Ed Bastian: The Grey Matter That Redefined an Industry

Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, embodies a rare kind of leadership—the ability to balance empathy with a deep sense of conviction when the stakes couldn’t be higher. 

In 2005, he stood alone in bankruptcy court when 180 airlines had filed before him and only a few survived.

At the height of COVID, with Delta’s business literally grounded globally, he refused to furlough a single employee. 

He blocked middle seats for over a year because protecting his people mattered more than the economics.

Under his leadership, Delta is now the most admired airline in the world. As Ed said himself, it's not just a byproduct of their planes or technology, it's because of a culture obsessed with taking care of its employees, knowing they'll take care of their customers.

This conversation is about what happens when leaders trust something deeper than data or convention and how the hardest moments don’t build character, they reveal it. 

In this episode, you'll hear and see Ed address:

• How growing up as one of nine kids in upstate New York and spending two years driving his younger brother to chemotherapy taught him that leadership is about service, not position.

• Why he left Delta six months before filing for bankruptcy and what it took for him to come back and lead the restructuring on his own terms.

• The moment his chairman told him during COVID that character isn't formed in the crucible but revealed by it, and how that truth guided the decisions that would shape Delta’s future.

• The decision during COVID to refuse furloughs and block middle seats for over a year and why protecting his people mattered more than the potential business impact. 

Transcript

0:00

If you don't have character, it's not going to be defined by the crisis. It is who you are. And when that crisis hits, if you don't have character, you're just going to get blown away. Welcome to Grey Matter. I'm Declan Kelly, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Consello. I've spent the last 30+ years advising the CEOs who are leading the world's top companies. If there's one thing I've learned in that time, the best leaders think differently. That wiring, that grey matter separates the truly exceptional leaders from everyone else. Understanding it is what allows us a Consello to help the best in the world be even better. This podcast exists because the most accomplished leaders agreed to sit down and talk about something they rarely discussed publicly, how their minds actually work. Ed Bastian is the CEO of Delta Air Lines. He embodies a rare kind of leadership, the ability to balance empathy with conviction even when facing existential challenges. In 2005, he stood alone in bankruptcy court when 180 airlines had filed before him and only a few survived. At the height of Covid, with his business literally grounded globally, he defied logic and refused to furlough a single person. He has become a legend in his industry for leading with empathy and support for his employees. And he has propelled Delta to the most admired airline in the world today. Ed’s story is a lesson in leadership and what happens when the best minds trust something deeper. This is Grey Matter. Ed Bastian, it's a pleasure to be with you here in Piedmont Park. Thank you for taking the time and welcome to Grey Matter. Welcome to Atlanta, Declan. It’s great to have you. So we're here in Piedmont Park. One of the features of Grey Matter, of course, is that we always leave it to the subject to decide where we do these interviews, and it's got to be something meaningful to that person. Right. Why are we here? We're in the heart of Atlanta. I don't think there's a more beautiful spot inside Atlanta than Piedmont Park. And you can see it for yourself. I understand one of the ancestors of the architect for Central Park built and created Piedmont Park, you know, decades and decades ago. And personally, and I know you have a like story as I spent a lot of time running around this park as I was raising money to go run the New York City Marathon. So we'll come to the running part of your life later, because I think it speaks to kind of who you are and your whole philosophy on life. Let me start off with why people are so impressed by the way you do your job and do your work, and that's me saying it, and I know you've never said it, but there's a human values piece to your story and how you operate and how you run Delta and how you live your life that I think everybody has recognized many times. I think it comes from how you grew up, a house with nine kids. Tell me about the foundational aspect of that and how it made you the person you are today. Well, running Delta, requires the leader to be service oriented and service minded. We’re a people business as we fly these amazing birds and aircraft around the world hundreds, if not thousands of times a day, and they have to go off flawlessly. We draw a lot into connection in terms of what we do to serve the world. My job as the leader of Delta is to serve our own. What I love to talk about is our people. I love to talk about our culture. I love to talk about the only thing that really separates an airline and its