#266: Richard Fain, Former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group – Push past comfortable

Summary

Podcast Summary: How Leaders Lead with David Novak

Episode #266: Richard Fain, Former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group – Push Past Comfortable
Date: November 20, 2025
Guest: Richard Fain

---

Episode Overview

This episode of “How Leaders Lead with David Novak” invites legendary cruise executive Richard Fain, former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group, to reflect on 33 years of innovation and bold leadership. Fain and Novak discuss organizational culture, the power of words, taking big risks, and how to turn a people-centered vision into UFB (Unf***ing Believable) experiences. Richard opens up about his personal journey, his leadership lessons, and how he continuously inspired (and was inspired by) his teams to push past comfortable, both in calm seas and through unprecedented crises like COVID-19.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. First Encounters With “Wow”

[00:33] Richard Fain:

• Fain’s life-changing first cruise with Royal Caribbean (at founder Ed Stefan’s insistence).
  • “The thing that blew us away was the people. They were so spectacular, they were passionate, they were innovative. It was just terrific. And I think that was probably one of the more defining moments of my career.”
• Early misconceptions about cruising.
  • “I had a view that…cruising is good, but I’m too sophisticated for that. …And it was amazing just how wrong I was.” [01:25]

2. Building Culture Through UFB—Unf***ing Believable

[02:19] Richard Fain:

• The origin of “UFB,” a phrase that drove their internal dialogue on innovation.
  • “Somebody came up and said, oh, this should really be unbelievable. …So it was un. Effing believable. …The question when we would meet is, hey, that’s pretty good…but is it UFB? Is it truly unbelievable?”
• The role of language and symbolism in company culture.
  • On project names: “The project needed to be aspirational. …We call it Project Eagle, and people wanted to soar like an eagle.” [03:48]

3. Innovation By Debate and Inclusion

[06:17] Richard Fain:

• True innovation comes from open, passionate discussion and rewarding healthy debate.
  • “People who argue are rewarded…We say, you know, that was really good. You made a really good point. You were wrong, but you made a really good point.” [07:43]
• Devil’s advocacy is embraced.
  • “Devil’s advocate becomes sort of a nice word. It’s a compliment, not an insult.”

4. Risk-Taking & Iconic “Big Toys”

[08:35] The Blimp Story:

• A “childhood dream” – putting a tethered blimp on a cruise ship for guests.
  • Fain recounts being afraid of heights, the adventure of the trial, and the punchline:
    • “The captain got a call from the Swedish Air Force. ‘Your blimp is in our airspace. Do you mind if we shoot it down?’” [00:00, 11:10]
• Lesson: Innovate boldly, accept failure, laugh at the missteps.

[05:03] Cutting a Ship in Half:

• Early leadership risk: physically expanding ships by cutting them and inserting new sections.
  • “I still don’t understand the engineering, but the guests were fine with it. It gave us economies of scale. It was a dream.”

5. Vision: Competing Beyond Cruises

[11:34] Richard Fain:

• On growth from niche market to industry leader:
  • “We were going to be a competitive force in the vacation market, not just cruise. That’s been very successful.”
• The “sexy stuff” vs. “the basics.” True wow is in the experience, not just the flashy features.
  • “Most of the time it’s small things. …It’s saying ‘good morning’ in a pleasant way. …Let me show you where it is.” [13:08]

6. Bringing Leadership Home

[14:44] On Family:

• Fain calls his wife his first mentor and credits his family for grounding him.
  • “I don’t have any confidences from my wife…She would say, ‘Did you really mean to talk like that?’ I would know this was a time when I should call somebody back and reset the conversation.” [15:39]
• On blending leadership at work and home:
  • “It is a question of working together, aligning, seeing the world in the same way and moving towards a common goal.” [16:41]

7. Evolution of Culture

[20:11] Ed Stefan’s Founding Culture:

• Fain inherited a culture of excellence and pushed for continual, intentional improvement.
  • “It’s not one great epiphany. It is a continual, every single day living that you believe.” [21:42]
• The “do it right or don’t do it” approach, exemplified in choosing real ice for ship skating rinks.
  • “If you’re going to do something, do it right.” [24:03]

8. The Rule of Thirds: Innovating with Intent

[37:20] Fain’s Rule of Thirds:

• Balancing tradition, evolution, and revolution on every new ship.
  • “One third, one third, one third. …We don’t want a new ship that is all revolutionary. …What do we have that people really love? Let’s give them that.”
  • “Then…make it just a little bit better…and then throw in some wacko ideas.”
  • Examples: ice skating rink, surf simulator, skydiving simulator.

9. Courage Through Crisis: COVID Era

[39:28] Facing Pandemic Shutdown:

• Recalls instant drop to zero revenue and what it taught about leadership in crisis.
  • “It was March 13th of 2020…and all of a sudden, revenues ceased. …The idea of zero revenue had never crossed our thought process.”
  • “Our mantra was: our objective here is to come out of this strong.”
• Decisions: keeping ships in ‘warm layup’ and investing in relationships with crew, bankers, and travel advisors.
• Restart: Deeply emotional return to sailing.
  • “[The crew] said, when we start operating tomorrow, these people are going to have the best cruise in their lives.” [42:52]

10. The Power and Risk of AI

[45:23] On AI’s Promise and Peril:

• “AI…allows us to be more responsive, to understand more about what people want. …it’s really going to be transformational.”
• Cautions about losing the personal touch, and need for intentionality.
  • “Before, we would take weeks to think something through. Now we tend to put it into AI and get an answer in 72 seconds.” [46:19]
  • “It's too late for [just experimenting]. We have to be using it…because only by using it do you truly understand it.” [48:27]

11. Lessons in Leadership

[49:41] Reflection:

• “The biggest lesson for me was don’t look back. There’s no forward progress without screwing up. …If you spend time obsessing about your mistakes…you’ll become so risk averse that you won’t do the things that are necessary to make you successful.”

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

The Power of Language:

• “Is it UFB? Is it truly unbelievable?” – Richard Fain [02:19]
• “I do believe in the power of words. I do believe in the power of symbolism.” – Richard Fain [31:10]
• “If you can pick the right words, they stand out. They break through the clutter.” – David Novak [61:02]

On Debate and Inclusion:

• “People who argue are rewarded for it…You made a really good point. You were wrong, but you made a really good point.” – Richard Fain [07:43]
• “Devil’s advocate becomes a compliment, not an insult.” – Richard Fain [07:43]

On Risk:

• “You can’t innovate without taking risks. …There just has to be a confidence that you know enough about your customers…” – Richard Fain [24:30]
• “Either do it right or don’t do it.” – Richard Fain [21:42, 24:03]
• “There’s no forward progress without screwing up.” – Richard Fain [49:41]

On Passion, People, and Privilege:

• “It’s the people. It’s the people. It’s the people.” – Richard Fain [26:52]
• “Love what you do, or don’t do it.” – Richard Fain [58:45]
• “It is such a privilege.” – Richard Fain [55:51]

On Resilience Through Crisis:

• “Our mantra was: our objective here is to come out of this strong.” – Richard Fain [39:28]

On Letting Others Lead:

• “Everybody needs to bring you along, too. …It really is a symbiotic relationship.” – Richard Fain [28:51]

On Adoption of AI:

