The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
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.
00:39:22 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:39:22] S0: I did a lot of research about what are some questions I can ask about your early career, because we could be here for hours if I try and go through everything step by step. And I found two stories that you talk about in the book. One is you were sat, I think at the back of the plane and the staff were doing a test about can they serve meals between Dublin and London and the unions disagreed. So would love to start with that because just reading that it told me that you learnt maybe about workplace politics, right, and like managing different stakeholders with different incentives early in your career. What did you learn from that and like what did you take from that and what did you go, no, I shouldn't do that because that's the wrong way of getting people on board?
00:40:06 · Alan Joyce
[00:40:06] S1: Yeah, so it was an interesting... Dublin, London is shorter than Melbourne, Sydney, as you know, it's shorter than an hour. And so they... There was a big competition happening at the at the time, and Aer Lingus was adding meals to economy, There was a dispute about how many cabin crew you needed to do it. So it was time and motion. So we were there on the management side, just assessing, could the crew do it in time? And then the unions had their reps doing a time of motion as well, and all the data was going to be compliant to make this big call. What I found at the time is that it's not always scientific. There's hearts and minds that come from it, because there was a couple of examples. There's some funny stories about having to interact with passengers. I had passengers joining the High Mile Club while I was trying to measure what was happening out in the cabin. I had I had one flight where the meals weren't collected in time, and they were put into the toilet and stacked up in the toilet, the aircraft came in for a hard landing, and all the trays came flying out through the cabin. And I think people thought the aircraft had had crashed. But what it taught me is that, you know, there may be obviously a scientific answer that says, yes, here's the maths and here's what the maths shows. But there's also human emotions, and that they have to help people understand why things are being done. And in that case, I think it was very important for Aer Lingus to be competitive on Dublin, London. It was going to lose market share and eventually did. It was going to put the airline into crisis if that didn't happen, which it had to go through a massive restructuring. So how do you make sure you're competitive and not just get to the arguments about here's the maths, here's the science, there's a bigger thing at stake and win people's hearts and minds to get those things done. And it's never easy, particularly... Now I say the best job I ever had was setting an airline up from scratch, Jetstar. One of the most difficult things you can do is changing a company that's been around for a hundred years because people do not like change. And unless you get the good case for that change and adapting to it, it is very hard.
00:42:21 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:42:21] S0: The other story that I found very fascinating and I'm curious how this shaped you is in the book you talk about I think the Aer Lingus CEO had a reputation of intimidating employees. And I believe the line you say in the book is you said to him directly, do you realize everyone's terrified of you? And he goes, clearly you're not because you say that. And I was reading that going, if that happened to me, that's something I would internalize for the rest of my career. And you became CEO pretty soon after that. How did that shape your view of, like I know sometimes a CEO has to be tough. Sometimes you gotta be tough, and like you said, you don't have to get approval. But then there are times where you gotta create a culture of people willing to speak up and say to you, Alan, I disagree with that, hopefully in some shape or form. How do you reflect on that story about you standing up to the CEO? And then what did you take from that into your own tenure as CEO?