industry is, its competitive edge is its people, because they can copy everything else. They can't copy our people. They can't copy our culture. And as a result of that, that's what I put all of my energy into. Taking care of our people so that they can take care of you, our customers. Where did that come from? Is it because of how you grew up? I think so. I think so. My parents, particularly my mom. My dad died young, but my mom, was my easily the most inspirational force in my life. And I always talk about her as my hero. Raising nine kids, her husband died early, and she instilled in us the responsibility to give back. The accountability that we all have to take care of each other. First of all, for me as the oldest of nine, to take care of my siblings, which I didn't always enjoy at times. But more importantly, we watched how she modeled that into the community and into how she poured her life into others. And while I talk about our house with nine kids and my grandmother or her and my dad at the time sounded like it was very busy. We always had so many people in our house. We had my dad's patients. He was a dentist. People that would work with my mom on community projects. We grew up in a community, and as a result of that, we understood the role we played in that community. I understood, you know, very early in life, the personal accountability I had. That I never wanted to embarrass my dad, my dad's name, which I carry to this day. And it was a different level of expectation that we had. And my mom would talk about it a lot. In drawing these different strings together, one of my favorite evenings of the year is the rally gala dinner in Atlanta, which you've introduced me to. And I've been to now 3 or 4 times. And it's an extraordinary evening with 1,600 people giving money for children's cancer and research. And you obviously spearheaded all of that. And that brings us back full circle to why we're in Piedmont Park. I think it also brings back full circle the way we were brought up, because it becomes really evident when you're in that room and when you experience the things that you've allowed me to experience with you during that time. Your brother was honored two years ago. Yes he was. And he was a cancer survivor. And you drove him to get his treatment every day, every week. Yeah. What an amazing experience to go through all of that. Yeah. When you grow up this way. Well he was 15 years old. Is the eighth in the family, so one of my younger siblings, came down with a pretty awful diagnosis, Osteogenic Sarcoma when he was 15 years old. Wound up losing his leg, in the process. He had a very small chance of living. We grew up in upstate New York. Poughkeepsie, New York, and I had just moved to the city to start my career as an account with Pricewaterhouse, a small little apartment in Queens. And, we didn't have a whole lot of money. So my mom and my brother moved in with me into my little apartment in Queens and my roommate at the time. And God bless him, he was okay with that. And he slept on the couch so my brother could use his bed, or I slept on whatever we made room for my mom and my brother. It was my honor to really take care of him. And I’d drive him in to the city at Sloan Kettering in the morning before I’d go to work. I’d stop by and see him. I’d spend many evenings in the hospital overnight. It allowed me to kind of see, not just what he was going through, see so many other kids were going through. I can't tell you how many times he had roommates in these different rooms as he was going through chemotherapy and radiation, that didn't make it through the night. And I'd come the next day and they'd be gone. I'm really privileged to have my health. I have a blessing on me. And as a result, I have a burden of responsibility to be able to give that back to others. And when you run that marathon, I remember getting a letter from you telling everyone you were going to do it. And I know you did that before you even had taken a step in training. Yeah. And you raised how much? The second time I did it, I raised $2.5 million. I did it twice. And, it took me about seven years to recuperate from the first and the second. You trained in this park. I trained in this park. This park is where the Peachtree Road Race occurs every 4th of July, coming down Peachtree and ending here in the park. And it's the biggest 10K in the country, 60,000 people. I love it. Not many people know this, but when you started your career as an accountant at PwC one of the first things you did was you uncovered or discovered a $50 million fraud that had gone unnoticed for years in a particular client or a particular project, and you had to report that, and you had to bring it to light at a time when you were just a kid. Right? What was that like? That was scary. You know, I was determined to figure it out. I always like challenges and again, I think that's part of my upbringing is not running away from challenges, but trying to figure out answers. And I stumbled upon this thing that just couldn't make sense to me. And I just kept digging in and digging in and digging in, and I'd get, you know, explanations from my client that wasn't jiving. And one thing led to another and it was a