The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
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?
00:43:22 · Alan Joyce
[00:43:22] S1: Yeah, because I always encourage people to do the same, to stand up. And I used to tell that story quite a bit to people that worked with me and saying that I think this was very important. And I think Carroll, he was, you know, was a great guy. He actually did want people to argue with him. I remember having discussion in his office about freighters, and I didn't agree with one of the decisions one of the other managers was proposing, and he just sat and listened. And I thought I learned a lot from that because he did want to hear other views, but people didn't think that was the case. And I always took a big effort where to encourage people to come into the room, to be prepared. You know, the last thing I wanted is people coming in and not being prepared for the meeting, not having their arguments, not having it succinct, and not having the facts. That was worse to me than anything else. It wasn't a bad thing coming in and saying, I have a different opinion. And if you had good facts and good position on it, that was great and always really encouraged it. And to this day, I'm still really good friends, working still with some of those colleagues over the years. And if that weren't the case, if you were always somebody that didn't listen to people, didn't encourage different views, didn't get them on-site, you wouldn't have kept that talent. You wouldn't have kept those really good people. You wouldn't have encouraged that talent, and you wouldn't have got to a stage where you're still working with them. And I think, you know, one of my... And and yet there were hard decisions to make. Sometimes people didn't make it. You made wrong decisions of getting people. Their performance wasn't great. And one of the other messages I have in the book that the head of HR once said to me, it's the walking across the street test. When somebody doesn't make it, and they're not a high performance person, they haven't achieved it, and you have to let them go, will you, if you see them on the street, be able to go up and shake their hands and have a chat to them? Or do you cross the street because that hasn't worked out? So I've always kept that the case.
00:45:20 · Alan Joyce
I've made people redundant, direct reports that haven't performed well, but there's always been good relationships with those people because you have to do it in the right way and make it clear of why that's happening. And usually, that gets you to really high performance, really good people that do really well in other jobs when they leave, but they're willing to be there, they're willing to have debates, they're willing to have discussions, and they're willing to challenge the CEO because that's when it works. And I... And it can only work that way.