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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone. Just before we get into the show, I just wanted to give a really big shout out to my founding sponsor, System One. As many of you know, I worked at System One, and before that I was actually a client of theirs. Now, the thing I love about System One is when I need to make a big decision, they have been there to help me. Because what System One does is use the power of emotion to help predict the likely impact of my innovation or advertising. So when I've been stuck in the boardroom needing to justify why we're going to pick one creative route over another or, or launch this innovation over that one, it has been indispensable. It's also really simple to use. Very actionable and incredibly good value, too. So if you want to find out more about System One's Test yout Add or Test yout Innovation, simply go over to systemonegroup.com and find out more. Okay, without further ado, let's go on with the show. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored cmo. Now, we're going to be talking about crises and how to manage them with somebody that really knows what they're talking about. Jim Olson here. Jim, welcome to the show.
- [01:07]
B
John, it's great to be here.
- [01:08]
A
Yeah. Well, thank you for taking the time, and if it's okay, I'd like to start on the 15th of January, 2009 and talk about Flight 1549, which you know all too well. Now, for anyone listening, explain what that flight is and why it's so significant.
- [01:25]
B
Yeah, well, I think most people may not remember what they were doing on January 15, 2009, but that day is probably next to my birthday, the most memorable day in my life. And that was the day that Captain Sully Sullenberger saved the lives of himself and 154 other people on an Airbus A320 after huge, meaty Canada geese flew into both engines a minute after takeoff and lost all thrust. And he safely landed the plane on the Hudson River. I mean, that.
- [01:52]
A
I remember watching the film about it. I mean, it's. It's astonishing that he can have the presence of mind in a situation like that to work out the options and safely land the plane and save all those lives. What was it he did that enabled him to, you know, you know, recover the plane like that?
- [02:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, well, that's the. The magic of that. And I think, you know, you would hope that every other pilot would have done the same thing that Sully did, because they're all taught the same crisis management lesson. Their first week of flight school, whether you're a military pilot, a civilian pilot, a commercial pilot, you learn your first week to aviate, navigate, communicate when something goes wrong, whether it's right after takeoff or whether you're at 30,000ft. And so what really I think truly saved the lives of all those people and Sully was that he aviated. He flew the plane first. It's the number one rule you talk to any pilot. And he stabilized the situation by not continued to try to pull the plane up as he lost all thrust, but put the nose down to buy an extra precious 30 seconds to then bought him the time to navigate and determine which airports would be safe or not safe to land at. And he determined none of them were. So the Hudson river was the only option. And so by stabilizing the situation first aviating flying the plane, he was then able to buy the time to navigate
- [03:06]
A
in a crisis like that. What is he communicating to everybody else on board the plane? Is he telling them what's going on or what are you saying in that situation to the crew and the passengers?
- [03:16]
B
Yeah, well, that's, I mean, that's the beauty of the nav. Aviate, navigate, communicate. You know, mindset and protocol is that he didn't communicate initially. He aviated. He, you know, again put the nose down to, to regain some momentum. He navigated, he figured out the Hudson river. And then once he figured out that he was going to land on the Hudson river, then and only then, it was the last thing he did. Thirty seconds before the plane landed, the Hudson, he got on the intercom and said, this is your captain. Brace for impact.
- [03:40]
A
Wow. What, I mean, what kind of presence of mind to be able to. Because, you know, the times when, times I've been in crisis, it's very hard to think straight. I mean, your critical thinking just disappears. You're panicking. It's very hard to make a decision. So to remain cool under that pressure, calm under that pressure is incredible.
- [04:00]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, that's really the impetus. And you can use that for not only aviation, but it's a great mindset to have for any kind of business crisis or organizational crisis, whether it's a leadership crisis or, you know, it could be an active shooter situation, whatever the situation might be, might be an activist shareholder attack. Or in your personal life, if you have a get to go through a divorce or you lose a child or you have a medical emergency, you can use that same pilot framework of aviate, navigate, communicate for pretty much any crucible that confronts you in life.
- [04:31]
A
One of the things I found interesting as well is didn't, wasn't there like a public, was it a public prosecution or investigation into how he handled the situation? That went on for a good couple of years. I was quite interested. Why was, why was there so much focus on what he did and how he made decisions afterwards?
- [04:49]
B
Yeah, well, I think, you know, they're in the, the US at least the National Transportation Safety Board's directed by Congress to do the investigation and they just, it's their job not to prosecute or throw anybody in jail, but to be, you know, almost like professors and study what happened. They look at the black box, they interview people. And so it's about a year long process and they conclude what was called the Sunshine hearing, which is shining light on the lessons learned from. And it's up to the FAA to determine if they're going to make new policies or rules or if they determine that the crew was drinking or something, then, then it gets handed over to the authorities to do the proper thing. But it's a critical, you know, it's this information sharing that really is critical because you learn these lessons and then they get shared for other situations. And so in that case where there was some blowback is that the Hudson river, even though it was a safe landing, there were some armchair quarterbacks that were saying, you know, you could have probably, it would have been a lot less dramatic if you had actually like returned back to LaGuardia or gone to Newark or one of the other nearby airports. And they ran it through all the simulations time and time again and there was not a single simulation of any other airport that would have had a safe landing. In fact, any other airport alternative would have been catastrophic. The Hudson river was the only survivable option.
