United CEO Scott Kirby speaks at Medill

Well, thanks Charles and first thanks for having me here and I love being in a room with people who want to communicate, like to communicate. So many people are like, 'Oh, I'm afraid to say anything because it might be wrong.' But being with a group of people that want to communicate, that's a huge asset if you keep doing it for the rest of your careers. I guess the honest answer to that is I don't think about the ROI on communication at all. It's the wrong way to think about it. It is a necessary thing to make a company great and to do great things. It enables everything else. And by the way, I'm a math guy. I mean, my undergraduate degree is in operations research. My graduate degree is in operations research. So I am a math guy, but I think even on a broader point, people try to put an ROI on way too many things in corporate America. And you guys, you know, Charles talked about or you Anthony talked about building a brand. Building a brand is not something you do one ROI investment at a time. You're making a whole bunch hundreds of decisions that ultimately add up to a great company which delivers great earnings, which employees love and customers love. If you make employees love your company and they make the customers love the company, the ROI is going to take care of itself. And I really believe I say I have the easiest job of anyone at United because my only responsibility is to create an airline that our employees are proud of because if they're proud, they're going to want you to feel the same way when they get on the airplane. When they're out representing United, they're going to be the best advocates. They're going to take care of everything else. When they stand up like Anthony did, they can talk sincerely from the heart about what it means to work at United. You can tell that they're proud. And if you do that, the finances all take care of itself.

Well, I like it. So that helps. I joke this up in a Wall Street Journal story not too long ago. I joke in a room with a bunch of airline CEOs that we all crave the spotlight. The only difference between me and them is that I'm willing to admit it. But most people there, many people, especially by the time you get to be in the executive ranks, whether it's CEO or others, you've done it by avoiding the big mistake. And so they've sort of been trained over their careers to avoid mistakes. Which means, you know, don't make any risky decisions, just follow the conservative path, but also means be very careful about communicating. And I think they make a mistake, people make a mistake when they go to media training. Because what they really train you to do in media training is don't communicate. They train you to memorize talking points and you can watch people on TV that aren't comfortable being on TV and you can see their brains processing like how am I going to say my talking points in answer to this question instead of listening to the question and just engaging and saying what they actually think. And so they are reluctant to do it but I think it can be the starting point for a brand and the truth is the CEO has a louder voice than anyone. I mean just because of the title like fair or otherwise like you know my voice is 10 times what anyone else's voice can be if I'm willing to go out and use it and by the way it enables everyone else. So our comms team like we have the best corporate communications team. I think of any fortune 500 company in the US not just airlines we have the best corporate communications team but it enables them to go out and communicate and communicate effectively and be listened to get audiences with people that matter and talk to them. It empowers them to actually go say something. You know we communicate a lot more than anyone else not just me but our team does. And so the CEO can do that. And there's, you know, we talked about brands. You guys talk about brands here. And people normally think about brands as advertising. The most effective kind of brand building you can do is actually free because it's communication. That's just way more effective than because people are cynical about advertising. But if you're out communicating and they're hearing other independent objective journalists say XYZ about you or about your company that can enable advertising and other kind of brand building activities to be much more powerful. So for all of you in your careers, if you forget to be the CEO, be communicators, but if you're in the communications department advising CEOs, like convince them to step out, you know, jump in the deep end of the pool every once in a while and try to communicate because it can be really empowering for a company.