over a matter of months, we finally discovered what was, everything they said was fraudulent. Put me in a position of having to go to my superiors, my partner, my managers who run the account previously, who missed it. And they have some young knucklehead, whippersnapper that finds this thing there. You can imagine the disbelief they were in. Amazing learning experience. At 32 years old, you were made partner of PwC. You were still a whippersnapper. But that was a serious achievement. And then one day you came in and said, I'm out of here because I want a more challenging environment or I want a new learning environment. Throughout your career, you've, I guess, made a trademark of doing the unorthodox, the unexpected things where people didn't expect them to happen. That was probably the earliest example. Why did you do that? Well, I became partner very young. It marked me at that time when I was 32, that I had many senior partners congratulating me, that basically I made it and it was like, that was, they told me, just don't screw up. You know, you've got 30 years to run here and you'll have a great career. You'll have it be very comfortable. You don't have to worry about life. Just don't screw up along the way. And I wasn't really comfortable. So to that when I was 32, maybe they were a little too transparent with me. I had a few more ambitions. I wanted to actually run things. I wanted to make decisions. I wanted to be accountable. To see what I could do in the business world. And I didn't have a postgraduate degree. I came right out of undergrad, St. Bonaventure University, a small school in Western New York. And so I was always looking that if I was going to do something in a more impactful way in the business community, I could either go back to school and get something and I had no interest, couldn't afford it, and no interest in doing that. Already had started a family at that time, or go to work with a company that I could get training on the job. And PepsiCo came calling looking for me. And I spent seven years at PepsiCo, and that's my postgraduate degree. So at 40 years old, you rejoined or joined, I should say Delta 1998. And you became CFO relatively quickly, ascended pretty fast. And then you left because you disagreed with leadership's approach to 9/11. And that was another principal moment where you decided, you know what, this is not for me. I'm going to do something out of the ordinary. Six months later, the phone rang and they said, you got to come back. What was that like? I still remember those conversations I had with Jerry Grinstein, who was the new CEO at the time, who I hated leaving because I love the man, but I just didn't see the company was serious in terms of addressing the real issues it had. And 9/11 had incredible impact on our industry. And it caused not just Delta, but many other airlines having to go into bankruptcy, in order to be able to reorganize and restructure and come through that. There was a group of people within Delta that just wanted to put their heads down. So, you know, we can get through this. And the reality was, there's no way in heck you can get through that without, having the skill and the tools available, you know, through a Chapter 11 process. And if you, when you, for those that have ever been through a restructuring know, that comes out, there's a very fine line between taking it to the end and going off the edge. If you go off the edge, you actually you don't have a shot at reorganizing. I at least wanted to give the company a shot and people weren't listening to me. So I left. And I left because of that. I left because of, I think, some of the decisions being made around cost cuts and customer amenities that were being reduced, people's jobs were being cut, savings were not being redeployed to kind of improve the outcome for the future. And sometimes the loudest voice you can create is one of silence. You were the sole person in the bankruptcy court representing Delta that day. Yeah. 180 airlines had filed before that. Only four of them survived. So that's a 98% probability that it's not going to work out. My boss Jerry, at the time led us, has a keen sense of humor. As I was flying to New York that day, which by the way, was 20 years ago this month. Wow. When that happened. September of 2005. Wow. He wished me luck as I was getting on the plane to go up and meet a bunch of lawyers in the courthouse. And it reminded me of those days. In fact, it was the first time I actually really focused on that. He said only 3 or 4 have ever made it out. Good luck. You had to convince the banks to give you $2.5 billion in exit financing, which at the time, as you said a minute ago, was real money. Yeah. How did you think about constructing an argument that, for all intents and purposes, was impossible? And this is a pattern of behavior because there's at least 2 or 3 more existential moments in the next 20 years, Yeah. that you had to face. And we'll talk about those in a moment. When Jerry first came looking for me to come back and lead the restructuring, I told him I wasn't coming, because, you know, I didn't have the right supporting cast. I told them you needed to hire a really sharp, smart, aggressive commercial