- [06:01]
A
Wow. What, what a credit to Sully to, you know, what an endorsement of his decision making.
- [06:06]
B
Yeah, but he took time to behavior. He, he, he, he flew his plane and then figured out where he's going.
- [06:12]
A
I mean, for me, the, the. Because Matthew side wrote this book called Black Box Thinking. Exactly. To make the point you just made there, which is so often in corporate culture when things go wrong, everyone flees from the scene of the crime and disavows any kind of, you know, responsibility whatsoever. But, but actually in the airline industry, if something goes wrong, it's used as an example for other people to learn from and made the entire industry safer. And I just think that's a really good example in, you know, in corporate life where actually when something does go wrong, we should be Leaning in to learn from it, share those learnings. And I think I'm right in saying that pilots have immunity from prosecution as well, don't they, in these situations?
- [06:48]
B
Well, kind, I mean, there's actually a, there's a whole, that's getting kind of in the weeds here. But there is a FA program where pilots can actually report, self report things that will help with shared learning. And it's a, it's a critical thing by collecting all that data, like if there's, you know, a close encounter with another aircraft, they can self report that, hey, you know, we were maybe flying a little too close and they won't be, they won't be prosecuted. Now it doesn't, it's not full immunity. Like if they self report that they actually were like drinking a couple cans of beer up in the cockpit, you know, they'll probably be in handcuffs when they walk off the plane. But for safety related issues, there is some level of an immunity and immunity.
- [07:30]
A
No, that's really good. Really good. So that was just one of the things, one of the crisis that you've had to kind of face into in your career and you've had some very high profile roles as director of Communication, managing situation. What are some of the other crises you've had to handle in your career?
- [07:45]
B
Where do we start? We got terrorist attack at Starbucks. You would think working at Starbucks would be just hanging out, drinking coffee and. But I kind of described Starbucks as like an airline at, at ground level. I mean, all the same kinds of issues we faced in the airline business affect Starbucks, right? Political, you know, natural disasters, terrorist threats, all these things. And so that situation was, was absolutely horrible. We were on a tour of Asia. I was with Howard Schultz, the founder and the CEO, along with a couple other executives. And we were in India and, and it was like our 911 moment. We were getting ready to go on stage. Howard was with the CEO of the Tata Group, which is like the major company India, that was our partner there. And our phones just started like melting in front of us. And we saw these horrific images of one of our stores in Jakarta, Indonesia, literally up in smoke with all the front windows blown out and the headlines, Starbucks targeted by isis. And you can imagine from a PR standpoint just the fear that would ripple across the world. No one would want to go to Starbucks if they, you know, felt that it was under attack by isis. And so it's a great example. I didn't really know I was doing at the time, but just I was wired this way. We, we aviated we kind of huddled and we just kind of stabilized the situation, got the information, and then I got on a commercial flight into Jakarta, got on the ground with the police chief and our team there, and then we navigated. We figured, okay, what's our, you know, where are we going to go from here? How are we going to, you know, not reframe the message but get the correct message out there that Starbucks wasn't an attack, but rather was attack against the government there. And then finally we communicated, we got our message straight and we got out the correct arm in arm with the leaders in Indonesia.
- [09:20]
A
One of the things that strikes me as well is I've had a few kind of crises in my career. And more recently, of course, you've got social media and the moment something happens, there's 100 phones on it and it's all over the Internet and everyone's got an opinion and people are commentating on it straight away. The speed of dissemination of news is just phenomenal these days. How does that change how you might respond in a situation like that?
- [09:45]
B
Yeah, well, so I'll give you a counterpoint. So we talked about two really basically described as textbook crisis response, the Starbucks and the US Airways situations business we call the US Airways response a case study in modern crisis management. And the Starbucks one was applauded as a great one. But it's like being a football coach. You try to always make the best plays, but you're gonna make some good plays and bad ones. You just pray to the PR gods that you'll make more good plays than bad ones. And so just to give you a counterpoint on one where I'm humble enough to know that I haven't made the right call every time. And at United we had this horrific, very tragic incident where a passenger, not by our employees, but by the Chicago police was forcibly removed from one of our United Express partner aircraft. But it's still our brand, right? It's United Express, it's operated by a different airline, but it was still the United brand on the tail and it was all over social media, all over the news. And I like to say that usually the first information that comes in In a crisis, 99% of the time is, is wrong. It's a fog of war and you're getting all this information. And unfortunately we didn't as a team aviate and navigate and communicate. We reversed it. We communicated first and then kind of aviated. And our initial response was not as full throated of an apology and as empathetic as it should have been. And then once we got the correct information, we again had the humility to quickly work with Oscar Munoz, the CEO, to recalibrate our message and get a more full throated apology and accurate information, you know, out there and, and redo all our policies to make sure that kind of thing wouldn't happen again.