Yes, exactly. So I see this through a different lens and I think we've done a pretty good job of it at United and first I start from a perspective I'm very centrist. You know, I've voted for Republicans, I've voted for Democrats. I truly am independent. And I don't like what they do on the far left or the far right. Much of it I dislike. And so I start from a perspective of being a centrist. I also read extensively. And by the way, many journalism people in here like I hate the demise of journalism. Bravo. Like getting your news on social media, like all you hear is like I actively seek out, you know, I read the Wall Street Journal, New York Times every day, lots of other stuff, too. And I read the opinion pages and I actively seek out news and writing from people that I respect that disagree with me. I don't need someone to tell me what I already think. I need people to challenge what I think and to come up with new ideas. And I've found that almost everyone, including politicians, even the ones that you may hate. If you sit down and listen to them, they're not coming from a bad place. They may have a different view than I do or than you do. But they're trying to do what they think is the right thing. And if you can see people through the lens of they're trying to do the right thing. They may disagree with you and try to understand, be empathetic, understand what they're saying. It gives you a different perspective which also then frames how I think of these otherwise what would be controversial decisions and I think of things that we're going to say or do and it's mostly me that are saying or doing them as I need to be able to explain what I'm doing to both sides of the aisle and feel good about it. And that usually means not taking a partisan position, even though sometimes I get accused of it. I mean, Tucker Carlson has gone after me three different times. And, you know, he generates like 100,000 emails. They shut my email down when he goes after me. I've had Laura Loomer's gone after me, on the right. So, I've had people on the left go after me. So, I've had it on both sides, but I try to think of things that you can explain it to both people. I'll give you a couple of examples. COVID was one. We were the first big company really kind of the only company of size that had a COVID mandate and we got 99.7% of our employees vaccinated and so I had to and I still sometimes have to explain to politicians why we did who start very in my face very hostile about it and what I tell them though is airline safety like safety is sacrosanct at an airline and you know our safety standards are an order of magnitude higher than any other company any other industry around. And I concluded personally that this was a safety issue and that I couldn't put a pilot in the left seat with a pilot that was unvaccinated. I couldn't put that person at risk. It was wrong. And it was a safety issue. And once I concluded it was a safety issue, it was no choice. To me it didn't matter what the consequences were. It was about safety and we never compromise on safety and I wasn't going to do it. And by and large everyone, even people that don't like the decision, respect why you did that. You can explain it to them. We've got another program called the Aviate Academy, which I'm really proud of, out in Arizona where we give what's called ab initio training to pilots, people that have, you don't have to have ever flown before. And we give you the first initial training that you can get and you got to pass all kinds of FAA tests. You got all kind, you know, you got like 10 hoops you got to jump through before, you know, six or seven years later, you can become a United Airlines pilot. But we made a point when we opened that academy to recruit people from, you know, historically black colleges and Hispanics in aviation and women in aviation. And we did that partly because today 92% of the pilots in the country are white men. Lots of history for that. Like I went to the Air Force Academy like I know lots of pilots. Lots of historical reasons that it is white men. But it's a great career and it's something that we should give opportunity to everyone. Another thing that I believe strongly it's one of the I think this is the greatest country on earth. Greatest country in history. But one of the things that makes us great is it's about the only place on the planet where everyone can have opportunity to rise above and accomplish great things. But we as a society and particularly as leaders have an obligation to try to help people get to the first rung on the ladder. That's the hardest rung to get to for a lot of people. And I tell them when they come to the United like, I'm going to we're going to help you get on the first rung. The rest of them are going to be up to you. You're going to have to work hard. You're going to have to be great to do it, but we're going to help you get on the first rung. And that's what the Aviate Academy does. We're super selective. Less than half a percent the application less than half a percent, way more than any Ivy League school or Northwestern. I think I don't know your application rates. But way more selective. We give them the best training. So like our graduates like top 1% in the country like amazing people that go there but because we've said you know it's 70% women and people of color and because of that people say oh you're not hiring the best and you know this is a DEI initiative and sometimes so I explain all the facts to them but the point that I've eventually realized is the most impactful with people is ultimately saying you know I went to the Air Force Academy I wanted to be a pilot and an astronaut my whole life but the very first time I walked onto an airplane was when I was 17 years old flying off to the United States Air Force Academy. The US Air Force saw enough in me to give me a chance and give me an education and give me a chance. We're giving the same opportunity to these people. And that's kind of hard to argue with. And if you do things in a way that you know you can describe it to both sides, and feel good about it, you're going to probably be okay.

Yeah, I mean, if you've explained it to them and they still don't, I just don't worry about it. It's a minority. Just move on.

So, anything of substance that I communicate, I take the pen on first. It gets edited. Usually, the legal team sends it back to me. And they've struck out everything that I want to say, so I put it back in. And they take one shot, they let it go. But almost everything that of substance that gets communicated, I write, it needs to be in my voice. I'm the one that has to be out talking about it. It needs to be in my voice. I want to describe it the way I want to say it. So, I write almost all of it.

We I already said it in public. We tried to buy American. I want to fix them. I'm sorry. I don't Please don't quote that. But there are you know...

