I want to create a winning culture where we hold ourselves accountable to results. But that we try new things, that we're entrepreneurial. I tell our team all the time, like if you're a baseball player and you hit .300, you get paid 50 million or maybe more dollars a year for making a mistake seven times out of 10. I don't care if you make mistakes, but fix them, you know, and keep trying to do the things that work well.
Welcome to a remastered edition of the Corporate Competitor Podcast presented by Forbes Books. We're bringing back one of our most popular episodes this time in a brand new way. Originally released as audio only, this conversation is now available on video for the very first time, giving you a fresh perspective on one of our greatest interviews. This is part of a new series we're calling the Corporate Competitor Classics, where we revisit powerful, timeless leadership lessons from the archives and bring them to life on screen. Today's episode features Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines. Scott brings more than 30 years of aviation experience to his role. A former baseball and football player, Scott brings that same competitive spirit to leading United's more than 100,000 employees. I'm excited for you to hear how he balances his high-profile role with family life alongside his wife and seven children. Enjoy this conversation.
Scott, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me. I'm really looking forward to it.
You know, so here you are. CEO of one of the great companies in the world. But it all starts in a small farming community outside of Dallas where you played baseball and football. And I know most interviews you probably do these days, they want to talk about on-time percentage and profit and loss, but I want to talk about batting average, right?
I want to know, can you, I mean let's just right off the bat, can you start with maybe is there a memory from the courts or the fields that when you think about your life that you still think of maybe a moment that still resonates with you.
Well, there would be a lot of them. You know, I grew up playing every sport, loved it. Thought I would be a professional athlete, realized where I was wrong. Didn't we all? But you know, it was the unifying factor for the whole neighborhood. I played on organized teams, but our summers, our days after school were all spent playing baseball during the summer, football during the winter, basketball in someone's driveway all the time. Actually, some of my favorite was in our front yard. We used to play football, and the funnest, the most fun thing to do was when it rained, we had a ditch. Most people don't have those anymore. And the ditch would fill with water and trying to tackle each other into the ditch as the sideline.
The kind of fun things that just, you know, great as a kid.
I know. Was there ever a coach or a teammate that had impact that you still think of like something you learned from them that stands out today?
So, there were a lot that influenced me growing up that were coaches. The truth is probably my parents. I would put number one. My mom especially. My dad was a good athlete and you know he played but my mom is like a super hyper type A personality, wants to win, driven to win. You know, would go out and hit balls to us when we were little. You know, practice shooting, pitch to us and do all that. But then I also had coaches. I had a coach I don't even know his last name. His name was Jamie when I was in little league and we always thought he was not only a great coach but he was like the only coach that didn't have a kid on one of the teams. He was a young guy that liked being a coach and you know he was single and his girlfriends would show up at the game. We thought oh my god this guy is so cool. Had a mustache and you know we just thought he was the coolest guy around but that he would spend time you know with eight, nine year olds to do stuff like that and growing up in Rowlett, Texas, you know we had to drive 20, 30 miles to other small towns to play games and you know somebody that would spend time like that really, especially as I look back on it, you know, it was pretty cool.
Well, and I mean again that reminds you your responsibility, right? You got to pay it forward and there will be those moments where you'll get a chance to do the same.
You know, we always love to do a little research. You know, and I'm sure I know the questions were shared with you in advance and I thought one of the things that was kind of fun was looking at your high school yearbook and that photo of you, you know, voted most likely to succeed.
All right. I gotta ask, when was the last time you saw that photo?
It's a long time ago. It reminds me how long my hair was when I was a high school senior.
But it's good to know we could grow it that long.
Yeah. Yeah. And but the picture also had Debbie Kelman in it who was one of my also one of my good friends in high school and you know I haven't seen her in 25 years probably. So it's kind of it brought back memories of those times.
Well, that's awesome. Is there when we think about this nexus between what athletics did in your life, right? It gave you community. It gave you, you know, it instilled probably some competitive spirit. I mean, heck, you like tackling people into a ditch, right? Way to go. Is there a lesson from playing sports that you apply today? I mean, about maybe something in that world of competition that you apply today at United.
Well, I think there's all kinds of lessons to be learned in sports and I'll talk about them both from my perspective, but also in some ways I've learned more watching my seven kids grow up and go through sports. You learn the obvious about teamwork and when you say teamwork, it's really about being forced to count on someone else and having someone else count on you. Later, you know, I went to the Air Force Academy and there learned what I thought was the best lesson, maybe the best life lesson you can learn which is no excuses, sir. But you know it's similar in sports like you know if you strike out you struck out like you don't get to make excuses and how do you come back the next time and not do it.