- [11:17]
A
Your point on not judging too soon is so critical. I remember doing a big product launch once and it went completely wrong and we had to withdraw the product from shelves, we had to relaunch it. It took about nine months for us to kind of, you know, get back, to get back to full production again. And I remember we got someone in to do an investigation and thoroughly looked through the entire supply chain. What went wrong. There were 96 lessons that we learned. I remember the documentation at the end of it. But what, what struck me was the assumptions we made in the first week about the reason for the failure were completely wrong and they felt right at the time. At the time we're like, of course that's what, that's why this has gone wrong. But once we got the report six, nine months later, it was completely different. And it was a real lesson to me. And I remember the next crisis I faced, which actually just a couple of years after that, I remember being sat in the crisis room saying to everyone, whatever we think has gone on here, like we need to pause and get all the information first and buy ourselves a bit of time because the worst thing we can do is a knee jerk reaction now to what we think's happened and then end up doing and then having to retract it later.
- [12:23]
B
Well, I like to say, and go back to the united situation, you know, once the toothpaste is out, you can't, it's very hard, it's pretty messy to put it back in. You can try to walk it back, but it's, it's not going to be that clean. So you're just better off. You can still, there are ways that, and that's why companies should have seasoned communicators at their helm. There are ways you can frame a response that still acknowledges the situation and what people are feeling in that moment, but without taking a position or pointing fingers and then come back a couple days later or once you've done the investigation with the more full throated response. And so there's a way you can balance that. But again, that takes discipline because you've got the pressure of your board, investors, the public, the media, social media, to get to communicate first. And again, I just go back to the aviate. First do an acknowledgment, aviate, navigate, and then come back with your, you know, accurate response.
- [13:12]
A
Now, coming back to the point about listening and learning first before communicating. I remember you were in charge, weren't you, of communications when United and Continental merged. And you have a lovely phrase in your book as well. Listen, learn, and then lead. So, yeah, tell me how you managed to navigate through two cultures coming together and all the change that that created.
- [13:31]
B
So. Well, I'll give that kind of accolade to Oscar Munoz, chairman and CEO of United. That was his kind of mantra of listen, learn, and then lead. And he didn't just talk it, he walked it. I mean, he actually, his first day on the job, went on a like 60 day listening tour, got out of the headquarters in Chicago on Wacker street and was like literally out there in the hangars, on the flight decks, on the planes, in the airports, meeting with employees. Because after that merger there was a lot of dysfunction and it was just not, you think United, it's United. It was about as ununited and divided as you could get between Continental and United. And Oscar did a just magical job and just such a masterful job by just connecting with employees across the board, getting all the union agreements lined up. And he did this all in the wake of having a flatlining heart attack and heart transplant. So. But yeah, he. But he listened, right? He went out there, listened, learned from hearing from all the employees, and then he figured out his plan to leave.
- [14:32]
A
Yeah, I mean, I've interviewed so many CMOs and CEOs on this show, and I think that the one connecting characteristic is exactly what you described about they spend time with their customer and they spend time listening. They experience their own brands. If, you know, if it's an airline, they're taking flights, they're talking to the flight attendants there, listening to customers. It's such an important point to make sure there's zero distance between you and your customer so you can then make the right decisions.
- [14:59]
B
Yeah, I mean, I like to say that like good leaders communicate, but great leaders connect. And you can't connect if you're trying to steer the ship from, if it's a battleship, just from up on the cockpit, you got to be out walking around, talking to people, connecting with people, all your different stakeholders. And so I like that kind of analogy because there's such an emphasis on communication, but it's really the next level up from communicating is connecting. And that's really what differentiates good leaders from great leaders.
- [15:28]
A
Yeah, that's really well said. Now you mentioned quite quickly there or quite briefly, the 60 day process. And in the middle of that 60 days, Oscar has a heart attack. Quite a dramatic one as well. It's not, you know, it's a pretty life threatening situation for him.
- [15:43]
B
Yes. Yeah, it was terrific. So that was right before I joined. I was actually in the interview process with United. I had not met him yet when he had that horrific heart attack. And he calls this a public service announcement because what saved his life was a conversation he had literally two weeks before with a cardiologist neighbor of his when he was living in Florida. And the neighbor told him, you know, Oscar, for men our age, and particularly men, if you feel something weird going on, you should call 911 and you'll know it when you feel it. When it feels kind of odd, if just something feels off, you should go. And he says, and he goes. I say this about men in particular because most men are afraid to call the paramedics because in fear of it not really being something. And then the embarrassment of the fire department and the paramedics showing up and saying, oh, you wasted our time. And so he said, don't worry about that because if something is really wrong and you don't call, you won't have the chance to be embarrassed because you probably won't be around. And so he followed that again, that kind of framework when he had his heart attack and he was in his apartment in Chicago and, and Oscar's in fantastic shape. He was a triathlete and ate really well. And he had just gotten done doing a three mile run that morning. And he went back up to his apartment, he was having some orange juice and he felt like his legs really shaky and weak, which for somebody who's as trained of an athlete as he is, it just didn't feel right. And he heard in the back of his head his neighbor saying, something feels off, call 911. And he called 911. And the other two key pieces are do it from a landline if you can. If you're an apartment, if you call off your cell phone and you're in a hotel or apartment, it won't tell them what room you're in. And it just adds extra time. So you want to do it from a landline if possible. And then so he did that. And then third, if you can stir up the energy before you pass out, go and lock your front door again. You want to make it as easy and fast because seconds count. He did all three things and he claims that really saved his life. So after he went through his heart attack and heart transplant, when he speaks it conferences, he always would end his regards of who he was talking, whether it's investors, whether it's heart association, whether it was Urban League or Special Olympics. He would always end his speech with that public service announcement reminding men and women, something's off, call 911. Yeah, go to the hospital.