leader because we needed to figure out how to get the revenue coming in the door, not just the cost going out the door. And I sent him back to go look for somebody, and he called a month later and told me he had found the person. My dear friend Glenn Allen Stein. Is still with you today. We still work, and we're partners together. I told him that, you know, I needed to have the responsibility to go implement. And that's when he put me in charge of the restructuring. I wasn't asking for permission any longer, So I needed the board to be behind me. I go that permission. Again, these things would never happen had I stayed in the company. You may have said we would eventually have found out a way that they would have filed for bankruptcy, and I would still have been there, but my voice still would not have been the one leading the charge. So, it wasn't just I came back out of the goodness of my heart. In fact, it cost me a lot of money because I had taken another job. So I had to pay all that money back that I went to. But I really wanted to do the right thing. But to do the right thing, I wanted to make sure I had the accountability and the alignment to go make it happen. The second existential crisis, of course, was the one faced by everybody, but especially the airline industry during Covid. And there were two things in particular that stood out. One was, I'm not going to sacrifice my people. Second is, I'm not going to sacrifice my company. Yeah. And I guess the third, more tactical, but still was really important at the time because everybody was scrambling, looking for money. I'm not going to sacrifice my passenger's health. And that middle seat controversy around selling the middle seat, these are all examples of how you think and how you operate. At the end of the day, you have to go into a room on your own, alone with your own thoughts and think through, how am I going to do this? What was it like for you at that time? It was pretty scary. It really was. We were in a dark place. The world was in a dark place. We weren't alone. I don't think anyone really knew who to trust. You know, no one really had information and I remember all watching press conferences out of the White House daily or other experts around the world speaking on the topic, all of which had direct impact on us in terms of how we were thinking, how we were approaching that next week. But you're right, there were three things I said, we're not going to sacrifice our people. People are going to be first and foremost. We're not going to sacrifice in terms of our cash. We got to still find ways to protect our cash, and we were going to protect our future. And I had no idea how I was going to do that, but I was going to be sure that we never gave up in terms of getting through that. And when you fall back on a service model that puts people first, puts your own people first, puts your customers first, decisions become candidly, pretty easy. Not easy to make. Not easy, necessarily, to communicate. But pretty tough decisions, you know, you have a clearly, a different lens. You know, the economics didn't really matter. We were all going to lose a gazillion dollars no matter what we did. So if going to lose a gazillion dollars, do it with people on your side, right. And we didn't furlough a single employee during Covid, the only airline I know in the world that got through it without furloughing a single employee. And I didn't do it because I had a big, generous heart, though I do at times. I did it because I knew I wanted my people on the other side of that to be prepared and for them to lead them to the actions they need to take. So what they did is that half the company essentially furloughed itself. We kept them on the payroll. We asked for voluntary options to take time off without pay. We kept their benefits alive, but we retained their ability to recover. And we got half the company within three months to agree. And it wasn't an issue. It was all different types of people that said, I'm going to step aside now because I love my company. I want to see it get through that. When I presented that vision early into Covid with my management team, they all said I had drunk the Kool-Aid, you know. It was like, okay, we know we got great people, but that's, voluntarily give up their pay out of seniority, and you're just going to allow them to keep their benefits. They did it for two years. It's incredible the power of the people because the power, the people they believed. They believed in the company and they believed in the future, going back to our tenants. The middle seat was another great example. You know, it was easy when people weren't flying to say, we're blocking the middle seat. But eventually people started flying again and Delta kept blocking the middle seat for another 6 to 12 months beyond any other airline, because I wanted to make certain that, you know, our customers first of all could get access to the vaccine, that the bulk of the customers were vaccinated at that point in time. But more importantly than our customers, because people still to this day thank me for blocking those middle seats because they'll say, you know, I didn't want to fly, had to fly during Covid. But Delta was