• “It’s too late for just experimenting. We have to be using it because only by using it do you truly understand it.” – Richard Fain [48:27]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:33] – Richard’s first cruise ‘wow’ moment
• [02:19] – Origin and impact of “UFB”
• [05:03] – The story of cutting a cruise ship in half
• [06:17] – Fostering debate and innovation culture
• [08:35] – The blimp story and bold experiments
• [11:34] – Vision for Royal Caribbean as a travel leader
• [13:08] – Delivering the ‘wow’: Basics and details
• [14:44] – Family as leadership foundation
• [20:11] – Company’s founding and continuous improvement
• [21:42] – Real ice skating rinks: Doing it right
• [24:30] – Taking risks and betting on mega-ships
• [28:51] – Bringing people (and being brought) along
• [31:10] – How “Delivering the Wow” became a rallying cry
• [37:20] – The Rule of Thirds in innovation
• [39:28] – Covid, zero revenue and the “restart”
• [42:52] – Emotional first restart after pandemic
• [45:23] – The potential and peril of AI for Royal Caribbean
• [49:41] – Biggest leadership lesson: No forward progress without mistakes
• [50:37] – Lightning round (personal insights)
• [54:31] – The tradition of champagne bottles and ship godmothers

---

Debrief & Tangible Leadership Takeaways

1. Make the Culture Tangible

• Use bold, memorable language (UFB) as rallying cries.
• Embed language into daily processes to set expectations and behaviors.

2. Embrace Debate

• Reward healthy conflict and devil's advocacy, fostering an inclusive environment for new ideas.

3. Innovate with Structure

• Use the “Rule of Thirds”: preserve loved traditions, evolve what works, and inject revolutionary ideas.

4. Balance Risk and Research

• Take bold bets, but compensate risk with thorough study, feedback, and alignment.

5. Lead with and Through People

• Invite bottom-up and top-down inspiration—“bring others with you,” and let them take you with them.

6. Crisis as Culture Test

• Double down on long-term goals, not just survival, in adversity.
• Maintain relationships across crews, advisors, and partners.

7. Adapt and Lead Technological Change

• Be intentional and proactive with adopting transformative tools (like AI); use rather than just discuss them.

8. Keep It Personal and Human

• Value small gestures as much as the grand “wows.”
• Share credit and stay grounded in gratitude and legacy.

---

Final Advice from Richard Fain

“Love what you do, or don’t do it.” [58:45]
“There is no forward progress without screwing up.” [49:41]

---

This episode distills decades of leadership wisdom, mixing big, bold innovation with humility, warmth, humor, and infectious enthusiasm. Whether you’re running a company, a team, or your own life, Richard Fain’s lessons—on the power of people, debate, and never settling for less than UFB—will help you push past comfortable and chart a course toward legendary leadership.

Transcript

[Richard Fain]

The blimp had been blown away. Almost immediately we got a call. The captain got a call from the Swedish Air Force. Your. Your balloon, your blimp is in our airlines can. Do you mind if we shoot it down?

[David Novak]

You have delivered a lot of wows over the years. So many that you can actually, with 1000% credibility, write a book on the power of really dazzling your customers. What's the first time you remember being completely wowed by something?

[Richard Fain]

Oh, I think it was actually my, probably my very first cruise. And I took it because I had never taken a cruise. And the founder, Ed Steffen of Royal Caribbean said, richard, you got to take a cruise. So you know what you're talking about. And I had never thought a cruise was for somebody like me. I knew it was popular, I knew it was a great thing intellectually, but to actually feel it. And I took that cruise, actually. My wife and I took her somewhat reluctantly, and we just blown away. And the thing that blew us away was the people. They were so spectacular, they were passionate, they were innovative. It was just terrific. And I think that was probably one of the more defining moments of my career.

[David Novak]

That's interesting. You say you didn't think a cruise was for someone like you. What do you mean by that?

[Richard Fain]

Well, you know, I had a view that back then was quite common. Today, there are still people that feel that way, that, oh, yeah, cruising is good, but I'm too sophisticated for that. I'm. It's not for me, it's not for people like us. We're really. We only do certain kinds of things. And it was amazing just how wrong I was. We just enjoyed ourselves. We enjoyed the company of the people we had dinner with, we enjoyed the crew, we enjoyed the ship. Everything about it was, wow. This was. I didn't mean to say that, but yes, wow, this was, this was a really special vacation. And that brought it home to me, you know.

[David Novak]

So, Richard, you, you, you led Royal Caribbean then for, for 33 years. And, and I understand there's a phrase that everyone knew now. I love this one. It's UFB oh, yes. Tell me the story behind it and what it says about your leadership style.

[Richard Fain]

You know, it's, it's interesting. It sort of developed on its own, but we, we were, we had had tremendous success with our ships. We had developed some wonderful ships that were really innovative and groundbreaking and game changing and all those words. And we wanted to find something that was us, that wasn't just another word that's overused in the business vocabulary. And so Somebody came up and said, oh, this should really be unbelievable. And yes, we added an adjective in the middle there. So it was un. Effing believable. And, and it really empowered people. So the question when we would meet is, yeah, hey, that's pretty good. Because, by the way, every architect's drawing I've ever seen looks terrific. They all look great. But is it ufb? Is it truly unbelievable? And that is empowered our discussion. And if somebody came up with something that was really spectacular, we gave it the appellation, wow, that's ufb. And we're off to the races.

[David Novak]

You know, I love that, you know, and, you know, so many people do just use the obvious word, you know, and they don't really think through how to break through the clutter with a phrase that really drives something that's going to be powerful in your. Your culture. Is. Is that something you've always tried to do, Richard? You know, find that magic set of words and spend in terms of communication.

[Richard Fain]

As you well know, I believe culture is everything, and it's, it's the people. And I worked with extraordinary people. And yes, I think it's important to go at a problem and find a way to describe it so that it doesn't just become rote. Oh, yeah, we want the best of this and we want the best of that. And so something that makes it more personal because it's really the people and the passion that they have for excellence that drives really good outcomes. And so having a few times in our career where we've identified something and giving it special names, one of the things we do was every project we would give as a project, and the project needed to be aspirational. So when we were designing what became a very new class of ships, we call it Project Eagle, and people wanted to soar like an eagle. And so, yeah, I think it helps. If you're going to do something and you really want people to understand it, you need to talk about it, and words help you discuss it.

[David Novak]

Well, speaking of ufb, you got to tell me the story of why in the world you cut a perfectly good ship in half.

[Richard Fain]

Well, that was really my introduction to the cruise business, and that was really the concept of the founder of the company who had built what were then very large ships holding 720 people. And they came up with this idea that they could cut the ship in half, make a. A new midsection that they would make individual in independently. They would then cut the ship in half, float the front part out, float the new midsection, in, float the front section back in, glue it all together somehow, and it still is supposed to float and provide all the services. And it was a terrific thing. I still don't understand the engineering, but the guests were fine with it. It gave us great economies of scale. The ship went from 720 to 10, 40 guests. It had a little more activities on board, and it had more economies of scale financially. It was a dream.

[David Novak]

You know, you're known for building a culture where people aren't afraid to share ideas. They really step out, they innovate. You know, what have you done to create that kind of environment of innovation and creativity?

[Richard Fain]

You know, I think that is one of the things that I've always been the proudest of at Royal Caribbean is the people and the culture that those people have created. And you made it, you personalize it to me. But it's actually a culture of a lot of people who come together and really, really are passionate about what they do. And so how do we do that? Well, the most important thing we do is we talk, we discuss things. We have. We have real arguments, and we make it clear that we want the right answer here. And everybody gets a voice. Now, in the end, the leadership has to make ultimate decisions. But by giving everybody a voice and by having it, we often come up with ideas that we never would have thought of, and then we are able to generate an alignment because everybody has been involved in making the decision. We're not trying to reach compromises where we adjust it so everybody's happy, but we reach a conclusion that everybody feels they've been heard on, they've been part of, and that leads to striving for excellence, which has resulted in innovation and performance that is, I think, remarkable. I've had the best job in the world.