- [17:57]
A
That's phenomenal. And of course, that advice may have saved your life.
- [18:02]
B
Well, I know it saved my life because In November of 2023, my wife was visiting friends out of town, my daughter was at college, I was home alone. And it was a Friday night and I got home, was in bed and at one o' clock in the morning, I had this horrific pain in my lower back. It was like a screwdriver going in. And I took some Tylenol or painkiller, thinking it might go away. And it didn't go away and it just got worse. And I could again hear Oscar kind of echoing in the back of my head. Something feels off. And this felt really, really off. I stirred up the energy. I didn't call 9 1, but I stirred up the energy to get in my car, the hospital was just a couple minutes away and drive to the hospital and flopped on the desk. And that's. That was kind of the thread in the sweater that ultimately diagnosed my cancer.
- [18:43]
A
Wow. Well, I mean, what happened? Tell me what happened next then. I mean, so you had the back pain, right? You end up in hospital and then you get told it's not back pain or it's not related to that, but actually you've got cancer and you weren't going there for a cancer diagnosis. I assume you're going there to fix your back.
- [19:00]
B
Yeah, I mean, you can call it whatever you want, just divine intervention or just coincident. None of the doctors have been able to make a connection because the tumors were on my lung and my brain. There was no connection with the lower back where the pain was. I never had it again. Once they gave me a shot of morphine, the pain went away. I've never experienced it again. But what my doctor did say was, you know what? Be glad it happened. It's what got you in here. Because that's what ultimately was able. Where they did the diagnosis because they did a CT scan in the yard to determine what was wrong with my back or if I had like an organ that was bursting and just accidentally the aperture of the CT scan caught the lower half of my lung. And so when the doctor came in he goes, I got some good news and some bad news. It's like 3 o' clock in the morning. I'm sitting the ER in the robe half naked. And he's like, the good news is your blood work and the CT scans shows nothing wrong with your back, nothing wrong with your organs. So I said, what's the. What's the bad news? Well, there's a two and a half inch spot on your lung. And I thought, well, I'm a runner and I'm really good shape. I've never smoked. And he's, well, it might not be lung cancer, but you got to go get it checked. It's pretty big and it might be scarring from COVID And again, that's just what led to the cascading of biopsies and other things and ultimately got me
- [20:12]
A
into the journey that I'm on now. The recovery rate for the type of cancer you had for normal chemotherapy would be quite low. Am I right in saying that? But you had immunotherapy, didn't you? Which is a different kind of treatment. That had consequences as well, didn't it?
- [20:29]
B
I mean, in the medical world, timing is everything, right? I told my wife not to do it, but she did anyway. She Googled, like, the survival rate of stage four melanoma cancer. And I said, don't do it. I don't know. And she still told me. She goes, you have probably a 20% chance of survival because those were the historical rates prior to 2018, when immunotherapy was approved by the FDA. And that's the. I have a fantastic oncologist as part of the Woodlands Cancer Institute north of Houston, and he was very aggressive in taking on the lungs tumor with immunotherapy. And then they also discovered a inch and a half tumor on my brain. And they zapped that with radiation, which sounds a lot scarier than it really was. But one dose of that and that was gone. So they effectively treated those. And immunotherapy, for those who don't know, it's. It's kind of like compared to a chemo being like a 20th century nuclear bomb. You hear about all the horrific side effects of chemo. That's because chemo kills both the good and the bad cells. Immunotherapy actually just goes after the bad cells, so there are far fewer side effects.
- [21:37]
A
But of course, it did have a side effect on the Internet, unfortunately. Yes, yes.
- [21:40]
B
Yeah, the small print was accurate. So when you get to the treatment, there's about five pages of potential side Effects. And one of them in my case was it can actually cause dramatic swings in blood pressure. And so on July 4th, so about six months after I started the immunotherapy treatment, everything's going great. The tumor on my brain was gone. The radiation had taken care of that. The tumor on my lung had shrunk from 2 1/2 inches to less than an inch. I mean, I was literally like, in American football. I was on the goal line. I mean, I could smell the finish line. I got so, so cocky and so arrogant. I went and got a tattoo on my right shoulder that said, do hard things. Like, I thought I'd slayed this monster, right? And, well, so that's my first advice to people, is don't get a tattoo. Do hard things, because the universe will give you something really hard. So I woke up. I was on a business trip in. Up in Napa Valley, Santa Rosa, with the airline I was working for at the time and went to call an Uber after event. And my. My vision was just shot. It was like dilation drops had been put in my eyes, and I just couldn't read my phone. And it just kind of cast. It just kind of got worse from there. And ultimately was determined to be optic nerve damage. That was. They don't know for sure, so I want to be a little careful here not to do a direct link to immunotherapy, but they think that the swing. And there was maybe a swing in blood pressure, which is a known side effect of. Of immuno, caused a micro seizure or aneurysm that night, which I didn't even notice, and cut off blood or oxygen circulation in my brain, which shot my optic nerves. And here I am looking at you in a very blurried state right now, but I can still see. You look great.