the only airline I’d even think about flying during Covid. I would say thank you very much. But the real reason I did it is because of our people, our flight attendants, our pilots, our airport workers. They didn't want to work in a crowded environment during Covid any more than our customers they didn’t want to sit in the seat. So I did it for our people. And when the final tally financial tally came from that period of time, we looked back, we actually generated more revenue on a plane by plane basis than our competitors did by blocking one third of the seats. And the reality is, when you do something that's the right thing to do, the good thing to do, it's usually the smart thing to do as well. This whole experience where you have to make these difficult contrarian decisions, where you're in an industry that is extraordinarily volatile, and to achieve a position in that industry where you can have consistency of performance over time. But the contrarian decisions are one of the reasons why you've been able to get to that point. When you're making those decisions do you know they're contrarian? Do you feel that they're contrarian? Well I talk to a lot of people. I listen to their views. I have something going back to my mom. She taught me the old little axiom. You know, you’ve got two ears and one mouth, use them in that proportion. And I really still subscribe to that theory. So I do talk to a lot of people. I know I talk to you many times on a daily basis through it. I talk to many of my, you know, not just the peers in the industry, but you know, peers across industry in different places, people whose opinion I trust in out of fellowship, out of support and just being able to bounce ideas around and thoughts around as we were all going through that hard period. But, you go through a hard time and you think about, you know, your purpose. You think about why you're there. You know, why you're in this seat. Why you're in the situation. Why are you trying to save this airline at a time when people aren't allowed to fly? And you realize the purpose that we bring to the world and the purpose we have in our business model. Following the herd, following the pack wasn't going to get us through. It's not going to get you through most times, but certainly not in crisis. By standing out for who you are, what you believe in, and letting actions follow the words. So easy to put the words out there. It's the follow through and actions so people see how important your people are. Not listening to you say it, watching what you do. I was fortunate to be sitting in the sphere, when you celebrated the 100th anniversary of Delta, which went from a crop duster to now what it is today. Yeah. And you announced all the partnerships with JoVE and Uber, and you show AI in action. And I began to think, and you and I discussed that you could look at Delta almost like a company five, ten years from now, people will say, and oh, by the way, they also fly airplanes. Yeah. Because the data part of it, the AI part of it, which I know you're extraordinarily focused on, is such a huge part of the whole thing now going forward for the customer and for the company and the shareholders. Where are we going in this crazy world we live in when it comes to travel, the customer experience, where do you see the future given everything you've been through from beginning to end here? Well, one of the things I'm most proud of Declan over my time at Delta is that we've created a brand that customers really love, that there's loyalty. When I started 30 years ago, the main reason why people chose airlines was who had the cheapest price. And as a result of that, you had, it was a race to the bottom in terms of cost. At Delta, people choose our airline because they love the brand. They're loyal to the brand and they realize that brand stands for something and they pay a premium to be part of that. So as a result of that, where you see us going as we continue to take that loyalty, people are also then loyal to the Delta ecosystem, to this travelsphere. That's why YouTube is starting an exclusive arrangement where we have exclusive YouTube capabilities on our planes during in-flight that, you know, content creators, eventually there'll be TV broadcasts. You'll only be able to get it on Delta planes. We're the exclusive provider of YouTube. Why does YouTube want to embrace Delta as a distribution out? Uber, you know, the number one source and distribution of Uber rides are to and from airports. Uber wanted to and Dara wanted to be with the airline of choice to be seen as a premium provider, people that have broken out. You can look at that in terms of hotels. You can look at that with American Express. You know, the relationship we have with the premier credit card provider in the world. And Delta is unique. And so you see that travel ecosphere coming out. And I think you're right. And by the way, I'm never going to underestimate putting, first things first, taking great care of our people and our customers and safe and reliable form of air travel. But that just unlocks journeys and unlocks opportunities because that's what we do. And so people naturally are pulled to that brand. You can talk about any of these