Talk to me about no excuses, sir, and talk to me about what you learned there at the academy. What an amazing and again there's a life lesson in that. Forget sports, forget just...
Look, I think the Air Force Academy is a great place to go. You know, you go off to the Air Force Academy. Most people there, you know, varsity letter, they played sports, they were the most likely to succeed. They did really well. Like everyone there, they were pictured with Debbie also. Yeah. Yeah. They wish some equivalent, but you know, they'd all done a lot. And you go there and first it's a great equalizer but then also you're a freshman and you're saying you got seven basic responses: yes sir, no sir, but the best one is no excuses sir or no excuses ma'am. And something would happen that wasn't your fault and you were going to there were going to be consequences for it and when you were asked why you had to say no excuses. And what that teaches you is like bad stuff is going to happen, it's not your fault but don't whine about it, don't complain, figure out how to overcome it. I think it's been one of the biggest strengths.
But one of the most important subjects, I actually wrote a book on building great teams, spent five years studying the best of them and one of the most important chapters was the idea on adjusting quickly to leadership transitions and it's just an important chapter. I often ask leaders about transition efforts and what they learned and can teach us. It's a unique question for me because just a few weeks ago we had your predecessor Oscar Munoz on and he likened you when he talked about bringing you onto the team. He said when LeBron James joins your team when he shows up for practice, you give him the ball, right? And he said that's the way I looked at Scott Kirby, right? I don't know how recently you've been compared to LeBron James. That's pretty cool.
Just saying. [laughter] Just saying. That's what...
It can never be too often.
Never. That's true. Never let that be something that you run short on.
But walk me through that transition process. Right. You have a predecessor who's not exiting, right? He's... and talk to me about how you navigated as a leader into your own space. Yeah. I'd love to talk to you a little bit about...
First I was fortunate to follow Oscar. He was great at the transition. Oscar had been the first boss that I'd ever had really in my entire life that gave me good positive feedback. One of the things he told me is he would talk to me one-on-one a lot and he had said like, 'I talk to you like everyone thinks you're this great at math, you're a hard ass, you're say no excuses, you do all that kind of stuff.' He said, 'I talked to you and I know how deeply you care about our employees and about the people and you just should talk about it more.' That's one of the great lessons, you know, just to talk about caring for them more. He told me, he said, 'I already did.' He said, 'You need to tell them that you care more.' And I sort of took it for granted that everyone knew how I felt. But he was right about that. So he was great. He was also really good in the transition. I got announced as CEO right before COVID started and became the CEO right as COVID started and in hindsight like everyone would say oh poor you like it turned out it was the best time that you can make a transition like that for a host of reasons.
Give me one. I'm trying to figure out you're the first person I've heard that it forced one.
You know, United was, you know, today is a 99-year-old airline, you know people have been there for a long, they've been through a lot. They've been through 9/11, they've been through bankruptcy, they've been through all kinds of stuff. So, there's a lot of baggage and history that comes with that. COVID gave us the chance to sort of reset and change. It was so traumatic for airlines. I mean, our revenues were down 99%. No other business has experienced anything remotely like that. And because of that, we are a team like nobody can point the finger at anybody, knows what's going on. They know what the playbook is. You know, we go to our game on Sunday or we go to the baseball like we know what the plan is and what we're going to do and I think that level of teamwork is something that's a real strength that probably wouldn't have done more traditional like a once a week staff meeting, you know, and there's almost no presentations at these two hours that we talk. Everyone goes around, here's everything that's going on and we just talk and it's incredible. I think that's one of the biggest like if I could tell a new CEO to do one thing. That's the one thing I would tell them to do.
And so that was going to be my next question is, okay, so you know, you're coaching one of us, right? We're a younger version of you and we're trying to find our space. What would be something you'd coach and your first thing would be find a way to spend time with your team as a team?
And by the way, it goes back to sports. I mean, what good, you know, any great team, the coach has the team together. You know, we got to go to the Cowboys 49ers game. It was pretty cool. And they let us come down to the locker room and at the end of it, you know, coach Shanahan stands there and rallies and talks to the team and the, you know, the captains stand up and talk like they're a you feel, it's about how you feel. You feel like a team. And companies don't do that for the most part they're much more siloed and you don't feel that kind of camaraderie and team like it's that's the one thing I would tell people do often.
And now you add in the idea that post-COVID right there's this whole struggle of hybrid. I mean for some companies right how are they struggling with it. You Amazon you've read recently and you know you're seeing some. What's your advice there when you look at I mean you had as you said in a weird way you had the good fortune of your team had to come together, right? If they don't come together, right? Then you splinter and everything falls apart. So that forced something really unique and cool to happen in a world in which a lot of people have gone to say, well, you know what? I don't ever want to spend time with you. I mean, I'll do this. I'll zoom with you, but I'm not going to I don't need to come spend time in an office. How do you what's your counsel?