- [23:12]
A
Thank you. Now, of course, you know, a lot of people would have been, you know, knocked back a long way by this, but you didn't let this situation stop you. And in fact, you've then gone on to write a book which come. Which has just come out, called Tailwind. So congratulations on your book. There's lots of very powerful wisdom in the book and kind of inspiring stories in there as well. 1. 1. Well, there's many quotes I wanted to pick up on, but the first one was you talk about cancer didn't make me weaker, and blindness didn't make the world darker. And what struck me about that was your mentality through this that you didn't see this as a setback. And in fact, even. Even the name of the book.
- [23:52]
B
Right.
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A
Because when I read the book Tailwind, I'm like, why didn't he call it headwind? I mean, this guy's had a lot of headwinds against it, but he's calling it tailwind. So explain to me this a little bit about the mentality that you, you know, that you took to get through this situation.
- [24:05]
B
Yeah. And, you know, in hindsight, you know, it's easy to say, like, oh, you're just approaching this so positively and all that, but I really need to be clear, like. Like this was. I was not waking up every morning going, wow, this is great. Like, I'm like, you know, there were so many mornings when I first got diagnosed with stage four, even though they were giving me positive outlooks with the immunotherapy, you just don't really. You talk to anyone, any doctors. There's no guarantees with this. Right. So I. I was staring down the barrel when I. Before even the vision loss happened. I mean, I wasn't sure I'd even make it a year. And I would just sometimes go to bed at night just with these horrific thoughts. It was less about being scared of dying. It was more just, you know, being in my mid-50s. I was 55, just. My daughter hadn't even finished college. I wanted to be able to watch see her life flourish. You know, all my friends around the world, I mean, just had so much left. A book wasn't even in my thoughts at that point. It was. I wouldn't. I didn't get cancer. Oh, I'm gonna go write a book. I was aviating. I was. That's where the aviation comes in. I just. I just wanted to stay alive so that I could figure out then what I was going to do next. And sometimes I would just sink into my sheets. When the vision happened, it was horrific. It was. That was harder than the. The cancer in some ways, because the immunotherapies I mentioned really didn't have many. It didn't. Other than, like, one episode of fatigue didn't sideline me from my job. I was doing press conferences all around the country and. But the vision, like, really just. I went to a, like, an emotional and physical nosedive. And I felt like sully. I literally felt like both engines had been just knocked out. And I wouldn't say I was in a depression mode, but I was definitely, like. I would just pull the sheet over my head at night. I was, you know, shrinking my sheets, and I had to make the choice each day, am I going to get up or give up. And there were a lot of days where I just wanted to give up. But I just, you know, just something in me, a fire in me, just kind of kept me going forward. And then the book kind of came a little bit longer. The book kind of became my occupational physical therapy to kind of get through this.
- [25:54]
A
I think if I think about the times, similar, not as dramatic as yours, but I broke my neck when I was in my 20s. I had a house fire. I've been knocked off my bike and, you know, taken a couple of years to recover from that. And each time those things happen, you sort of lose your purpose for a while because suddenly, like, oh, my life's not quite working the way I thought it would. And it's so important in those situations, isn't it, to kind of rediscover your purpose and set a new course for yourself?
- [26:24]
B
Yeah. Well, you know, the really fun part about the book, and it wasn't. I didn't really go into this way, just kind of, as I just, like I said, the darkness of the vision loss kind of these. These just thoughts and ideas would come into my head, probably clarity than If I had 2020 vision. And one of the thoughts on a walk one morning very early on as I was kind of building out the chapters, was, you shouldn't make this book about you. It can't be the Jim Olson memoir. I mean, as much as I'd like to just tell stories about myself as a storyteller, I thought, you know what? If I really, truly, authentically want this book to be valuable to a lot of other people, it needs to be a mirror to their lives. And I need to have other people in this book kind of like you, who, like, you didn't have cancer, but you had a broken neck. Right? So I wanted to have like, these other. Not really characters, but these other stories of just ordinary people who went through extraordinary crucibles in their life and came out the other side, not just surviving, but thriving and making their lives and lives of others better. And so one of the people I interviewed, just extraordinary story. He's a friend. He was a client of one of my friends, Daniel Jacobs, who is the middleweight boxing champion of the world in 2014. And he got diagnosed with spinal cancer right before he was about to win the championship. And his doctor said, you can never, never fight again. Don't even think about it, because you'll be paralyzed for life. And of course, once he got cured, he. What did he do? He's a boxer. He went back into the Ring and got his. Got his championship. But he had this great quote when I interviewed him. He goes, jim, he goes, you know, in boxing, in life, the fight is won before you step into the ring. And for boxers, you don't win the fight. You win by all the training, all the trips to the gym, all the miles you put in, all the jump roping you do, all the push ups and the pull ups.