[David Novak]

You know, Richard, it sounds like you go through sort of a healthy debate process and then you get a healthy decision. Is there anything unique that you do to make sure you get that healthy debate?

[Richard Fain]

We pride debate. We really do. People who argue are rewarded for it, mostly in both promotions, but also in. We say, you know, that was really good. You made a really good point. You were wrong, but you made a really good point. And the discussion was terrific. And we had. We always had so much fun doing it. We always learned something and we enjoy doing it. And I love playing devil's advocate. Devil's advocate becomes sort of a. A nice word. It's a compliment, not an insult. And so by having the back and forth and by just saying over and over again, well, let's let's look at this again. That. That has proven to be very successful for us. We're never satisfied. This is constant. Well, that's. That's really very good. But is it the best we can do?

[David Novak]

You know, one of the big ideas your team gave you was to send guests. Send your guests 500ft up in the air with a blimp tethered to the cruise ship. Tell us that story. You've got some wacky things that you've done. I love this. I really love it. And it's good.

[Richard Fain]

And who gets to do stuff like this? I mean, you know, this is every child's dream, to play with toys of such amazing complexity and beauty.

[David Novak]

These are big toys.

[Richard Fain]

These are big toys. Maybe my Tinker toy isn't the same as a $2 billion cruise ship, but it's the same concept. So we were building a ship, and we wanted it. Part of what has been so successful for us is to give our guests more. More choice, more alternatives, more things to do. And one of the things we thought was, well, we can put them up in a blimp, and they can trail it behind the ship and they can see everything. So we designed this blimp. The team put together an amazing blimp. They designed it in computers. They ran computer simulations. We tried it in a factory setting. Then we took it out on an abandoned Runway and pulled it behind a big truck to test it out. And then we actually did a trial on the ship during the sea trial of the ship. And we took this enormous balloon with a gondola under it that would hold up to 18 people. I got in it, and I'm afraid of heights. We went up. I went up with the safety officer, and we went up. Couldn't go much more than 300ft, and my agoraphobia just got to me. But got up there, and we were off the coast of Sweden, and the view was amazing. We could see the coastline. We could see the ship. We could see for miles in every direction. It was really fun. Unfortunately, you know, it was a test, and we didn't really tie it down very well. That night there was a storm. We woke up in the morning. Balloon. The blimp had been blown away, and almost immediately we got a call. The captain got a call from the Swedish Air Force. Your. Your balloon, your blimp is in our airlines can. Do you mind if we shoot it down? I mean, who deals with stuff like this? I mean, how? And what. How do you react to that? So we said yes, but fortunately the balloon descended on its own. But it was a great idea. And, but like many ideas, you have to try a lot of ideas and choose the ones that work best.

[David Novak]

The idea that almost got shot down, I love it.

[Richard Fain]

Or it did get shot down, just not by the Swedish Air Force.

[David Novak]

Okay. All right. Now, some of your ships have ice skating rinks, 40ft, rock walls. And yet I've heard you say, I think sometimes people focus too much on the easy stuff. Explain.

[Richard Fain]

For all these things, we wanted to have something special. We wanted to deliver the wow. We wanted to blow our guests away. And one of the things we've had from the very beginning, I think a key part of our success has been we've had a goal, a long term vision of where we wanted to get to. And we keep coming back to that. It's not just something you put in a pamphlet, something you tell new employees. We were going to be a competitive force in the vacation market, not just to cruise, but the competitive force in the broader vacation market. And that's been very successful. We've gone to the point where we've gone from a very small niche cruise line to we're now market caps higher than any hotel chain, any airline, any vacation company you can think of. And so, and that's because we're offering so much more. And so our vision was we wanted to be in the total vacation market. And to do that we needed to be more than just taking you from point A to B in luxury. We wanted to have more activities on board, more connection with our destinations that we go to. So that's really been our North Star and we talk about it all the time because as I mentioned earlier, discussing things is the way to make sure you have alignment. And it's been very successful for us.

[David Novak]

In your mind, that's really not the sexy stuff. That's the basics.

[Richard Fain]

That is, that's a good way to put it. It's, it's often not sexy. It's, you know, we talk about delivering the wow. And sometimes it's extraordinary things that the crew do. But most of the time it's small things. It's smiling when you walk past people, it's saying good morning in a pleasant way. It's when somebody says, where do I find this? Instead of saying, well, you go around the corner, turn left and you're first right. You say, let me show you where it is. But it's also not just the crew on board, it's the people on shore that say, how do we deal with. We bring amazing amounts of food and other supplies on a ship every. Every day, that or every Saturday when the ship is in port and we end up with a long queue of trucks. How do we arrange that so we don't have these big traffic jam of trucks? And how, once we've done that, do we do even better and make sure that everything is put away in a way that makes it accessible to the crew members on board?

[Interviewer/Host]

Hello, everyone. I hope you're loving this conversation with David and Richard Fain. Richard is an icon, and you're gonna love the rest of this interview. Stay tuned to the very end so you don't miss the debrief. David and I are going to break down some of the key themes that he discusses with Richard, and we're going to give you some really tangible takeaways that you can apply to your leadership, to your work, and to your life. So stay tuned to the very end of the episode and don't miss the debrief.

[David Novak]

You know, I want to dig more into your journey at Royal Caribbean in just a minute. But. But first, you know, take me back and tell us a story from your childhood. You know, one that shaped the kind of leader that you are today.

[Richard Fain]

Well, I was born and grew up in Providence, Rhode island, and inculcated in me from the very beginning was the importance of family and education. And that was something that I was always told was simply something one had to do. I was lucky enough to go to school at Berkeley and to meet my first mentor. We met both as freshmen, and eventually we married and had what is now four wonderful kids and eight extraordinary grandchildren. I've been lucky, actually, in my career to have mentors at a number of stages that have believed in me, supported me, and become friends.

[David Novak]

So you describe your wife as your first mentor.

[Richard Fain]

She. She was. And is. And.

[David Novak]

And how do you get her involved in. In your business and the decisions you make?

[Richard Fain]

Of course, everything we do is confidential, but I don't have any confidences from my wife. But probably the most clear it came was during the pandemic when I was doing things from home and I would finish a zoom call and she would say, did you really mean to talk like that? I would know this was a time when I should call somebody back and reset the conversation, but just throughout the period. And I'm proud of my business career, but I'm. But you did not. You do not have a good business career by itself. And after 56 years of an amazing marriage and amazing life together, I am. I'm lucky on both counts. I Had the best job in the world and I have the best family life in the world.

[David Novak]

How did you bring all the stuff that you've learned about leadership and you are an acknowledged leader and you've made it happen. How did you bring leadership to the family?

[Richard Fain]

You know, it's always the people and especially with the family, you know, I'm not sure that you can define, I'm not a big one for, you know, seven lessons of great leaders. I think there is something where you have to be in it together. It is a question of working together, aligning, seeing the, the world in the same way and moving towards a common goal. And I've been extremely extraordinarily fortunate in business where I've worked with people who share my passion. It's pretty obvious I'm a passionate person and I, I think that's important to success. If you don't, if you don't love what you do, you're not going to do it well. And the same thing in my family life and what we do together, we love to do together. We've always tended to do to more active things to do together and vacations. And the result has been, as I said, eight extraordinary grandchildren. Their parents are pretty good too, but the grandchildren are quite extraordinary.