other brands. Starbucks. Another example. We have a close relationship. They don't on their own necessarily drive an ecosphere that sits around them that are many times bigger than who they are themselves. We get to do that in travel. I know you spend a huge amount of time, you know, on the floor meeting people in airports, in planes, etc. How do you inculcate that sense of loyalty above and beyond what everybody else already thinks they do? Yeah. How do you, what is that secret sauce that matters? How does it work? Well, you have to believe that it's important, you know, first and foremost. And I don't know any company out there that doesn't say, tell their people that they're important or that they're here for them, that they want to. And I think all companies do. But at Delta, they really, it really isn't words. It's the actions. This goes back to Mr. Woolman, who founded Delta 100 years ago. He had a very famous saying that we still have on the walls of our company at our headquarters. If you take care of your people and put them first, they will take care of your customers. And we live in a world where everything is so customer obsessed and customer centric, and it doesn't matter which technology or, you know, whatever business you're in. It's not that I'm not. It's that I'm people obsessed. My people, I’ve got 100,000 that I'm obsessed with. And if they feel my infection in terms of the positivity and energy, and they get that it spreads through them. You know, the multiplier effect across 200 million customer interactions a year that we serve gets brought with that same level of energy. And so that's every day I spend the majority of my day with our people, about our people, for our people trying to make their job a little bit easier. And they know me, they know that about me. And they know that it starts at the top. And when you have someone at the top that's driving that mission and loves that mission, is passionate about them because we're making a difference in people's lives, then it's very easy for people to get on board with that. And by the way, success breeds, you know, many fathers and mothers and people and people have seen Delta’s success and they just start kind of trying to replicate that. We even have our competitors in the industry. They're all saying, we want to kind of do what Delta does. At some level. It's not that easy, but if you're not, they don't have a heart for people and put people first. It's not going to happen. You once said that people who don't aspire to be CEOs are usually the ones who end up in the role. Why do you think that? I could think it for myself. And I know many friends of mine who are are great CEOs don't have that gene that requirement in their life mission to be a CEO. I think there's several reasons. I think the very best CEOs share a common trait. And this is something that I first learned from Jim Collins in his Good to Great book, which I read and have re-read, and I'm honored to say he’s a good friend of mine to this day. The one common trait that he found many, many years when he researched leadership amongst truly good to great companies that sustain themselves. It's humility. And you can look at so many different examples of companies and different industries that have stood the test of time. And you look back at their leaders, what is that they share? It might have been different, different people, different business models, different backgrounds. What their common trait they shared is one to make certain that they respected the position, they respected their people. And when you have a mindset of humility and service, you know, whether you get that top job or not, that's not your ultimate calling. That's not your ultimate reward. Your ultimate reward is that, you know you made a difference and you want to make the biggest difference you can. But it's not about you, it's about someone else. And I think too many of CEOs in today's world, it's still about them. That's definitely true. Isn't there some connectivity between your emotional intelligence and your analytical capabilities to think as a CEO, in that the ones who make it about them have a lot less emotional intelligence, and the ones who don't have a lot more of it? And has that being your experience? I think so, I think so, you know, you can't underestimate the analytic capabilities and the smarts. That's common though. In life. You don't get places in life by, you know, just lucking into it. You have to have that. That's a prerequisite. I think those that distinguish themselves are the ones that can do something with it. You've been through a lot of different scenarios, existential crises for the airline, for the industry, for different companies that you've represented and advised. You've seen a lot. When you are alone at those moments, is there something that you go back to when you think about those things and you have to make those big decisions? There's literally life and death on the line, you've had to deal with accidents, you've had to deal with all kinds of things, and everybody has an opinion on what their airline should do and what it should be. What's that like to sit in your shoes when that happens? Well, you need to understand your