- [28:05]
A
And.
- [28:05]
B
And I think this was kind of true for me, too. Like, I kind of won this journey. Not. I mean, obviously a lot of medical and faith helped, but I think I kind of went into this fight already. My life was almost like a rough draft for this chapter. My story, even though I didn't know it, so I was kind of prepared. All these crises we talked about at United and US Airways, like, I've been dealing with all these other crises that weren't really my crises. And it prepared me for the biggest crisis in my life.
- [28:31]
A
Yeah, that's so true, isn't it? And I love how you talk about doing the hard things as well, you know, and that's such an important point. Another thing that jumped out at me was you got this lovely phrase which I found very inspiring, which is, don't ask what if? Ask yourself why not? Yes, I think that's brilliant. Because that plays back to this mentality point, doesn't it? Because human nature, you know, the kind of psychology is we feel pain twice as much as we feel gain. We are hardwired as human beings to look out for danger. It's very easy to write a long list of what could go wrong.
- [29:06]
B
Right.
- [29:06]
A
As opposed to asking why not?
- [29:09]
B
Well, think about it. And all these individuals that I talk to in the book are people who cast aside the what if? And did the why not? Take Daniel, the boxer I just mentioned, right? Like, he could have gone down the list of what ifs and not gone back into boxing and never achieved his childhood dream of being the middleweight champion of the world. And myself, I had this opportunity to go to Africa with my family and be an executive in residence at this amazing university on the island of Mauritius and in Rwanda. And my wife and I and daughter, who was 14 at the time, we would just toss and turn at night. Once I kind of signed up for it, we're like, what did we just sign up for? We had a beautiful house in the North Shore of Chicago and we went through the whole list of what ifs every day. Like, well, what if we can't sell our house? What if we get there? This is before the Pandemic. And there's like, we have a major health crisis, but we ultimately went to bed, like every night, we'd lay our heads on the pillow and go, you know what? We are not what if people. We are why not people. So we did it. And I think that what if mindset just holds so many people back from the things they want to do and then they get to the end of their life, and those are the people that have the regrets. And it ultimately came down to the what if mindset. That was the barrier.
- [30:18]
A
It's a great point, isn't it? If you could meet your future self, what would your future self tell you? Yeah, it will tell you why not, right?
- [30:25]
B
Yeah. You only have one life. So in my story, that's why I'm so excited about the book, is all these stories, I mean, they're not just all medical situations. Every single person that I feature in the book had those kind of what if crucibles they were facing. But again, they shed that what if mindset. They embraced the why not mindset. They came out the other side doing those things that made their life and the lives of the others around them, the people they're helping, more fulfilling by saying, why not what if?
- [30:56]
A
I mean, the blindsided moment, you talk about where, you know, you had the eyesight challenge as well, that slowed you down, didn't that? That forced you to take a little bit of a break. And you talk about this idea of the fourth place, which I like as well. And of course, Starbucks is famous for its positioning as the third place to meet. But actually you describe the fourth place, which is taking yourself out of the situation. And I think you use this phrase, you know, turning down the volume and turning up creativity, because life comes at us fast these days, doesn't it? And the amount of data and the amount of communication, the amount that's going on, and the amount of information we're exposed to that causes anxiety because of world events that we know about, we wouldn't have known about 10 years ago. So how important is it to kind of, as you described, turn the volume down sometimes?
- [31:41]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, I came up with this concept of, you know, long before I was at Starbucks. So when I was actually, when I turned 30 and I was living here in LA and actually had my own small PR shop down in Playa Del Rey here, right down the street. And I had an early midlife crisis at 30. Not a midlife, it was kind of a 30 something crisis. I went, I climbed Kilimanjaro in Africa. And that was the first time I was kind of exposed. I took three weeks to do that and go on a foot safari across Kenya and getting out of LA for three weeks and clearing my head, really, that kind of explains this whole idea of kind of think space. And I didn't really know it at the time, but so then the book, it kind of manifests itself as what I call this kind of in between space, or the fourth space, if you think about that word. And it doesn't have to. You don't have to go to Africa to do it. You could have a flat in London and just your think space. Or your fourth place could be your walk around Hyde park, or if you're in New York, it could be you're walking your dog through Central park or your bike, whatever your space is. Like for me in Chicago, I had to take the train for an hour every single day back when I wasn't traveling from the North Shore to downtown Chicago. And ironically, one of the noisiest places in Chicago, the train, when I put my noise canceling headphones on, was my quiet, was my think space. It was my time in the morning to. At five o', clock, six o' clock in the morning when I got on that train, it was 20 below zero outside to get my mind ready for whatever's coming that day at the airline, which even if there wasn't something that I knew was coming, something would come. And on the way home is my chance to decompress and reflect and you know, and analyze what had happened that day. And so, you know, your think spaces or fourth spaces or in between spaces are literally like all around. You've just got to be intentional about finding those when you go on a plane ride. One of my favorite fourth places is, you know, I'm one of these rare people, like the longer the flight, the better. And I love just being a lot of the ideas in the book came through like just being on and playing with a notepad. I'm old school, I have a notebook and I kind of like, just like you and write down ideas and I just. Being on the plane, I usually take a couple notebooks with me. But a lot of people get on an airplane and they pull out their laptop, work on their spreadsheets or their PowerPoint grant, you do have business. So I'm not saying don't get your job done, but if you've got the time, instead of maybe watching a movie, just use that quiet space to just think.