[David Novak]

I feel you on that one for sure. Now, you started out in finance before joining Royal Caribbean. What drew you to the cruise industry in the first place?

[Richard Fain]

Never imagined it, as you say. I started out in finance, I thought I was a financial person, but what I found was that finance doesn't exist in a vacuum. So I became the treasurer at a surprising young age. I had a great mentor who gave me that opportunity, Ken Tripp, back in the early 70s. And I thought I was a purely financial person, but. But what I found was that finance doesn't exist in a vacuum. If you just take the world as it is and say, now my job is to finance it, that doesn't work. In order to do the financing, there really has to be a symbiotic relationship between the financer people and the operating people. And so at an early stage, I found that to raise the kind of finance we had to raise, I needed to be actively involved in how we, how we were operating our business. And that led in effect at one stage to the whole issue of Royal Caribbean. The company I worked for, the shipping company I worked for, had a small interest in Royal Caribbean. And I was asked to do some work with that. And I got more interested in it, more active. I found it an interesting business. But. And what really got me into it was there was a disagreement amongst the board over whether or not we should build another ship. And they wanted really a neutral party, somebody who hadn't expressed a view to do an analysis of it. And that was an amazing opportunity. So that's really how I got into the cruise business. Never imagined that that's where my future lay. But when I got into it, I said, oh, my God. God, this is a, this, this is a real business. This is, this is not some niche that's only inter, only good for certain people. And one thing led to another.

[David Novak]

So how would you describe the spirit of the company that you, you joined back then? I know it was a while back, but taking yourself back, what, what was, what was it like if you were at Royal Caribbean at the beginning?

[Richard Fain]

Well, the Rock Ribbon had been founded by Ed Stefan, who had a passion for the industry and he created a culture that passionate about doing excellent, providing excellent service to our guests. And so I, I started with something and I was impressed by that. And then when I was asked to be chairman and CEO, I basically said, this is a wonderful foundation and inconsistent with our mantra of continuous improvement. How can we take it to the next level over 33 years? Every year we look to make it better. And it wasn't so much this, an absolute amount of this is perfect. Part of our success, I think, was we were never really satisfied. We had an amazing culture and have an amazing culture, but we always want to improve it. It improved while Ed was running it 33 years. I think I had 33 years where I felt every year we got a little stronger and stronger. I stepped down as CEO almost four years ago and the culture has continued to do very well and continue to strengthen.

[David Novak]

Did you have a process, you used to think through the culture, when did you know that it needed to shift in a certain way? And can you give me an example of when you added this to a culture, whatever this is X.

[Richard Fain]

It's hard to define a culture and it isn't one great epiphany. It is a continual, every single day living that you believe. I, I see a lot of companies that talk about, well, this is our DNA and everybody believes that. And it's. The truth is, if you want people to believe, whether it is integrity or commitment to excellence or whatever it is, you need to be intentional about it. You need to go at it and you need to talk about it all the time. You don't just take it for granted and you also do it by example. And I'll give you One example, at one point we were talking about having a large secondary room. We discussed having an ice skating rink in it. And a lot of people said, well, of course, ice skating rinks are very expensive and it's technically very difficult to do on a cruise ship. So we can get almost the same thing by having artificial ice. Artificial ice is essentially a big piece of Tesla Teflon. And you can skate on artificial ice and people do. It's all over the place. But it doesn't give you that beautiful fluidity that you see when you see a really good skater. Just skate as though there's no friction. And that's something that you don't get by artificial ice. You don't get that from artificial anything. You get it by being real. And in the end, we said, we're going to do this right or we're not going to do it. And that example resonated with people. It made it tangible. It was very expensive. And of course, a lot of people said, first of all, I don't see who wants an ice skating rink on a cruise ship. So there's a lot of that. But there was much more. Oh, yeah, I can see why this is really sexy, but it's so expensive. We basically said, either do it right or don't do it. Make it authentic or make it real or don't build it. And once we had that mantra, it becomes an example in the company, and so others come back with the same feeling and that it empowers people to come up with weird but wonderful ideas.

[David Novak]

And doing it right, which was a big part of your culture. If you're going to do something, do it right. And that's a great story that you could tell. You know, you helped pioneer the mega ship era at a time when a lot of people thought it was crazy to build ships as big as you built them. What did that teach you about taking risks? Just that whole process of trying to reinvent the size of what you offer.

[Richard Fain]

You know, that was a key learning for me. And a key part of our culture is taking risks. You can't innovate without taking risks. Now, you can do a lot to mitigate those risks by studying it, by trying things. But in the end, there just has to be a confidence that you know enough about your customers, that your customers are giving you enough feedback that you can feel good about this. These were, in fact, bet your company kinds of decisions. But what we had seen, and one of the quotes that I like to use when we talked internally and our people like to use was attributed to Henry Ford. I don't know if he actually said it, but I still like the quote, so I'll use it. And it was, if I asked people what they wanted, they would have said they wanted a faster horse. And so you really have to say, let's not just ask people what they want, but what are they ultimately trying to do? And what we saw was that people wanted a good vacation, they wanted time with their families, they wanted something that different people could do. And so it was a number of these innovations that we did, particularly the size. The real thing we saw was that people wanted choice. And the tradition in the industry was, let's give everybody what they want. And it turns out that not everybody wants the same thing. So if you build a ship where everything satisfies everybody, it's a smaller ship because you don't have to have so much choice. But if you build a ship where this satisfies this category of guests, this satisfies your families, and this satisfies somebody who just wants to read, and this satisfies somebody else that we felt confident would attract, and we've been proven very right, the ships nobody ever imagined ships of the scale that we're looking at today.

[David Novak]

So you build this big, your first big mega ship, right? And you say it's a bet your company kind of decision. What do you have inside of you, Richard, that makes you go for it like that? I mean, you know, what can leaders learn from just how you build your own conviction on a big idea?

[Richard Fain]

You know, people think about it. It's the. It's the inspiration. It's the confidence. No, it's the people. It's the people. It's the people. It's the people. And in this case, the people were two sets of people. One were the people within the company who studied this and studied this and really felt confident about it. And the other was some of my mentors, the board of directors, who said, yes, we also believe this. And so we had alignment. We all saw this the same way, and we all said, we actually have nothing to lose, because if we continued the path we were, we would remain a niche industry that was sort of incidentally, interesting to a few specialist magazines. But if we were right about this, this was something that would become mainstream America, mainstream Europe. This would be something that everybody would enjoy. And so it was a risk, but it was a necessary risk, because either way, you were not going to do well. You were not going to do well as a niche player. And if this failed, you wouldn't do well. But this was really the only way to, that you could become a meaningful competitor in the vacation business. And of course, as you know, it's been very successful.

[David Novak]

Yeah, absolutely. But you know, when you think of visionaries, you know, visionaries often like yourself, you know, you're out there before other people many times can get there. How do you bring people with you so that they can see what you see and see the possibilities that the, that you know, the people that helped you develop this idea had and the board supported. You know, how do you bring people? What's the key to bringing people along so that everybody says, yeah, we really need to build this mega ship or is that something you even try to do?