values in terms of who you are personally, who you are professionally, who your company is, the values of the company. When we went through Covid, another person who was a really close mentor of mine, still is fortunately to this day, was my chairman at the time, Frank Blake from The Home Depot Company, a dear, dear man. I love him dearly. And, I remember sitting down with him the last meal we had together for quite a number of weeks and months, because, you know, he was, we weren't in the position to be together after that. And he put his arm around me and said, you know, this is going to be the test of your lifetime. This is mid-March. Literally we had no idea what was happening around us. This is going to be a test for your lifetime. And there's one thing I want you to know is that going through this test, a lot of people think that's the crucible where character is formed, where it's born, where it's developed. And he said, that's not true at all. He said, character is, If you don't have character, it's not going to be defined by the crisis. It is who you are. And when that crisis hits, if you don't have character, you're just going to get blown away. And that's what happened. A lot of people are getting blown away trying to survive. Not sure why they were, where they were, not sure what to do, where to go. He said, I know your character. I know your company's character. I know your values. Those values will stand brightly and shine brightly during Covid. And while we have no idea what's coming at us, as long as you keep those values front and center every decision, every decision I made during Covid, every decision I still think about today is they define us. They define who we are and how do they fit with our values. Are we taking a shortcut or are we selling out somebody? Are we trying to do something that feels unnatural or uncomfortable? Because we all have to change, and change is hard, and it's a lot of easy reasons why you can say, don't change. But I think the more powerful reasons to change are when what you say your values call for, and you step forward as a result Okay, Ed. This is the segment that we call The Uncharted Path. What this is about. I’ve been on a lot of uncharted paths with you. We've been on a couple of them together. I agree. Hopefully a couple more before we're done here. We will. All right, so this is all about quick fire round questions about things that you don't really have time to think about. And I want to get your immediate reaction. Toughest decision you've ever had to make that you didn't expect when you were making it? Oh, I'd say they’d be people decisions. When something's not working out. I've had a couple of senior leaders I brought in from outside the industry that I thought were going to be home runs. And I realized within a 6 to 12 month timeframe, because I think you have to make those decisions quickly, too, it just wasn't working. They were tough. You ever make a decision as CEO that went against your instincts and your judgment, your better judgment, and then you either regretted it or were happy you made it afterwards? I don't know, you know, I'm pretty stubborn, as you know. Just a little, in a good way. If I don't feel good, I'll keep pressing it until I feel better about it. So, I mean, clearly there's things that people have changed my mind and whether it was, you know, during Covid, we had plenty of those opportunities and things that, you know, if you had to do it over again you'd probably maybe go different ways. But, you know, sometimes I get a little stubborn and I need to sit myself down and listen to people around me and, you know. And, by the way, surround yourself with people that care about you because the business world largely doesn't care about you. So you have to find people that really do care. And it could be in your family, it could be in your professional life, it could be your church or other places. But you gotta have a circle of people that really couldn’t care less who you are, just care about you as a person. And by the way, my kids do that for me too. Of course. I've seen that many times. Before you make any major decision, we touched on this earlier, but to get a bit more granular, what's the one question you always ask yourself? And has that changed over the years? I'm sure it's changed. I can tell you that question for me is how will our people respond to it? How will they read it? Are they going to see this is good for them, good for the business? Is it going to help grow the business? Is it going to be able to enable them to do a better job? What was one leadership value that you once believed was non-negotiable? But you've now since revised that? And what did you learn from all of that? You know, I think probably over my ten years as CEO now, you know, this job has changed a lot, whether it's social media different, the way the world has changed, it's moving fast. I’m a very different CEO today than I was then. And I think one of the ways is I think I've realized I have to continue to be even more empathetic, have even more compassion, even more understanding of the human element of my decisions. You know, I'm an analytical guy, I’m a finance guy growing up. It's hard. When I