The news landed with a crash. Jeff Smisek, CEO of the $38.9 billion United Airlines, was forced to resign just after the Labor Day weekend as a federal investigation looked into whether the airline offered preferential treatment to a former chairman of the agency who operates the New York-area airports.
The short of it, as the narrative plays out, is that United—while cutting scores of flights and cramming passengers like cattle into legroom-free round-trips—launched a special flight from Newark Liberty International Airport to Columbia, S.C., less than an hour’s drive from where the former agency chairman and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appointee and political mentor enjoyed a second home.
Quick disclaimer: I live in northern New Jersey, fly regularly out of Liberty and rely on United as the airport’s largest carrier. I also have written about the alarmingly regressing quality of service that has occurred since United acquired the far-friendlier Continental Airlines five years ago.
This column, though, is not about Smisek’s professional demise or the corrupt nature of New Jersey politics. The countless stories of woe from disenchanted United employees and Smisek’s own prerecorded message to passengers about United’s record as the largest transporter of cargo was all customers needed to know about this company’s pecuniary priorities.
Rather, United’s upheaval speaks to something greater: values.
Smisek deserves credit for turning around a once-struggling airline. The company earned $1.7 billion in the first half of 2015, a nearly tenfold jump in earnings vs. the same period last year. When it came to making money, Smisek was bringing in the dough.
Where he failed, however, was in creating a culture. Legacy Continental employees I have talked to over the past several years, from baggage-claim workers to flight attendants and pilots, all waxed nostalgic. They voiced frustration over pay cuts, longer hours, little praise and virtually zero employee recognition.
One young flight attendant who was returning home recently confided to me, “I feel sorry for you guys. You’re paying more to fly and getting less legroom and no snack.”
When it comes to a people-centric culture, our industry is evolving. Culture now matters. Check out our cover story on Mapco by Steve Holtz (starting on p. 40) and a column by Ricker Oil Co. president Quinn Ricker (p. 20).
We had reached out to Mapco for more than 18 months about featuring the company on our cover. Retail leader Tony Miller would politely decline: “Not yet. We’re working on something big, something important, and we’re just not there yet to share with the world.”
When we reached out to him this time, his response was telling.
“I believe we have a story to tell,” said Miller, who is executive vice president of Delek U.S. Holdings overseeing retail subsidiary Mapco. “We’ve had a couple of fantastic years, but it’s not just the results. It’s the accomplishments of the team and the organization, and the culture that we’re building.”
Get Miller on the phone and mention the word “culture,” and you are guaranteed to enjoy a long conversation. It’s his passion, and it’s the compass by which Mapco navigates today.
As for Ricker’s, the Hoosier-state operator caught the eyes of many this summer when it raised its base pay by $1 per hour. Unlike at McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, no one was picketing in front of Ricker’s stores, nor were employees fleeing. Life at the company was fine and profits good. So what propelled Ricker to arbitrarily bump up wages?
“Too many times I see companies in our industry have an unbalanced focus on the customer,” he said. “I love our customers, but I love our people a lot more. I am always thinking about how we are going to make a better life for them.
“I know if I build a culture where our people are engaged and positive, and our people are No. 1, the customer will always get taken care of.”
Our country is at a crossroads. We are neither the social revolutionaries of the 1960s nor the mercenary arbitragers of the ’80s. We’re some sort of mix, a country that values social freedom—even when it comes to age-old taboos such as same-sex marriage—but also is suspicious of government’s every intention, even when it is purportedly for the people’s benefit.
There is another factor, I believe, one that both Miller and Ricker clearly grasp. In an ironic age, when technological connectedness yields greater human disconnectedness, we yearn to be seen, to be heard, to know that we exist and that we matter.
Jeff Smisek was operating a corporate behemoth where individuals lost their purpose, supplanted purely by profits.
Miller and Ricker are teaching us that these objectives need not be exclusive, that doing the right thing can be very profitable.
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