The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:57:16 · Alan Joyce
[00:57:16] S1: So, yes, so the the pros the process was the the board had decided that they were going to look at internal, external candidates. They hired a great a great guy called Steve Langton, who worked with all the internal candidates out of assessing what the quota CEO job description for the perfect candidate looked like, and then assessed all of the internal candidates about where where they were and looked at the gap. So it looked at the gap between the current position and where you need to get to, and then worked on a development plan to close that gap. So there were a lot of things he ran through, his three sixty degree feedback, my boss, which was Jeff, people that worked with me, people that worked for me, and then said, what are the areas that you need to build up your strength in, and what were the areas that you needed to enhance? And that was a great process. Really enjoyed it, really worked with Steve Langton. He's been used by a lot of boards to help in the selection and development of the CEOs. And as I was leaving Qantas, I used him and the board for the same process with the next CEO. And I think everybody that was involved in that process found it very useful. The other thing that was feedback I got at the time was also that I wasn't dressing very correctly for being Qantas CEO. I I tell the story in the book that I was voted as CEO of Jetstar as the worst dressed CEO in the country at the time. I think somebody said it gave... I gave off I gave off the vibes of being a graduate at the photocopier, I think, was the was the citation. And I took that as a badge of honor at the time, but I had somebody in Old Meadow who I know very well came to me, and he basically said, this is gonna be an issue with getting the Qantas job because you you need to up your game. You need to start dressing better. And was right, because Qantas are premium airline. The cabin crew and the pilots all dressed with a tie. Jetstar was obviously more of a leisure airline at low cost. And that was the other thing that I needed to work on. And I say in the book, I got a stylist at the time to help me with what's the right dress sense, to have the right impression of being a CEO because that was an issue with getting the job at the same time.
00:59:35 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:59:35] S0: Yeah, yeah, I did find that story funny and I'm glad you shared that. If I compare Jetstar and Qantas, as in your time at both, I was trying to think of what is a question that brings them both together, and maybe the one is, was there things that you'd, your persona and your approach to Jetstar that actually became Achilles' heel at Qantas?
00:59:55 · Alan Joyce
[00:59:55] S1: Yeah, that's a great question. I think Jetstar, because it was a startup, was a lot faster in moving and doing things. You're being involved in a lot of startups in the tech industry. And when you're starting something from scratch, the ability to move... It's like Jetstar was a speedboat. I actually had probably a terrible analogy at the time, which was that great scene out of Ben Hur, where he's got four stallions that is racing around the arena. And we had four businesses in Qantas at the time. We had Qantas Domestic, Qantas International, Qantas Loyalty, and Jetstar. And Jetstar was being run by Bruce when I left it, and I felt that was the stallion. It was pulling ahead, and you had to pull it back. But the other tree at the time were donkeys. They were very hard to move. You just couldn't get them going. And that was frustration when you came in, because you said, we need to adapt, we need to change. Things were changing rapidly in the environment, but the businesses weren't moving as fast. And I felt over time, by getting the right people to run them, by getting the right strategy in place, by getting the right culture in place, they all became those stallions, and we had the four horses around around the arena. But at the start, I think it was that frustration and that I didn't have I had that expectation this would be the same as running Jetstar. It would be as dynamic as a startup, and that was just not realistic and that led to a lot of frustration.
01:01:34 · Vidit Agarwal, Alan Joyce
[01:01:34] S0: The other one is we chatted earlier about the demands of being a public company CEO, right? Like how intense [01:01:40] S1: can Yeah, that's you the other thing. [01:01:41] S0: Can you talk for just a minute about a week in the life of when you were CEO, maybe towards the end of your tenure, cause I think towards the end of your tenure you were under extreme pressure, and it's for people to judge whether that was right or wrong. What was that like, like week to week? Give us an insight, you talked about the mindfulness earlier, but give us an insight, you'd wake up in the morning, what did your day look like towards the end of your tenure at Qantas?
01:02:04 · Alan Joyce
[01:02:04] S1: It's a good, it's a, that's a good catch up, because that was the big difference also between running Jetstar and running Qantas. Was quite significant because you were, once you became Qantas CEO, it really just changed. The elevation was completely different. There was a lot more of a high profile. And then the other thing was a lot more stakeholder management. So rather than just running the strategy, running the people management, you had to deal with the government, you had to deal with the media, you had to deal with shareholders, and you had to deal with the board. So the whole stakeholder management side of the job was a completely different skill sets that were needed. And your communication skills became very important in all of that. And then you had a lot more employees spread out around the world as Podcast flew into every continent. So communicating to them was also an extreme challenge as well, particularly because a lot of your workforce is in the air or it's it's never one location. And and then it was the recognition because I think Australia is a bit unique for its CEOs. They appear in the media a lot more than you would in The UK than they would in The United States. So then there's the recognition of you walking down the street and somebody recognize you. And I tell a few stories of the good and bad with that bit of... So there's one time there at the end where this guy, he challenged me on George Street as I was going to get a haircut. He was protesting inside Medibank, and he asked for a selfie. That happened, so I was happy to take a selfie. But it turned out he was videoing, and then he started shouting abuse about us asking people to take vaccines at the time to travel and to work, which was controversial. And then he turned out to be a controversial individual himself. We went along, and then I reacted to it. I tried to stay calm for a while, but when he gets so much abuse, and my reaction to it, told him to piss off. And then I told him to f off, and it became viral. And the security guy said, that is exactly what you shouldn't have done, and it turned out, it talks about in the book, the guy had a bit of history where it was absolutely the wrong thing to have done, to react to it that way. But it was part of the public recognition and the public aspects of being in public life.
01:04:30 · Alan Joyce, Vidit Agarwal
As you know, I also got it with the pie in the face. Somebody protested against my support on marriage equality. He didn't like a strong gay man speaking out on marriage equality, and I had a physical attack, a homophobic attack in West Australia just before I was due to give a speech. So they were parts of the job that you didn't expect that you were going to have to run into, and probably an element of being that public figure. [01:04:58] S0: Yeah. And I've heard that with other folks that I've had either on the show or spoken to privately. I think that's one thing that most of us don't quite understand and I think it's something it's hard to understand till you're in the role, right? I want to fast forward till maybe there's the end of Qantas and I want to talk about even the book writing process and also the period in between after you left Qantas and you released the book. But end of Qantas, what I'm hearing here is you were hoping to leave Qantas at its peak, right? At its peak, at your peak, unfortunately, works out in funny ways. Left at a time when the company was under intense criticism, and you were under intense criticism. What is the hardest truth to accept from that time?: