The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
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.
00:45:51 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:45:51] S0: Yeah, the thought I was having is, have you ever thought about if you were a CEO of a bank or something where you've got a bit more commercial flexibility in terms of your P and L structure, do you think you'd have a different personality? Because I like I worked in retail and FMCG for a decade, as you might know, and it was intense. It was intense without naming names, like some of the leaders I worked with, it was tough. There were days where they yell at you and you'd go into the Monday sales meeting and if you didn't know your stuff, you'd be ripped to shreds literally, right? And I think of that often and I compare that to tech now where I spend most of my time and I go, tech is not like that because they've got a lot more margin protection and a lot more commercial flexibility that allows them to have different personas perhaps sometimes. It's an interesting one that I'm curious, have you ever reflected on that? If you weren't in airlines and you were in a different industry, would you have had to take a different approach to management?
00:46:48 · Alan Joyce
[00:46:48] S1: I I think maybe. I think in aviation, you have to rely on experts, so you cannot be the fount of all knowledge and making all the decisions. And so what you're always doing, I think, is asking lots of questions from people that are experts. Go to that engine issue, or I go to when we were in COVID. We always had experts in the room from the different elements of complexity that you're dealing with. I don't think there's an industry as complex. I think if you come up in retail, there's a lot of principles, a lot of what you've learned over your career that you've done. I think in aviation, there's a lot you haven't done. There's a lot you don't know about, and that's why you need those experts in the room that are willing to debate and willing to have those discussions. And I was always want... You know, my personality has always been calm, and I always did not like people shouting or bullying because that is... There's a difference when asking for high performance and demanding people are delivering. That... If you get into shouting, and I'm sorry you ever went through a period where people shout at you, that is just completely wrong. And that is just bad management because there's ways of managing performance that you don't... There's no shouting. There's no aggression in it. It's all about taking people through your expectations, why you're disappointed with the expectations. And I think one of the hardest things that... When I found in my career and the one of the biggest things that that shook me up to perform better was a senior manager, one of my mentors saying, I'm disappointed, Alan, you haven't gotten prepared for this. That wasn't a good report. That wasn't... And doing it in sorrow rather than anger. That is a bigger motivator. And I think for a lot of people, having your mentors, having people you respect, showing their disappointment in what you've achieved really stirs you on if you haven't achieved the good report, the good business case. I'm telling you that, that's the thing that lifted me up more than somebody shouting at me.
00:48:52 · Vidit Agarwal, Alan Joyce
[00:48:52] S0: Yeah, absolutely. I know I'm sure you've heard the metaphor about the carrot and the stick. Sometimes a stick can be a bit too much and people like you do it out of fear than rather than do it as choice, right? And you might get the result, but it's very much by fear and that person is gone the first chance there. [00:49:08] S1: Yes, Scott. And you can imagine it because, you know, I've seen it, it happened to me that I did, I think I did the business case of the acquisition of some aircraft back when I was in Aer Lingus, and it wasn't a great business case. And my boss told me that, but it was there was no. And I still remember today that read the review, and it was more powerful than anything. And he was right. I went off and redid it, and I did a lot better job the next time. And that was more it's still a bit of a stick. It's still giving you, you know, feedback, but it's not doing it in an aggressive way, and I think that's a lot more powerful.
00:49:08 · Alan Joyce, Vidit Agarwal
[00:49:08] S1: Yes, Scott. And you can imagine it because, you know, I've seen it, it happened to me that I did, I think I did the business case of the acquisition of some aircraft back when I was in Aer Lingus, and it wasn't a great business case. And my boss told me that, but it was there was no. And I still remember today that read the review, and it was more powerful than anything. And he was right. I went off and redid it, and I did a lot better job the next time. And that was more it's still a bit of a stick. It's still giving you, you know, feedback, but it's not doing it in an aggressive way, and I think that's a lot more powerful. [00:49:43] S0: Let's go into your first CEO job. So you mentioned earlier Jetstar. Think 2003 is when you became CEO of Jetstar. I'm always fascinated, like, how did you learn... No one gives you a manual on how to be a CEO, It's kind of like being a parent, you become a parent and you figure it out and you sort of make a lot of mistakes along the way is what most people would say, right? And I think CEO is similar, you can go to Harvard and you can go to every school but you got to do the work every day. How do you reflect on your own development as CEO? Did you spend a lot of time on your own development? Did you build a group of mentors you'd reach out to? Did you have other CEOs you'd approach? How did you do that in this first, say, three years of you being a CEO for the first time?