Today as the pilots of American Airlines and US Airways look toward the merger of the two airlines and the pending exit from bankruptcy we are hopeful, but not naive. One key factor that will ultimately determine the success of this endeavor is rarely spoken of – that factor is leadership. Since deregulation of the airline business in the early 1970’s most of the visionary airline builders were culled from the industry replaced by the “bean counters” (finance majors), business managers (MBA’s) and the jackals (those who want to break unions for the sake of breaking them and drain assets and liquidity for their own purposes). Very few airline visionaries remained into the 1980’s (Bob Crandall and Herb Kelleher stand out). The fact of the matter is that the US airline industry has been managed to death, but it has not been led to success. In conversations with airline insiders and at least one visionary (David Neeleman) it is apparent that current executives feel that the only way for senior executives to make money after an airline “matures” (i.e. after ten years for a startup when the actual costs of running an airline begin to take effect) is to either sustain 5 to 6% annual growth or restructure through mergers, acquisitions and/or bankruptcy. The new team set to run the “new” American Airlines stated recently that there will be a new culture of cooperation and leadership at AA where leaders will listen to what the employees have to say. Well, so sorry, but this is not leadership. Leaders have a vision for greatness and victory, they study and understand the elements necessary to pursue the vision, they then motivate a team of people to also see and adopt that vision. They then give everything they have to support the team in the accomplishment of the goal, literally sacrificing themselves for the greater goal. If you have been to any business school in the US, you have never heard of this kind of leadership from your professors. The real school of leadership apparently happens in life, not in class, and its best students tend to be brilliante people with high ethical standards. Case in point, Admiral Jim Stockdale, Vietnam POW and former Vice Presidential Candidate. While in the Hanoi Hilton POW camp, he literally punched out the camp commander. Why? Here are the words of his cellmate at the time:
Why did Stockdale intentionally assault the camp commander by punching him
in the face? An irrational outburst of anger or violence was completely out
of character for this Stanford-educated philosopher. He was noted around the
camp for his towering intellect, not his emotional volatility.
Mr. Johnson pauses for a long moment before answering that question,
choosing his words deliberately. “Frankly, I think he was protecting me.
You know, that’s a characteristic of leadership.”
I urge all of us riding this rollercoaster of bankruptcy and merger with American Airlines to seek out, support and exert or follow this kind of leadership. Such leadership gives us the best opportunity to succeed. We don’t need more managers who have had a class on leadership – we need leaders who have taken a few classes on management and can choose fine managers to manage, not lead.
Below is an article on leadership that brings it all into focus.
Regards – Rob Gaylord – Focker Out
Vietnam POWs
Lessons in leadership from our heroes
The Washington Times
By Taylor Baldwin Kiland and Peter Fretwell Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Forty years ago, on Feb. 12, 1973, our nation started to welcome home
591 American prisoners of war, most of them from the infamous Hanoi Hilton
POW camp. Some of the released prisoners had been held for up to nine years,
and U.S. military doctors expected broken men to step off the C-141s landing
at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. Instead, they found fewer than 5
percent of the POWs suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Using just their brains and tin cups, these Americans created their own
high-performance society, communicating with each other through prison walls
by tapping on the cups – employing a type of Morse Code as their language.
They built a civilized culture against all odds – including extreme torture
and extended isolation. For the longest-held of the POWs, this duress lasted
more than eight years. No other group of POWs in our nation’s history has
ever been held captive as long as these men.
Texas Rep. Sam Johnson was one of those POWs. Four decades later, he
believes the leadership these men demonstrated can provide today’s political
leaders with some genuine role models.
Mr. Johnson recalls one hot summer night in 1967 when he shared a cell with
James Stockdale, the senior ranking officer among the group of POWs, and
their de facto leader. They were trying to communicate with recent
“shoot-downs,” other aviators whose planes had been recently shot down.
Captured and incarcerated, many of these men were still recovering from
their aircraft ejection injuries. As Mr. Johnson describes it, “They were
scared, for good reason. We wanted to talk to them and make them know that
there were other Americans around.” The tap code communications system was
the POWs’ lifeblood, but the risks for using it were high. Punishment by the
camp guards for communicating with each other was harsh. When possible, the
POWs assigned at least one man the task of “clearing,” or alerting other
POWs of a guard’s impending approach. This required lying on the filthy
prison cell floor and peering through the crack under the prison door. The
alternative was balancing on their toilet buckets to look over the top of
the cell door for moving shadows along the hallway.
“Stockdale had a broken leg, and I had a busted arm. The bunks were, you
know, about that high and concrete,” Johnson explained, as he held his hand
up to his knees. Johnson is a tall man, so the concrete slab allowed him to
peer out the high cell windows.
“Jim would get on the floor and ‘clear’ and I’d get up on the concrete bunk
and talk to [a new guy] down the back side out of the window. We happened to
be on the back of the jail. We would tell him essentially how the cow eats
the cabbage [how the things worked in the prison system] and, that ‘you’re
going to be all right.'”
On this particular night, they were finally caught. “The guard and an
officer came charging down the hall. Jim barely got up before the door
opened. I’m standing there and the door pops open and here’s this little
North Vietnamese guy wearing Air Force 2nd Lieutenant bars. Turns out he was
a camp commander. He wasn’t a lieutenant – he was masquerading as one. Jim
hauled off and decked him right there. Just knocked him down.
And, I thought, ‘.We’re in deep serious now.’ And we were.”
Punishment was immediate and harsh. Mr. Johnson spent 72 days in leg stocks
in a small cell with the windows boarded up. He quietly notes, “Jim got the
worst punishment.”
Why did Stockdale intentionally assault the camp commander by punching him
in the face? An irrational outburst of anger or violence was completely out
of character for this Stanford-educated philosopher. He was noted around the
camp for his towering intellect, not his emotional volatility.
Mr. Johnson pauses for a long moment before answering that question,
choosing his words deliberately. “Frankly, I think he was protecting me.
You know, that’s a characteristic of leadership.”
Stockdale exhibited several noteworthy characteristics of a great leader
that day. He stayed focused on the POWs’ agreed-upon mission, he chose his
battle carefully and – without fear of personal consequences – he sacrificed
himself to protect those under him. He asked nothing of his followers that
he would not first deliver himself. When pain was on the agenda, Stockdale
didn’t delegate. He led.
Even today, Mr. Johnson found Stockdale’s actions a model for himself and
others in challenging leadership positions: “All of us who serve America in
public office would do well to pause at this 40th anniversary of our
homecoming to ask ourselves whether we are showing the same courage and
selflessness I saw in his leadership during our time in the Hanoi Hilton.
This is America – where we rise to the occasion to make this country better
for the next generation. This is our time. This is our challenge. When we
honor the legacy and values of outstanding leadership like Jim, America will
win.”