went away to school, my dad told me I should go be a tax accountant, and I didn't know, I said, why? He says, well, you're not good with people, but you're good with math and you're good with numbers. And that way you tax counsel, you're always going to have a job. Right. And so I went to school to be a tax accountant. And I've learned over time, while I love numbers, I love people more. They're a lot more fun. Have you got an example of something that once looked like failure at the time to you when it when it happened and you thought, oh gosh, this is a real problem and actually was not what I wanted to happen, but it turned out to be an accelerator for you over time, because it actually was the opposite of what you expected? Well I think during Covid was a big part of it. You know, some of the decisions we made were pretty controversial, whether it was around masking, how do you require your employees to be vaccinated without requiring them to be vaccinated? And I came up, we came up with a different way to do that. And, you know, during Covid, we were challenging ourselves all the time because the facts were changing. I think if I, you know, on a same set of facts, if I don't learn something new, I don't go back and just, you know, Revisit. revisit. Life’s too short. But I think it's also important that, you be decisive. I think one of the things that I learned at PepsiCo in my training there was that people are not born good decision makers. People learned how to become good decision makers. And if you make decisions quick enough in life or your job and you don't let them become age and become bigger, bigger decisions, you'll get a better batting average. You'll be better at it, because then you can always go back and course correct over time. But if you get paralyzed by making a decision, you know, they turn into big decisions and the odds of getting it wrong grow. Best piece of advice you've ever received and the best piece of advice you're glad you rejected. I'll talk about the last one first. My predecessor told me when I became CEO that I was already too public. I needed to change my identity, have kind of a private identity. I had to get a new phone number. I had to get a new email that people didn't know. And so that I could have sanity, I could kind of create a buffer between myself and the world. And I said, thank you very much. Didn't do that. And, I'm known for being very accessible. And I think that's one of the reasons why, you know, as the face of the brand, it's really important to be that way. So I hear from hundreds of customers, employees, investors, people in the community, people around the world. I want people to know because it allows me to be able to do my job better. You know, people ask me, you got so much going on, how do you sleep at night? You know, how do you? And I say, I sleep very well because if there's something going on, I hear about it. Well before, I'll hear from our ops team, or I'll hear from some, in fact, I can't tell you how many times I found something out that our ops leaders didn't even know about. And they've learned from me. And people like the fact that you're accessible and it's funny, it'll be a Sunday afternoon. And I also like to get through these and I don't just sit home at night and do it. I mean, it's just a cadence during the day. And people inevitably will say, is that really you? Is that? I say yes. Is that you? They say, you have an amazing agent or bot or something you're using. I say, no, it's me. I'll never not be human in that. What's one thing about you that most people will be surprised to know that they don't know already? Well, when I started my career, I was a young partner, and MTV was part of Viacom, was a client of mine. And they came to me and they were doing the MTV Music Awards, and this is back in the 1980s. And they said, we need an accountant to come on stage to have the voting tabulation. And it was kind of like a goof on the Academy Awards. So they would dress me up in a tux and I did it for a number of years. I'd come on stage with the envelopes and be backstage with the talents and kind of hand out before they went on to read the winners. And that was pretty cool. Last one. In many years from now, I hope, when you pass the reins and the mantle to your eventual successor, what's the one piece of advice you’ll leave in that envelope in the desk, to take the presidential metaphor to ridiculous lengths, what is the one thing in your job that you’ve got to tell this guy or this woman, above all else, make sure you do this? I would just say, you know, make peace with yourself every day. You realize that it's a tough job. That you're never going to satisfy all people. You know, leadership is not a popularity contest. You know, you’ve got to make tough decisions at times. But in your heart and soul, put your head down on the pillow and realize that, you know, you're responsible to a higher power. And you have, you know, you have to sit with your decisions and you have to be comfortable with who you are. Well, I know you certainly are. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being with me today. And thank you for joining us on Grey Matter. it's great to be with you. Thank you.