[Richard Fain]

You do need to bring everybody along, but everybody needs to bring you along. And it really is a symbiotic relationship. And we pondered this, we really focused on it. And also when we did things, we learned from them. So the first megaship was 72,000 tons. That at the time was an unheard of scale of ship. But today our newest ship is 258,000 tons. It's bigger than two aircraft carriers. There will be 10,000 people on board this one ship. So it's quite a change from the early days. But we didn't get there in one big step. It was a series of steps, each of which proved the previous one and gave us confidence to go to the next one. I'm actually surprised others, more others didn't look at what we had done and said, oh, that worked. But I think how do we get the confidence to do it? We talked about it, we had huge discussions and we ran scared. I actually think I'm going to mention that at every point we were terrified and so we overcompensated by studying it more. So we would look at something and say, wow, that's terrific. But is it good enough? It's good, but is it good enough? Is it ufb to come back to your earlier comment. And so, and that, and by the way, it is interesting being able to say is that UFB that helps galvanize people and gets them to say, well, I better check this. So it was that fear factor that actually drove us to be over cautious.

[David Novak]

I always love learning through great leaders and going to companies and picking up something. I guarantee you if I would have heard UFB I guarantee you we would have been using that all over Yum brands and Taco Bell, KFC and pizza. I love it. And you know, I mentioned at the top that you, you, you, you know, you, you've written this book about wows, and it's called Delivering the Wow. You know, take me back to the moment that that phrase was born in your mind and. And why it became a rallying cry for. For your company.

[Richard Fain]

Actually, the evolution of it was rather prosaic. We wanted. We had decided that we were going to give a series. I do believe in the power of words. I do believe in the power of symbolism. So having words, having this project, names, et cetera. And we really wanted to have a coherent set of guidelines and thought processes for our crew. And we decided we were going to call it Gold Anchor Standards. And we had gold being an acronym and we had a G, we had an O, we had an L, but we couldn't come up with the D. And we needed a D if we were going to have gold. So we're sitting there and we're arguing and discussing, can you come up with a D? And nobody's really making much progress. And then all of a sudden, one of the people in the room said, what about deliver the wow? And we all just kind of looked at each other and said, my God, that's just what we do. That's exactly what we do. And. And it's so descriptive. It's one of those phrases that everybody knows what it means, but nobody can define it. And it is that indefinable je ne sais quoi that just brings you to a level of excellence in performance. And it's delivering the wow. And it's not. It's the crew member that goes above and beyond, but it's the accountant that really comes up with a new way of doing things. It's the revenue manager that works on things. And so that name, it wasn't that we were going to do it, it's what we did. But it described it well.

[David Novak]

I love it. And, you know, you said it already a few times. It's a people. It's a people. It's a people. And that's the people driven culture that you drove across your over 100,000 employees around the world.

[Richard Fain]

And I know, David, I do have to say I know that I'm speaking to the choir here because you are famous for that approach.

[David Novak]

Well, I think you put me to shame, to be honest with you. But I have to tell you, when you do that, it's a challenge to spread that around the globe with so many diverse people. What do you think was your key in being able to not just talk it, but really make it happen?

[Richard Fain]

Well, I think it's a challenge. It's a constant challenge and it's acknowledging that it is a challenge and you'll never get it right, you'll never be perfect at this. I mean that is key. But it's something that you understand is essential to your success. So you keep working at it and you keep this concept of continuous improvement. I'm always going to be better and I'm going to be better on the culture. But it's also trying to get everybody to make sure that everybody understands where you're going, what is your North Star. And it really needs to be tangible. Everybody talks about having a long term vision, everybody wants to be called a visionary. But it's not just some vague vision that this is going to be wonderful and everything's going to be sugar plums. It's very specific and very specific, tangible steps to do that. And so the ice skating rink, which we talked about earlier, was a good example. You show, you demonstrate by example. It isn't just words. We were consistent at it. And when people did come up with new ideas, we didn't just poo poo them.

[David Novak]

Absolutely. And you know, you've mentioned earlier that you're passionate about what you do and it's obvious it comes through. And you've talked many times just about how you guys studied things over and over again just to make sure you know that if you were terrified by an idea, you just studied it until you could move forward on it. How do you balance that? Often conflicting thought of emotion, you know, being emotional about what you want to do and also then being data based and fact based. How do you balance that?

[Richard Fain]

Balance is a very important term here and I'm glad you raised that because you also have to worry that you can paralysis by analysis. So you can overthink things but, but you really have to be a little bit obsessive. You have to think about that. I'll just give you one example of what I now view as one of my best ideas was when a group came and we were trying to decide what to do with the space and they said, let's build a rock climbing wall there. It was one of the dumbest ideas I had ever heard of. And I told them so. And what I didn't tell them was that I had actually I went, I wanted to try out the idea. I went to a gym and tried it. And I can, I was, I proved to my satisfaction that it was a really dumb thing to do. I mean, it was awful. And I got scraped and I fell and it was just terrible. And so I said you know, that's an awful idea. Go back and come back with the better one and give me three options. And they came back and they said, well, giving you the three options you asked for, but we're reopening the first one because it really is a good idea and you should accept it. And I eventually did. I still didn't think it was a particularly good idea, but it was the best of the four. And when we brought the ships out with the rock climbing wall, it was an unbelievable success. This stupid wall was all people could talk about. And it became such a good idea that we decided to retrofit it on all of our ships. And I now say it's one of my best ideas. But they were persistent at it. And it isn't just analysis. They think about it, they think about in the shower, they think about on their way home, and they care. It's their caring that makes it right.

[David Novak]

You know, tell me a story that captures your. What you call your rule of thirds in action.

[Richard Fain]

It's interesting that. Thank you for raising that. Because the Rule of thirds actually proved to be quite good. So Royal Caribbean started to get a reputation in the industry for innovation, deservedly so. It had come out with some fantastic new ideas. But what started to happen was everybody started to say, well, we're going to revolutionize everything. You don't want to revolutionize everything. A lot of what we did was terrific and should continue to be terrific. So what we said was we were going to divide the ships, every new ship and every new project into three categories. Traditional, evolutionary and revolutionary. One third, one third, one third. So when we look at the ship and, you know, part of the process is you look at every idea on the ship, but then you have to go back and look at it as a cohesive whole. And so you don't want a cohesive new ship. That is all revolutionary. So what we said was, what are we going to do that? What do we have that people really love? And let's give them that and make sure that we can add other stuff. But what they love, they're going to get. And then we take other stuff that they really love, and we're going to make it just a little bit better, a little evolutionary, and then going to throw in some wacko ideas. The ice skating rink, the surf simulator, the skydiving simulator, the Pearl, this amazing circle, sphere in the middle of the ship. The Royal Promenade. So we're going to try these things, and if they don't work, there's no harm done, because 2/3 of the ship is what they already loved.

[David Novak]

Oh, that makes so much sense. And what a great way to innovate and give your people the freedom to go after it, you know. But then, you know, the world basically stopped for you like almost no other industry. When Covid hit, I mean, literally, your revenues dropped to zero, seemingly overnight. What did that experience teach you about leading through a crisis?