Yeah. Well, as an airline, I hope people spend time in office because that means they travel more. But really, you know, the truth of the answer is I, you know, of S&P 500 companies, I'm, you know, probably in the 1% that's most relaxed about this. What I think about return to office policies is that I don't know what the right answer is, and I think actually it varies by company. What I know is I want to create a winning culture where we hold ourselves accountable to results. But that we try new things, that we're entrepreneurial. I tell our team all the time, like if you're a baseball player and you hit .300, you get paid 50 million or maybe more dollars a year for making a mistake seven times out of 10. I don't care if you make mistakes, but fix them, you know, and keep trying to do the things that work well. So, I want to create that kind of culture. And if I'm telling people when to clock in and clock out, it feels like we don't have that culture. But if the results aren't there, then we're going to be back together. And we've got a number of groups that are back together in person because the results weren't there. United has been fortunate coming out of COVID. I think we've performed the best of any airline in the world. We do spend a lot of time together on video. But we also in person. And the other thing that I do that I find really valuable now that I didn't do before is I go, you know, every month out to Denver, which is where we train all of our pilots. I go every month down to Houston where we train our new hire flight attendants. And so I get to see thousands of employees every month and have business meetings where people can come in from all over the country and meet with there in Denver. But that you're meeting in the operation instead of sitting at the Willis Tower in downtown Chicago. We're in a training center where the simulators are or we're at the Houston airport and at the inflight training center where you know we got a swimming pool where people practice ditching and all that kind of stuff. And it's just a different experience than sitting in an office building.
You know. But that what an important lesson there too is that you going to them makes such a difference, right? You going to them allows it to be you're not they're not on your turf, if you will, right? So there's this sense that you walking around makes a big difference in that space.
Yeah, it's also fun. But you're right, it is a part of camaraderie. It's part of being the team. You know, I may be the coach but we only win together like...
The flight attendant is the one that got to make it happen.
You know, and along these lines earlier in your tenure, one of the things I read about you was that you realized there was something undermining the culture of teamwork on your team and in your industry they're called delay codes, right? They're where a flight is delayed and they have to put blame on somebody, right? Is it the pilot? Is it the ground crew? Whoever it is. And you realized that though it was an industry standard to do that, it was actually undercutting your efforts to make people feel like they were part of one team, right? Part of something unique together. Tell me about discovering that and unraveling something that was embedded in the culture.
You know, delay codes. Delay codes are anytime a flight is delayed, even if it's one minute, the why was the flight delayed? You know, was it a maintenance issue? Did the boarding process take too long? Did a P, you know...
But essentially it's pinning the blame on someone or something.
And I wanted to get rid of them for years. And the teams would always say at every airline I was at, they would say, well, nobody ever gets held. That's not the purpose. The purpose of this is for us to understand what the problem is so we can get better. Nobody ever gets held accountable. But you go out to the airport and talk to people, they would have fights that lasted for four hours with seven or eight people in the room over a one minute delay. And who got pinned on? They felt whether it was true or not, they felt like they were going to be blamed. And they felt like there was accountability. There was... they felt like there was accountability or not. And by the way, there's no way that 100,000 people felt like there was accountability and there wasn't accountability. There was like somebody had to have been yelled at at some stage.
The senior VP may have said there shouldn't be, but they were.
And so I just culturally wanted to get rid of it. And everyone said for years we won't have the data to get the airline better. And eventually I just said we're getting rid of it on this date. Because we can get the data from other sources. We have all kinds of data on things at an airline. And we stopped doing that. And it was a culture change to have people be on one team instead of worrying about if this flight turns out to be a minute late, who's going to get the blame, they all work together to how do we get the flight out early? And guess what? You have fewer flights that are delayed because they're working together. There's other cultural things like that that we did. Another one was called connection saver where we'll hold airplanes for connecting customers and we save about 2,000. We hold airplanes, usually not for long, less than five minutes to let those last connect. Anybody that flies has seen people running through airports and the door closes, you don't get on the airplane. We tell our employees that we want you to care and take care of customers and then we slam the door in their face. Like we were full of you know what, like when we said that and other airlines still do it. I can't believe it. They still do it. It's not just about saving those 2,000 customers a day. It's about having our employees believe they're empowered to do the right thing for customers and take care of customers. Those simple cultural things are what change companies. But that's a sports thing too. The great sports teams have great culture.
