The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
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?
00:50:31 · Alan Joyce
[00:50:31] S1: First of all, I think what I did is I figured out what I knew and what I didn't know. So I had a career that worked through most of the commercial side of the aviation industry. So network planning, revenue management, pricing, fleet planning. And a large part of the job at the start was developing a business case, which I had done for decades. So we did a... I got a team around me that were really good, pulled together a great business case, but then figured out the areas that I had weakness in, and then saying, how do I get really good people to help me with that? When I talk in the book against somebody like Bill Johnsey, who had this huge expertise in operations, John Gissing, who had this huge expertise in safety, I then used these guys who were a lot older than me, who were very experienced in what they did, as people to mentoring me through those areas of the business I didn't know, and relying on their expertise on it. And then also we had a great CEO in Jeff Dixon, so we'd be picking up the phone to Jeff. Then later, when I was CEO of Qantas, it was Leigh Clifford as chairman who was the CEO of a very big company, and ringing him up and ringing Jeff up and saying, look, here's what I'm thinking. What do you think is wrong with this? How do you think I should handle it when there's a problem? And being always open about the problems that you were facing and having that dialogue with them. But getting... And then it's deep diving on it. So while I knew how to do network planning, which is where an airline should fly to on the fleet, you hire people and let them do that. And you stand on that at 30,000 feet. You said, I'm not gonna get down. I'm not doing that job. That's the job. And a few people fail at this because they go back to the peep... The area that makes them comfortable. And fleet planning, network planning, pricing would have made me comfortable, but we had really good people doing that. So I didn't need to be at five feet. I need to be at 30,000 feet, Donna, and let them do the job. But then in other areas, like how does the safety management system work? Because then I was the accountable manager. I had legal responsibility for the safety of the airline. And there was a big learning curve in saying, how do I be at five feet on this so that I learn, I'm comfortable, I know what's happening?
00:52:54 · Alan Joyce, Vidit Agarwal
And then you immerse yourself and spend your time and your effort getting to know that part of the business. And I took, I chaired the safety committee on Jetstar for the full five years I was there. I've had a huge amount of training and learning from those great operational people to understand how that worked, And that brought me up to speed very fast. And you had those people that you could rely on. And then after a while, you started coming up from five fleets to also be at 30,000 feet for that and let the experts manage it. [00:53:28] S0: So when I did the research and I, as you know, spoke to a lot of people, I said, what's one question I should ask Alan? And I think the most curiosity I received on that is people said ask him to assess his strengths and weaknesses. And I say that because you mentioned the word weakness earlier. How would you assess your strengths and weaknesses?