[Richard Fain]

First of all, it wasn't seemingly overnight. It was overnight. It was March 13th of 2020, and it was one day and one event, and all of a sudden, revenues ceased. Something we had never, you know, we do a lot of analysis of bad times and downside risk. The idea of zero revenue had never crossed our thought process. So we're faced with running a company on zero revenue. It was traumatic, but again, we fell back on what had worked for us. What are we trying to accomplish? What's our long term goal here? We had long discussions about it, and there were those who said, well, our goal is to survive this. When we sat around and looked at it, we said, that's a terrible goal. If all we do to survive, what are we? We need to come out of this strong. And it will come out. It will. We don't know how long it'll last. We don't know how terrible it'll be, but it will end. And if all we do is focus on the short term, when we come out of this, we will be in trouble. So our mantra was, our objective here is to come out of this strong. And everything we do, what we do with our, with our employees, what we do with our ships. So for example, one of the questions on a ship is it's very common. If you're not using a ship, you lay it up, you simply park it somewhere, leave a couple of people on board to make sure nothing happens and go away, and then come back. And when you come back, your ship has deteriorated. Because the worst thing for a ship is to just lay idle. So we said, no, we're not going to go into standard cold layup. We're going to go into warm layup. We're going to keep 100, 120 people on every ship just to keep operating the ship. They're going to keep as though there are people on board. And so that when we come out, that ship is in great shape. We won't have problems that things are breaking down because they've been idle for two years. What we do with our crew, how we help them, our relationships with our travel advisors who are key to our success. So, and a Big one, as I think, you know, was the financing. Good thing. I had a financial background, but the temptation was issue equity so that you just have some cash. But issuing equity at a low value wasn't going to give us a lot of cash. And when we came out, it would seriously undermine our profitability. So we took the harder tack of going after more financing, and we were able to raise it because again, we had had such great relationships with our bankers and they trusted us. And so our mantra during the thing was, come out of this strong. And fortunately we did.

[David Novak]

You know, the other thing that I, I love that you did is you didn't say you wanted to recover. You said you, you. You used the word restart. You know, I mean, there you go. You're going to restart the business. And. And what did you mean by that exactly?

[Richard Fain]

Literally, the business was closed. We weren't operating.

[David Novak]

You're right about that. Got to start it back up again.

[Richard Fain]

Got to start it back up. And we need to bring tens of thousands of crew members. You know, we now have 105,000 employees around the world. We needed to bring them back in some case retrain. We also needed to provide some help during the period that everybody was suffering. So it was a restart. And I have to say the restart was one of the more emotional days of my life. We were the first cruise ship and the first cruise line to start up back in the United States in 2021. The first ship to start from an American port was Celebrity Edge. I went to the ship the day before. All the crew were now back, and I walked on the gangway and I expected to sort of meet everybody in the central plaza. And you walk in the crew gangway and then there's an elevator lobby about 30, 40ft ahead of you. It took me an hour and a half to go from the crew gangway to the elevator lobby. An hour and a half. Every person. It was just so emotional for them and for us and for me, there wasn't a dry eye there. We probably took 8 million selfies. And I heard. And I. And I also played back. I told my stories and I heard their stories. And it was. It was a remarkable time. And the greeting was, we're back. And one person said to me, you know, Richard. Or actually he said, Mr. Richard. You know, Mr. Richard, when we start operating tomorrow, these people are going to have the best crews in their lives. And that summarized their dedication, their passion, their. We knew they were going to deliver the. Wow, it was such an emotional time to be back to restart, to Use your word.

[David Novak]

You know, that was such a, obviously a high touch moment. And here we are in this big technology boom now where AI is everything that everybody is talking about. How do you see AI impacting Royal Caribbean?

[Richard Fain]

You know, I think AI infects every business everywhere. It allows us and it has blessings and curses, but one of the things that allows us to do is to be more responsive, to understand more about what people want. It allows us to be more efficient of what we're doing and the way we're providing allows us to imagine things that we never would have thought of before. So it's, it's really transfer, it's really going to be transformational and I know the company is focused on that heavily and I think we'll all see the impact along with some of the dangers. And I think we have to be careful that we are balancing the word you used earlier, the dangers, the risks, with the obvious rewards.

[David Novak]

What do you see as the biggest danger?

[Richard Fain]

Well, I mean, I think it's seductive. Again, I think we learn by, by thinking things through, by obsessing about them. And so whereas before we would take weeks to think something through, now we tend to put it into AI and get an answer in 72 seconds. And. But we've lost that personal, in that case, we've lost the personal input and so does the person lose that hands on touch which makes it so special? I don't know. We don't know yet. We're still in such an early day of AI right now. We're realizing the benefits, but I think we do need to be careful.

[David Novak]

Most people are realizing the benefits. On the productivity side, do you see AI really driving your, your revenue?

[Richard Fain]

It does. It clearly helps us understand who's out there. It's clearly from a marketing point of view, it's, it's also, as you say, productivity. It makes us more efficient, it allows us to try out new ideas. You know, if you have an idea, you can ask AI to draw it for you. So there's a lot of advantages that will actually help us make the experience better. We're using AI so one of the things that we started a while ago is what we call win on waste. And it's a lot of food that gets wasted. We bring out the food, it's not used and we have to throw it away. We can't reuse food for health reasons. So there's a lot of waste there. AI has already been very helpful in helping us refine that, how to manage our food operations better so that there's less of that. So there's some real value there.

[David Novak]

What advice can you give other leaders on how to get up to speed on AI and driving a new force like that, a new force of technology and making it a success in your company?

[Richard Fain]

I actually think it's a point that to me is very important and that it is intentionality. You, you really, I hear so many people say, well, we're still experimenting with it, we're still trying to understand it, we're still learning. It's too late for that. We have to be using it and we have to say we are going to use it because only by using it do you truly understand it. And it's, it's a little bit like we've done with our ships. Only by talking with our guests, only by talking with our crew member do we understand. And you have to do that with intentionality. It's in just osmosis. And the same thing with, with something new like AI you really have to say this is going to be an important part of who we are and how we operate. And so you have to really say, I'm going to go at this clearly and with intentionality that I'm going to accomplish these goals. Not just let's try and see what happens.

[David Novak]

You know, looking back, Richard, you know, what do you think is the biggest leadership lesson you wish that you would have learned earlier?

[Richard Fain]

I think probably the biggest lesson for me was don't look back. There's no forward progress without screwing up. And, and I had my share of mistakes and I tried to be as open as anybody can be in the book. It's a little hard to be that self aware, but I did try. And I think one of the lessons I learned was if you spend time obsessing about your mistakes, you won't, you, you, you'll become so risk averse that you won't do the things that are necessary to, to make you successful. So I think if I had one piece of advice to my earlier self, it was don't look back, only look forward.

[David Novak]

I love it. You know, you know, this has been so much fun and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. So are you ready for this?

[Richard Fain]

All right, I'll go for it.

[David Novak]

The, the three words that best describe you.

[Richard Fain]

Passionate, loving, insatiable.

[David Novak]

I guess if you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be?

[Richard Fain]

Colleen Fain, my wife.

[David Novak]

Your biggest pet peeve, jumping to conclusions. Who would play you in a movie?

[Richard Fain]

Ben Affleck.

[David Novak]

Okay. The most breathtaking view you've ever had from the deck of a ship was.

[Richard Fain]

Definitely from the blimp that nobody has ever had such a view. It was breathtaking. Looking at the coastline, looking at the ship. Just amazing.

[David Novak]

What's the most expensive bottle of champagne you've ever ordered?

[Richard Fain]

That's easy. We had to have a special bottle made called a Sovereign, and we were building the Sovereign of the Seas. It was the biggest cruise ship ever built. Tattinger offered to give us first a Jeroboam and then a Balthazar and then a Methuselah and then a Nebuchadnezzar. And we said they're all too small. And so they made a special bottle of wine that. That holds sort of this high and holds the equivalent of 25 bottles of champagne. It's.

[David Novak]

It's almost impossible to lift up bagpipes at company events. Where'd the idea come from?

[Richard Fain]

I love bagpipes. That's. You know, that's. That's one of the few things I just get to do because I love it.

[David Novak]

What's a day in the life of a cao aboard a cruise ship on a workday, not a vacation.