So that was one you know that's a good example in communication. You know what we did was totally different than what most companies would do. And so it is true that we were I talked to the American Airlines CEO about an idea to merge with them and they sort of dismissed it out of hand as we couldn't get regulatory approval and then I did some other stuff which has been reported but to get myself convinced that we could get regulatory approval and but then it leaked and you know there were enough people in Washington that knew about it that we knew it might leak. Leaking was bad for us like because when it leaks like we can't really tell our story because you can't go out it's hard to go out and say yes we tried to do this and the opposition can all gear up and say this will be anti-competitive and everyone that doesn't want the deal can gear up to say it. So I was we were disappointed that it leaked and that's what happened. American came out and pretty publicly said that they were not going to do it and you know really kind of poisoned the well for the current management team at least to get a deal done because once you've said it's anti-competitive it's sort of hard to go back and later say oh no change my mind it's going to be good and I knew that it would be competitive because I knew the merger what we were trying to do was different than traditional mergers in airline industry have all been about subtraction they've been done from a place where the companies were struggling and they were going to cut jobs and they were going to cut unprofitable flying and they were going to shrink and they were going to do a bunch of negative bunch of subtraction. This was about addition because United has created a brand loyal airline where customers choose to fly United. I have lots of great data from around the country everywhere we fly. We've won huge market share because we've created a better airline and that's what customers want. Customers don't just want air travel as a commodity. They do care about price. But value matters too. You know, the lowest priced airline just went out of business because they were horrible to customers. And customers hated them. That's why they went out of business. And customers care about value. And all the stuff that we're doing at United for technology and product and reliability and service matters to customers and customers have chosen overwhelmingly that they rather fly United than, you know, our competitor here in Chicago, then our different competitor in Denver, than a different competitor in San Francisco. Overwhelmingly chosen that customers want and that's the vision that I have is to really expand that expand it globally and so I know because I'm the guy that gets to decide what we're going to do. I know for 100% certainty that it would be better for customers because the whole reason to do it is to create a great airline for customers. So I was 100% certain that would be true and I really disliked that the narrative had become that this was anti-competitive. It was sort of all the old way of looking at it. And so I decided to draft a note. I drafted it. My wife was at Amanjiri for her birthday weekend, so she was a little bit annoyed while she went to the spa. I drafted the note. But I did it while she was at the spa. I drafted the note on Saturday and the team scurried around with it a little bit and on Monday we put it out. But I really I wanted to explain what was in my head and the reason I thought it would be good for consumers. And I wanted to do that.

The response has been really positive. From everyone. You know I live in Dallas because I was the president of American Airlines. So I've never moved I have a house here but I never moved the family and so and I'm at you know this has happened every time I've been out basically since it happened. You know kids soccer game. I have still four young kids at home. And so I spend my Saturdays and Sundays as an Uber driver shuttling kids around and standing at soccer fields. But every time I'm there, you know, a pilot or a flight attendant from American Airlines comes up to me and says, 'Can you please, you know, is it could it still happen? Like we really need it, you know, like so it makes me feel good.' I mean total strangers. Customers tell me that all the time. Our employees tell me like it really it struck a chord with people who would like to have a great US airline that it's also about being global and competing with Asian and Middle Eastern airlines. I think it struck a chord with sort of everyone I know except the people that sit in the suite at American which matters because they at the moment get a veto vote.

Well, I mean, I think it's probably unlikely. We have to have something this big and transformational. You got to have a willing partner. And we have a clearly unwilling partner. So, we're doing great things at United. You know, we're going to keep doing the stuff that we're doing. And we'll probably get to a similar end point in terms of size and customer. It'll take a little longer and it'll, frankly, it'll come at the expense of our competitors. They'll be smaller because they're competitors but they're just not competitive with United.

No, I mean this is like got to be who you are, too. That's another point like and I just thought it was horrible like I hated the way they treated customers and we all got tarred with it. Like I go to Washington DC and you know have meetings of people and they'll say stuff and like sometimes senators are like you know that's not United like right like and you know I just like I couldn't stand the way they treated customers. I mean it was like it was disrespectful to customers and look to their credit they tried to change at the end but they just had gone way too far. You know they'd gone over the cliff. They were falling. They hadn't hit the bottom yet, but they were already over the cliff and it was too late before they tried to change. And the point of all that is we're in business for our customers and if our customers love us, we're going to be successful. And if our customers hate us, we're going to fail. And we should focus on customers. And when other people don't, I'm willing to say it.

Yeah, that's a good question and I and actually it's important to me. I already said I think this is the greatest country in history. I really believe that. I think I'm so lucky. All of us are so lucky that we're born here in this country. It's not perfect. I know that. But one of the things that makes it great is we are able to criticize and we are able to talk about what we think is not great. And over time it changes. And while we're not perfect, we get better and we get better. And we're just incredibly fortunate to be born here. And I think leaders have an obligation to try to make a difference for the country. I mean, I really that I hope someday people remember me not as that we created the best airline in history. We're going to do that. And I already know that. But I hope that they remember me for making a difference in the world. And things like Aviate are really important to making a difference in the world. We were pretty critical in some of the stuff that was in the inflation reduction act around sustainability that makes a difference in the world. I spend a lot of time I've spent I think you know close to 20 days in Washington DC this year and one of the things about communicating if you're willing to use your voice you can make an impact like I get to go in you know and you know I've seen the presidents in both parties and the leaders of you know the house and senate in both parties and had get to have conversations with them where I disagree with them on stuff and I'm respectful but you know can actually not you know and it can be maddening it can be frustrating at times, but if you're willing to engage, if you're willing to listen and engage in conversations, as a CEO, you can actually make a difference. You can't get everything done. There's some places that you know, you'll be in trouble if you try. But on a lot of places, you know, you can make a difference. And like there's nothing that's more rewarding to me than to think, you know, I'm helping leave a better world for my seven kids and the grandkids that are going to come after that. And a CEO, if they choose to do it, can do it. But you have to be willing to communicate. Like CEOs that aren't willing to communicate aren't gonna they're just not gonna be in the room. If you are willing to communicate, you can be in those rooms.