- [33:56]
A
I love that. I do exactly the same, by the way. I look forward to those long plane journeys for exactly the reason I can do a level of deep thinking or reflection or creative that I couldn't do normally. That's so true. I wanted to touch on another phrase you use. And. And in this chapter you're using Zelensky as the example. But a crisis doesn't build character, it reveals it.
- [34:17]
B
Yes.
- [34:17]
A
Which I thought was very profound. What are some of the lessons from looking at, you know, a leader of a country defend its nation in a way? I mean, this is sort of thing you hope you never have to live through, isn't it? But he's. He's been thrown into a situation where it's literally existential. For him, it's life and death, and against all the odds, somehow he's kind of, you know, keeping the enemy at bay.
- [34:39]
B
Yeah, well, I kind of like what I, you know, love about, you know, Zielinski is, you know, I think a couple of things. One is a leader. Both, whether you're the leader of a country or a company, it's like, you know, I'm very into legacy, right? And so it's like, what is your legacy going to be? Are you. You're either going to be judged for your humanity or your inhumanity. And I think that history will show I don't have a crystal ball, but I think that if everything plays out the way it should, that Zelensky will be judged for his humanity and the other guy will be judged for his inhumanity. And the same is kind of true in business, right? You're making decisions every day that are choices. These are intentional choices we're making to either make people's lives, our employees lives, our customers lives, our investors lives, better or worse. And as leaders, we have that responsibility. You know, Howard Schultz used to. I remember one of my favorite stories and I talk about in the book, I'd been on the job for maybe five weeks, and we're in his office overlooking the Puget Sound, and we were getting ready to do a, like a phone interview with Bloomberg, and we had a little bit of time to kill. And he's at his Bloomberg terminal and I'm at the. On the couch. And Howard turns to me and says, jim, you know, how's, you know, how are you enjoying the job? And I said, you know, Howard, it's, you know, the most exciting job that I, because I didn't aven't think I communicated before I actually thought about it. I said, you know, it's the most exciting job I've ever had. And just so Privileged to be here. And he went back to his Bloomberg. And then about 30 seconds later, he turns back to his gym. And I don't want you to forget that why we're here is really important. And that's all he said. It was like a mic drop. And I went home that night and we went on with the interview and stuff. And I told my wife, I think I'm going to either get fired or that I failed my first essay exam with one of the most influential leaders in the world. Because what Howard was saying, you know, I failed the essay exam because I answered with, it's the most exciting job I've ever had. And what he was saying, the culture at Starbucks is not about you as the leader. It's about everyone else that kind of orbits around us. Our employees, our customers, our investors. And so everything we do, our mission there is to nurture and inspire the human spirit, not nurture and inspire our own spirit. And so I just learned a really important lesson. I didn't get fired, thankfully, and went on for another great five years. But I think it's a really important lesson that we get so caught up in what the value to us is going to be. And as leaders, I write about this going back to the quote that you said we really need to think about, not what is. When we have a job, it's not about what the impact is it's going to have on us, but what significance are we going to have on the world as leaders?
- [37:05]
A
That's super powerful. I was just intrigued, actually, because you obviously spent time with one of the greatest founders of all time in Howard. I mean, what other lesson or what else did you observe in his leadership style that people could learn from?
- [37:20]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, just one of the most. I just feel so blessed that I had a chance to work with him and there were so many others that had that chance, too. But he just really understood the balance between being growth oriented and performance oriented, but also being missions driven and really holding your values even when it's easy to have mission and values when times are good, but when times are tough, are you still going to make the tough calls even when it might set you back some numbers on your quarterly profits? And it might be like most leaders, if the numbers are off, might postpone that leadership conference, or they might. He had pressure from investors to cut back on the health care that we were authoring employees because we were going through a tough stretch. And Howard stood the line. He said, no, that's not who we are. We are not going to be successful. We're not going to get to be and grow to be a hundred billion dollar a year company by, you know, cutting back on the health and wellness of our, of our people. Without our people, we're, we're nothing. We are not a technology company. We are a, you know, a people company that happens to serve coffee. And so that's again, what differentiates like I think really good leaders from great. You have a lot of good leaders who drive the bottom line, but the great leaders like Howard have figured out how to balance that, that purpose with profitability. He used to, used to say like that, you know, profitability without purpose is a shallow aspiration.
- [38:45]
A
That's a brilliant quote. Yeah, that's absolutely brilliant quote. And again, we always underestimate in business the importance of people. It is always about the people. And if you can motivate the people, you know, you can get people to work together, you can achieve incredible things.
- [38:59]
B
Absolutely.