[Richard Fain]

Well, it's never a vacation for me on a workday. And I have to say, it is thrilling. I see the people. I get to be with them. I get to hug them. I get a lot of requests for selfies, and I am blessed every time, and I feel complimented every time. It's a wonderful experience. And people tell me their stories. And when you hear these stories, you just have to admire these people so much.

[David Novak]

What's the one thing you do just for you?

[Richard Fain]

I have a really comfortable, easy chair, and I sit in it, and I read and I read trash. And I love it.

[David Novak]

Besides your family and your friends, what's your most prized possession? And maybe that chair.

[Richard Fain]

Well, that's an interesting one. So from the very first ship that I was involved in, I. I asked them to. When we had the naming ceremony and we broke the bottle of champagne against the side, I asked them to save the bottle. And then I. And I didn't know what I would do with it. I just asked them to save it. And I've asked them to save every one of the ships we've named since then. Them. And I've just now been working on an art piece that uses all those scraps. But for 35 years, I just kept the bottles without knowing what I would do with them. And now I'm making use of them, and I'm loving it.

[David Novak]

I. I love that you Know, if I turn the radio on in your car, what would I hear?

[Richard Fain]

Golden oldies.

[David Novak]

What's something about you few people would know?

[Richard Fain]

Oh, I'm not going to tell you that. But I think, I think people know I'm, I, I'm passionate. Maybe people don't realize just how lucky I've been in my family life, in my career. Nobody gets to be as lucky as I've been. And I, I thank my lucky stars every day.

[David Novak]

What's one of your daily rituals? Something that you never miss?

[Richard Fain]

Well, now I do. Wordle.

[David Novak]

There you go. There you go. We're out of the lightning round, Richard. But I love the fact that you've been collecting these bottles. Talk a little bit about the bottle tradition that you have for ships.

[Richard Fain]

Well, it's actually a tradition in the shipping business for literally thousands of years. And to have a woman of some accomplishment give the ship her blessing and break a bottle of champagne. The French have been good about getting champagne into the act. And so it's a tradition to break this bottle of champagne. And we've had great godmothers. In fact, more recently, we had a godfather with Messi. We've had President Carter's wife, Rosalynn Carter. We've had. Malala was on, was God. We've had such, such wonderful. Whoopi Goldberg was a terrific godmother, One of our funniest and most gracious. We, we just had so many wonderful people do it. And it's just an honor. It's just a way of saying thank you to them, but also imbue the ship hopefully with some of their expertise and their successes. Mariners are superstitious lot. And having the, the, the godmother give her blessing to the ship and rub off some of her expertise and her success is always good. And we've been very proud to have to carry on this tradition.

[David Novak]

You know, you've mentioned the fact that you feel lucky, that you feel blessed. You, you know, how do you feel about just the privilege of being a leader?

[Richard Fain]

It is such a privilege, and people focus on the fact that I'm leading such a large organization. I've had just as much of a thrill in some of the smaller organizations that I've been involved in. I just get such personal satisfaction, such personal feeling of being blessed to be involved in almost anything that's successful. And, and so while most people focus on my career at Royal Caribbean, I think I, and I think my family would say I get just as much satisfaction and pride from some of the smaller things that I've been involved in.

[David Novak]

You know, you mentioned, you know, people taking selfies with you and you know, everybody wanting to shake your hand. That magic moment and day when you restarted after Covid, there's so much adulation that you get as a leader, you know, and being that person. How do you, how do you handle it and still stay grounded?

[Richard Fain]

Well, I, I think part of the problem is that it's, it's a little bit frustrating because you don't always feel that I've earned it and people are very gracious and people have been just incredibly kind to me over the time. But I am self conscious of the fact that I happen to be in the right place at the right time. I've been blessed with, by being surrounded by imaginative and creative and, and hard working and thoughtful people. And so I actually, I guess part of it is I feel overwhelmed by it and I feel that I have to work a little harder to try and earn at least part of it.

[David Novak]

What do you see, Richard, as your unfinished business?

[Richard Fain]

Now watching and applauding my successor, Jason Liberty, has taken the reins. This is my pride and joy. Jason and I have worked together for 20 years. It's more than a friendship. It is in fact, a love affair. But to see him thrive and take the company to yet higher levels, to see him continuing the concept of continuous improvement and continually making it better, I couldn't ask for anything better. And I see the same thing, by the way, with my children. Like my children, Jason keeps making mistakes. But they're his mistakes, just as my children's mistakes are their mistakes. Fortunately, they get it more right than wrong. And that makes Jason, and that makes my children really extraordinary.

[David Novak]

Last question here. What's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader?

[Richard Fain]

I wish I could narrow it down to one piece of advice, but love what you do or don't do it.

[David Novak]

Perfect. Perfect. Richard, you obviously love what you do and you are doing it and you're doing it unlike anybody who's ever done it in your business. And you're a great example of a leader who cares about people and knows that's the magic that you gotta have to do big things. So thank you so much for being on this show, David.

[Richard Fain]

Thank you. You've, you know, you've been an inspiration. Your books and your, your own career are, are inspiration to a lot of potential leaders. So thank you for that and thank you for doing this interview with me.

[Interviewer/Host]

David. I have to admit that I have never been one to think that I was a cruise Girl, like, that's never just. That's not really been my vibe. However, this interview with Richard Fain has changed my heart in a significant way. And I'm ready to book a Royal Caribbean cruise.

[David Novak]

Oh, man, it sounds like you really are going to rough it.

[Interviewer/Host]

I loved this episode. Richard was at Royal Caribbean for over 30 years, and I love how fricking passionate he is about the cruise business. I mean, for a finance guy, this man's got a ton of passion and excitement around what it is he gets to do.

[Richard Fain]

Well.

[David Novak]

I mean, his roots were in finance, but he quickly became a people leader. I mean, everything that he talked about is how people do this and people do that, and they wouldn't have been able to do this if it hadn't been for the people. And he's a culture driver and a big believer that you can only make big things happen if you can take people with you. And he's got a lot of people who are really fired up to get big things done. And we're Royal Caribbean.

[Interviewer/Host]

Well, David, we're going to debrief this conversation and give the listeners a couple of tangible takeaways from this conversation that they can apply to their leadership, to their life, and to their work. And I'm so excited to talk about this first theme because it's a part of the episode that's going to stick with me for a very long time. And it is Richard's phrase ufb. Unf. Ing believable.

[David Novak]

I love that because, you know, I love the fact that, you know, internally they said, is this ufb, you know, un freaking believable? I mean, that's. That's. That's the use of words. You know, words have such power, you know, if you can pick the right words, you know, they stand out. They break through the clutter. And it basically says, this is what we do. And to be able to say, is it UFB or not. Okay, I love it. It's such a great criteria to have for how you look at ideas and processes or whatever you're working on. Is it ufp? And I think that that was. That's so powerful because I always talk about, in culture, you know, people, a lot of times, they'll come up with these words like, we want to be transformational. It's like, oh, you know. Well, I mean, that's so boring. I mean, transformational, yeah, it's a nice thing to be. But does that really stand out as language? Ufb. That stands out. Stands out, you know, and I think when you're thinking about the cultural behaviors the you want to drive in your company, the more you can put it in language that breaks through the clutter, the better. You know, for example, when I was at Yum, we wanted to be customer focused. Now, what company in the world doesn't want to be customer focused? I mean, that was boring as hell. Okay? And then I said, you know what? We're not being customer focused enough. So I changed the cultural value to be. We wanted to be customer maniacs. People said, you want me to be a maniac around customers? I said, yeah, I do. Okay. But the word made people think, well, how can you be a customer maniac? You know, how can you go above and beyond what's really. How do you show your mania for making customers happy? But it was much more powerful than just customer focus. So I think people really need to think very hard about what behaviors they want to drive in their culture and look for very powerful language that drives it home. And UFB may be one of the best examples I've ever heard.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's so good. It's so good. I feel like this is an exercise that I did at a company I used to work for, but we looked at our core values and cultural values and circled all of the kind of descriptor words of what they were. So similar to what you did. Customer focused, excellent quality, those sorts of things. And we asked ourselves, do these words ignite action? And the answer was no. And so that exercise of going through and saying, okay, this is the value we want, but people are just going to forget about being customer focused or having excellent quality, but they won't forget about being maniacal, about satisfying customers.