Well, COVID was an interesting time. You know, I say now United has celebrated our 100th anniversary a month or so ago, but I say we're a 5-year-old startup embedded inside a hundred-year-old...

Because we started over coming out of COVID, a complete reset of what United would do culturally and everywhere else. First, we were the first airline, first company really to realize that COVID was a pandemic. We were just a couple of weeks ahead of everyone else. We went and raised $2 billion at 3% unsecured like two days before the NBA walked off the court and the world shut down. At an earlier thing today, Jason Bernbomb, our CIO, was telling people we also had a big management conference where we bring all the leaders in at the McCormick Center here. You know, like three days before the NBA walked off the court on a Thursday, and we had that on a Monday. Normally I'd be out in the audience listening and participating, but I was sitting in a back room and one group after another was coming through. A lot of people can tell you this story, and I would start with this speech like, 'This is a global pandemic. I don't know why no one else has figured it out yet, but we are going to be ahead of it, and here's what we're going to do.' So we started off ahead of the curve then, which was, you know, no one else thought. Then everyone thought COVID was going to be over, the novel coronavirus, in two weeks, in a month. And I thought that was wrong. But then once the second wave hit, all the experts around the world said people are never going to travel again. Air travel is going to be down 50%. Like literally every single expert said air travel is going to be down permanently 50%. Airlines are going to go out of business. They're going to all have to shrink dramatically. They're going to have to all go bankrupt. Like it's Armageddon. And every global long-haul airline in the world except for United Airlines went with that consensus approach and permanently started retiring part of their global long-haul widebody fleets. Literally every single one except United. And I thought, well, that's wrong. I think this is deep and it's going to last, but it's going to end. And when it ends, human nature is not going to have changed. People are going to go back to recovery. By the way, I just read a book over Christmas of 2019 about the history of global pandemics and how they shaped society, going all the way back to like 3,000 years ago in China, how they shaped society. So it was good to have in my head. But part of that is like everything does go back. And so I was convinced that demand would recover. And so we decided that we were going to do exactly the opposite of what everyone else did. So we did the biggest aircraft orders in the history of global aviation during COVID, before the vaccines were even done, on a bet on the recovery. And that was a launching pad for everything else that's come. We've since used that. We've made all kinds of other investments. We invest more in technology and product, all kinds of other investments. Connective media, which you're going to work at, only an airline in the world that has something like that this summer. But that was like a pivotal moment. And that's another good point for all you, most of you in here are young. You should read a lot. You're a journalism major, something around journalism, read extensively. I read three hours a day and have done it since I was a kid. And when you read extensively, especially if you read a wide variety of stuff, you can connect dots that nobody else can connect. And by the way, that's a great thing if you're a journalist too, like connecting dots that other people can't see. You can connect dots that other people can't. And when you have confidence that you've figured out something that no one else has figured out, or most people haven't figured out, go big. Trust your instincts. Pressure test it, but go big on doing it. We did that at United and there's no looking back.

Thank you. And you can aspire to Global Services someday.

You know, that's a really good point. Not where I thought you were going with that one, but I drive my team crazy by saying too much in public. And, you know, I am who I am, so I just do it. I also think the balance is mostly communicating is fine. I mean, I'm sensitive to it. I don't say something that I think is going to get us in trouble. But I try to be pretty open and honest, and I don't really think it puts us at a disadvantage with other companies. It also gives you the ability to create leverage on the other side because you can be saying stuff. Anytime you're saying something like that in public, like to aircraft manufacturers, if I say something about Airbus, Boeing hears it. If I say something about Boeing, Airbus hears it. And so both sides hear anything. So I think the balance is communicating is mostly better. The network team, another like, it's funny, they joke, it was a running joke at United that the guys that decide where we fly, and they're super creative and all the cool places like Nuuk, Greenland that we've started, they're super creative. They won't tell me in advance because they know I'm able to say it in public. So they wait until pretty much the last moment to tell me what our new routes are going to be. I think my team treats me that way. Over here.