- [38:59]
A
That's so, so powerful. So you've dealt with terrorist incidents, you've dealt with planes dropping out the sky. You know, you've had a lot of that you've had to contend with in your career. And of course, personally, you've had your own challenges. So maybe to wrap up anyone listening who right now is facing into a big crisis right in this moment in time, what would be, what would be your advice? Them?
- [39:22]
B
I think I'll give them like, you know, three things. I mean, one, you know, I really do believe in the aviate. Navigate, communicate. And there's a fourth section, appreciate too, which we didn't really talk about that beyond, you know, just the avian, Navigate, communicate. You're not going to get through this alone. You might. No matter how strong, smart, wealthy you are, you're not going to do it. There's this famous African slogan that, you know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And another term I learned on that first trip to Africa, where I climbed Kilimanjaro, is an African concept called ubuntu. It's because I'm, because of you. And I've kind of tried to embrace that. So I think that's one piece. Just remember, don't try to, whatever crisis you're facing at business or work, don't try to be the hero and do it yourself. You know, the best heroes are the ones that bring others along with them. Second is this idea that, you know, that, that hope is, is never lost. I have a whole chapter that hopelessness is finite, but hope is infinite. And in the business world, I've had so many leaders in the past who used to say, hope is not a strategy. Well, I like to say, well, yeah, hope's not a strategy. Hope is everything. And you don't have to be religious to believe that. But Disney was able to create Snow White based on pure pixie dust and faith, right? I mean, there's so many examples. Steve Jobs bounced back after being fired from Apple. And so these great leaders have just never lost faith or hope. So just don't lose hope. And hope really is. When I think about it, I was talking to a friend while I was here over the weekend and we basically said, what is Tillman tailwind really mean? And, well, tailwind is hope. Tailwind is. Yes, that's, you know, that's the hope that's going to kind of push you through the storm. And so just kind of marinate in that storm. Use the storm to your advantage. Don't like so many people, try to race through a storm as fast as possible. You know, try to just maybe slow down. Pilots throttle back when they hit turbulence or headwinds. So throttle back in your life and just kind of use that storm. Because, you know, we're not going to be judged by, at the end of the day, or we're not going to measure our lives by the number of storms we avoid, but rather the magnitude of storms we actually ride through.
- [41:29]
A
I love how you've turned that because you could easily have called the book headwind, right? Because you face a lot of headwinds, but actually you've pivoted the situation and you've used the situation to create a tailwind for yourself and to project you into a new direction. And by the way, I love the fact you added appreciate because actually it made me think as you were talking there, after I broke my neck and people came to visit me in hospital, they were a. They were surprised I was conscious because apparently the doctor said I was like the second person ever seen survive an accident like that. But everyone said, you're surprisingly upbeat. And I'm like, I've just literally broken my neck and survived. Like, I'm really happy.
- [42:05]
B
Yeah.
- [42:05]
A
And then the same thing happened. We. Our house burnt down about six years ago and we lost everything, everything in the house. Same thing afterwards. People like, people quite surprised. And I'm like, I escaped a house fire. The family survived. No one died.
- [42:19]
B
Right.
- [42:19]
A
And then same thing after I got knocked off my bike a couple of years ago. Same thing again. Because you can decide at that moment, am I going to let this defeat me? Or am I going to actually. Or am I going to appreciate the fact that I've been given another chance?
- [42:31]
B
Yeah, you're either going to. You're either going to get up or give up. I can't recall if we discussed the story, but like Oscar Munoz, CEO of United, told this story in the forward of my book about, you know, when he was after came out of his heart transplant, they put him in a medically induced coma. And a couple hours after he came out of that, he was in the ICU at the hospital in Chicago. And the night nurse comes in and says, you, Oscar, you're doing okay, but it's been a long road. The nurse said, I see a couple kinds of people come through the icu. But they both asked the same question. The first group asks, why me? Why God? Did you inflict me with this tragedy and ruin my life and not give this to somebody else who's less worthy than me? And the second group come in and say, why me? Why God, did you give me this second shot at life? Why are you giving me this chance to, you know, be the headlights on the road ahead for other people and show other light the way for other people to get out of whatever crucible they're facing? Oscar told the nurse, you know, I'm committed to being that kind of person. And I told Oscar, I'm committed to being that same kind of person.
- [43:32]
A
Amazing, Jim. That is. That is such a powerful place to end and always be that second person. I think for anyone listening and watching, thank you so much for sharing your story. Congratulations, by the way, on the launch of Tailwind. Please do get a copy of it. You kindly gave me a manuscript to read and it's very heartwarming, encouraging, inspiring, and there are plenty of amazing stories and inspirational bits in there.
- [43:56]
B
So thanks, John, for having me on. And yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to meet you. Thanks.
- [44:01]
A
Great. You too, man. Thank you. So I hope you enjoy that episode of Uncensored CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter, so if you'd like to get my thoughts on the one Thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the One Thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast just launched, Uncensored Renegades, with the fabulous Corey Marchisoto. She is one of the world's best CMOs. She's an absolute rock star. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that it's in your feed. Uncensored Renegades. And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast, it would not happen without them. So big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.