[David Novak]

And you just can't underestimate the power of words. Or let's just say one word. You know, I remember Raid. I think they still have this. You know, raid had this thing. You know, what their functional purpose was is they kill bugs. They came up with this advertising line was, raid kills bugs dead. Well, that one extra word, Raid kills bugs dead. That's like, that means those bugs, they get killed. But the power of that one word, no pun intended, is extremely powerful. And so I just think leaders need to think about language and the words they use to break through the clutter and really make sure people understand that they're serious about this behavior that they're trying to drive.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's just. It's so memorable, too. It's like no one's going to forget. Un f ing believable.

[David Novak]

Yeah. And by the way, the other thing I love about that, it Took a little courage. You know, I mean, to say ufb, you know, that takes courage, but it takes courage to stand out. It takes courage to break through the clutter. It takes courage to break through the rules. It takes courage to get out of your comfort zone. And that's what I loved about UFB.

[Interviewer/Host]

Being a risk taker and being bold and courageous is something that clearly marked Richard's tenure at Royal Caribbean Cruises. I mean, he put a rock climbing wall in most of his ships. He doubled the size of the largest cruise ship ever. And you ask him in the episode, you know, how do you get the conviction to go after these risks when you know if it doesn't work, you're kind of screwed? And he said, david, that was easy for me. It was the people. I had belief in my people, and I knew that they were going to be the ones to execute it well and bring that vision to life. So I knew we weren't going to lose and I wouldn't get embarrassed. What else can leaders do to build that conviction within themselves when they know that they're about to make a pretty risky decision for their business?

[David Novak]

Well, I think you gotta understand what the risk is. You know, I think in this particular case, one of the things that he talked about was the rock climbing wall. Okay, he didn't even know what a rock climbing wall was. But then he went and he observed it and he saw the fun that people had doing it, and he listened to his people and he thought it was a crazy idea at the beginning. And, you know, he got a little bit more knowledge and they kept pushing back and then finally he did it. And it was one of the best decisions that he made. But he also knows that, you know, if it doesn't work, you can take it down, you know, but when you're trying to really delight your customers, create an experience that you can't find anywhere else, you're not going to do that if you just keep doing the same old, same old. So you gotta constantly look for ways to change the game. And that's something that he took a lot of delight in doing. Ufb. Ufb.

[Interviewer/Host]

Pretty ufb. I love how he also doesn't seem like the type of person to take those risks in isolation. He galvanizes his team and really understands how to take people with him and get them fired up to conquer what might be seen as a risky.

[David Novak]

Yeah, well, I think what's really interesting about him, his approach is almost like his people are taking him with them.

[Interviewer/Host]

And he says that in the episode too. They took me with them.

[David Novak]

Yeah. And I love that. And it's like we. We just did the conversation with the Bumble CEO and. And she. She basically said the same thing. How do you take people with you on, you know, AI and different things? And she goes, oh, they're. They're taking me with them. They're ahead of me. But I think it's giving people respect. Giving people respect and acknowledgement that, hey, you value what they have to say and that they really count and, you know, you truly listen to them and recognizing them for showing you things that maybe you wouldn't be able to figure out on your own, that's really powerful. I always loved recognizing people who, who saved me from my cells, you know, who. Who gave me ideas that I would have never had or showed me something that, you know, there's no way I would have possibly done it, but it hadn't been for them. And I would scream it from the rooftop. I would tell everybody that I was going down this path until Kula, you know, told me to do this or Tim told me to do that, you know, and you know, that says, hey, look, you want people's opinions, you value it, and you know you're going to change if they got a better idea. And just as importantly, if they have a great idea, you'll recognize it and you'll hop all over it.

[Interviewer/Host]

David, last point that I want to debrief with you, and I think this is so important. In the episode, you ask Richard what makes his culture so special, because he, as we have mentioned in this debrief, is so super committed to his people and just has an excellent, amazing UFB culture at Royal Caribbean. But he says, david, our culture is so amazing because what we do is we talk and we have real arguments that are healthy when things are at odds and when people are at odds. And I just love that he calls that out, because a lot of companies say that they encourage healthy conflict, but a lot of times it's usually only the person in charge who is going after other people. A lot of folks might not feel safe to engage in healthy conflict at work. So from your experience, I'm just curious what you would say to leaders who might be having a hard time encouraging healthy debate and healthy conflict in their business.

[David Novak]

Well, I think you tell everybody that you think that debate is important. That debate is all about collaboration. Collaboration is one of the most important behaviors you can build in any company day. There's no computer there that's ever gonna take the power of people collaborating together and so when you collaborate well, you always have healthy debate and you get to a healthier decision. We used to coin that phrase at yum. It's healthy debate, healthy decision. And I think that it's also fundamental to what I think is a law of leadership, which is no involvement, no commitment. You want to have people feel free that they can speak out and give you their perspective and share their ideas. And when you're able to do that, then you can have commitment to whatever the decision is. But if you're in the total dark about the decision and, and why it's being made and you find out about it later, when it's an area that maybe you have the potential to impact in, man, that's really, really sapping. Really, really frustrating. So I think healthy debate, healthy decision gets everybody involved. And that always drives much more commitment.

[Interviewer/Host]

And it always starts with the leader. I mean, they cast the shadow. And if the leader starts engaging in this healthy debate and admits to being wrong, then other people will feel more comfortable doing the same.

[David Novak]

I think the leader obviously is key to that. But I also think when you're coming up, the way how you really distinguish in yourself is when you have the courage to speak up and you have the courage to speak up and step out and say, this is what I think we need to do. And that's how you can set a mark for yourself. I know this doesn't sound too good, but I used to like, love to be sitting in meetings and my boss would say something that I disagreed with. I just couldn't wait for those moments.

[Richard Fain]

So I could tell him that, hey.

[David Novak]

This is how he should be thinking. But, you know, that was just, you know, I enjoyed those moments, but I think that demonstrated that I had the courage of conviction, conviction, the courage to speak up. And then I had a point of view.

[Richard Fain]

And I think as you're an up.

[David Novak]

And coming leader, I think you want to express your point of view. You're not going to get anywhere by being a brown spot on a brown wall.

[Richard Fain]

I mean, you got to step up and step out.

[Interviewer/Host]

Never heard you say that. A brown spot on a brown wall.

[David Novak]

Well, it's a love.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's great. I love it. Pretty ufb, if you ask me. Okay, last question here, David. What Royal Caribbean Cruise would you go on if you had to go on one tomorrow?

[David Novak]

There's nothing like the Amalfi Coast. That's pretty good. I'm sure they do that.

[Interviewer/Host]

That would be Great answer, you know, Great answer. Well, David, another excellent edition of How Leaders Lead. Stay tuned for our next episode. And we'll see you next.