Yeah. First, since I'm on stage and your name is Austin, I'm going to tell a story that's amusing to me. I wanted to always name my first boy Austin. And my wife is Irish Catholic and so she wanted Irish Catholic names and I'd almost convinced her, and I'm from Texas, had almost convinced her, I think, to let our son, who's named Shawn, be named Austin. And I made a huge tactical mistake because I was like getting close to convincing her and I said, 'You know, if we had three boys, which we turned out we did, we can name them Austin, Dallas, and Houston.' And it was over. Over. So, your dad must not have made that mistake. Now, I forgot the question. I was so interested in telling my... oh, how do you manage different kinds of communication in a crisis? You know, I think in a crisis you have to be more open about communication. The bigger the crisis, the more you have to communicate. People are worried. The job, one of the jobs of a leader is to always have people feel confident in the future. You can't lie to them. You can't sugarcoat it. You can't be Pollyannish. But you've got to say, 'Here's where we're going to go.' Like even if you don't even know everything about how you're going to get there, 'Here's where we're going to be and I got your back and we're going to do it.' And I started that during COVID. I mean I was lucky, like a lot of people, I became the CEO right at the start of COVID. A lot of people like, 'Oh, that's terrible.' Like no, that's the absolute best time in history to become an airline CEO. One, it gave you the excuse to change everything, but it forced me, like I think I have a natural instinct to want to communicate, but it forced me to do it even more. And I started like the first or second weekend of COVID, the first time I did it, called 'Straight from Scott,' we still do 'Straight from Scott' videos today. First time I held up a cell phone, like it was 10 minutes long. My arm was starting to get tired which is why I stopped, of holding the phone up. But I think we had that first video, 93% of employees watched it the full 10 minutes. Now it was existential. Their careers were at risk at the beginning, but at the beginning, you know, I was doing a couple a week and everyone was watching them. And you know, I did another one when fuel prices spiked. I wrote a long letter to employees, made a lot of press too, about I think oil prices are going to be higher for longer, sort of the middle of March is when I wrote it. Oil's higher for longer. That was another time like all the experts were saying absolute worst case is going to be over by the end of March. And so I write this note that oil prices are going to be higher for longer and it winds up in the press and then I get a call, somebody from the White House is going to call you, like oh, but they were great, you know, like why do you think that and like we think you're wrong but you know we understand what you're doing. But communicating in a crisis is even more important because people, they need to have confidence. And employees often ask me like what keeps you up at night and I have a bunch of funny jokes that I tell about that that I won't tell in this room. But what I tell them is my job is to make sure none of you need to stay up at night worrying about your careers. My job is to make sure you never get furloughed at United Airlines. And that's what I'm trying to do.

You got to be honest, but you got to figure out how to turn the bad news into opportunity. I think it's one of the things I'm really good at is not only like how do you solve a crisis, but how do you turn it into an opportunity? And you know, we had something that happened, you know, a couple years ago called a chip audit. When the FAA, they do it at every airline, but you know, we'd had a couple of incidents and the FAA, you know, they were going to do it a year later, they decided to come in, do a chip audit, and that can be really demoralizing and damaging, you know, especially when they're, you know, like one of the incidents was a balloon had flown, AC had blown across a runway, got sucked through an engine, and caught on fire. But, you know, it blew like, you know, just bad luck. But the FAA had, you know, a couple of those things happened like we should check. And, you know, we could have been really defensive about that, would have been the normal reaction. Our chief operating officer tells the story like, I love him. He's awesome and he loves me too. But he's used to, you sort of, you know, like going and delivering that kind of news to your boss, you're going to get your head taken off. And he talked to his wife about it before he came and talked to me and, you know, because he knew it was coming and he wanted to do it in person. He came to see me and you know and he's like, 'Scott's not like this but like this is like,' you know, and he said, you know, he tells the story that he told me about it and he said I stopped for like 5 seconds and said, 'This is going to be awesome because we're the best airline in the world. We should be the best, and I think we're really good at safety, but we should make sure that we're the best. And this is an opportunity to just stop what we're doing, be totally objective, get other people to look at it, totally objective, and say, what can, even though we think we're really good, what can we do better?' And that's what we did with it. And we're better today because that chip audit happened and because we took that approach. That's what you do every time in a crisis is like this might be bad today, but how is there going to turn this not just into I'm going to solve the problem, but I'm going to make it an opportunity to be better on the other side.

Yeah.

So, I don't know what the question is, but she's been nodding along.