stay on and do university, and that they had an intervention to say, need to go to university, you need to do a degree. I was very resistant to that. So... And I think you can have an overwhelming desire that's maybe not in your long term best interest as a kid. And if you have a good mentor and a good parent, I think they can make your life very different. So I was encouraged to go on and go to university with no prospect about what the idea was at the end of that. And it was only when I finished my master's degree, I literally saw an ad in the newspaper for a job in a in an airline. I had no interest in working for airlines at the time. A job in an airline that happened to be for the branch of mathematics I had just done, and it was just pure coincidence that career path happened and got me into aviation. But I think at 18, I could have gone a number of different ways, and it was thanks to the intervention of my teachers and my parents. They encouraged me to go to university, and I may not have done that if I had my own way. [00:33:14] S0: As in you wouldn't have gone to university if you had your own way.
00:33:14 · Vidit Agarwal, Alan Joyce
[00:33:14] S0: As in you wouldn't have gone to university if you had your own way. [00:33:16] S1: Yeah. I was... I... If I had my own way at the time and hadn't been persuaded, I would have just gone out and got a job, any job to help my parents out. And that was the wrong, that was a short term decision instead of taking in the longer term and looking at my father and my teacher had a more long term view of where I should have gone. [00:33:35] S0: That is such an interesting reflection because most people would say your career, for most of your career panned out really well. You're saying the university thing you think impacted your career perhaps? [00:33:48] S1: It was very positive for my career. If I hadn't done the university course, there's no way I would have went into aviation. There's no way I would have had discipline in my decision making, because I think my university and science degrees really formed the way I think and the way I make calls. And I was lucky I did that because if I hadn't done that, hadn't taken that course, I would have been a very different person.
00:33:48 · Alan Joyce, Vidit Agarwal
[00:33:48] S1: It was very positive for my career. If I hadn't done the university course, there's no way I would have went into aviation. There's no way I would have had discipline in my decision making, because I think my university and science degrees really formed the way I think and the way I make calls. And I was lucky I did that because if I hadn't done that, hadn't taken that course, I would have been a very different person. [00:34:12] S0: Talk about the topic because you studied science, You did a bachelor's and master's in science. I'm simplifying it, but I think it was a bit more detailed than that. How did that shape your career? Because I think most CEOs, a lot of CEOs actually come from a history background, like history background or they have an MBA and they've kind of come out of central casting and they've studied commerce. How did that science background shape your decision making as an exec as you rose through the ranks and eventually became CEO?
00:34:44 · Alan Joyce
[00:34:44] S1: I think particularly in aviation, it was extremely helpful because in aviation, a lot of the decisions you have to make, sometimes you don't have the space of time or massive amounts of information. And I always used to say that, you know, you... I do a couple of examples in the book where decisions were needed to be made for safety reasons and other reasons. And the scientific background, I think, is very useful because the scientific method is usually that you have a hypothesis. You think you have an understanding of what the answer is, and then you get enough information to either prove or disprove the hypothesis to say, is this the right answer? Is that the right way of going? And for that to work, you need good people around you. And I always tried to get the best people I could to work with me, to work with us as a team. And then you have big debates. And you argue. You have your view, but you're listening to other views to say that's wrong, that needs to change, or this is what I think the answer is. And you get to answers faster, I think, through that process than you would of the consultants call it boiling the ocean, trying to get all the data you can, trying to get all the information that you could possibly make. And a lot of people put off decisions because they don't believe they have perfect information, and you never get the perfect information. And I tell the story of the QF 32, as an example, where we were in a boardroom, and we had this amazing team around us, and we could see TV pictures of part of the engine sitting in Indonesia when they had blown up. And there was a critical decision to be made. Do you ground the fleet of a three eighties? Because we're three aircraft apart, and within an hour or two of where the beating was happening. And you were listening to people around the table talking about what they could see from the TV pictures, limited information, because the aircraft was still in the air. We had to make a quick call. And that scientific method, which was the hypothesis, was we have to ground up, they're not safe. And then you had to have the information. Is that right? Because there was a big call either way. And that worked, and it's worked for my entire career having that ability to make quick calls when it's needed and have good people around you to debate them and argue them.
00:37:04 · Alan Joyce, Vidit Agarwal
And I think that scientific background, that scientific degree, I think helped me with that way of thinking. [00:37:11] S0: I've not spent as much time with scientists, but I've spent quite a bit of time with engineers in the tech world. And one of the things I noticed is that single-minded sort of binary approach can limit them. Don't become the leader of the company sometimes because they don't like the people side, they don't like the coaching side. Whereas you became leader of companies and leader of people and leader of teams. How do you reflect on that? Is that a feature and bug of studying science?
00:37:40 · Alan Joyce
[00:37:40] S1: I think what I actually really enjoyed is the debate of the discussion, maybe from those early days with my dad, who would encourage that, and debating my brothers and having discussions with them. And I'd like that. And I liked people that are unbelievably bright. When you look at the teams that we had together in Qantas and Jetstar over the years, and what people went on to do, they were unbelievably capable people. Jeanne Herdlicher, Bruce Buchanan, David Khosla, they all run big companies now around the globe. Andrew David, who came in from running Tiger and being second in charge of Virgin. We had Lyle Scramby, who was second in charge of Virgin Atlantic, had some amazing people that came in. And they all had one characteristics. They debated and argued and put the case. And, you know, there was a lot of times when I had those great people around when I said, you're right. We go off and do that. And that's what got us to set up Jetstar, to do Project Sunrise, to do all the businesses in loyalty. It was where the innovation came from, those debates, those discussions, and those great people. And I enjoy that because you'd like I still met Bruce very recently. He's doing an unbelievably well-being software company in New York, and we were having discussions about things. I'd say, wow, I love your brain, Bruce. It's very unique. It's very different. You argue in different ways. You come out with different perspectives on things, and it was very fulfilling seeing that. And I've always enjoyed, having people that come from solving problems from different angles, different approach, and add to the discussion.