JAL: Another “Shared Sacrifices” Lesson from Haruka

Here we have a second YouTube video clip (the first is here) about Haruka Nishimatsu, CEO of Japan Airlines. As with a current comparison between, say, Toyota (world’s #1 automaker) and GM (now bankrupt and bailed-out), the cultural differences between Japanese and American leadership styles is striking:

“Maybe they could learn something from the boss of Japan Airlines … who takes a city bus to work. Merrill Lynch CEO John Thane spent more than a million dollars decorating his office. But Haruka Nishimatsu knocked down his office walls, so people can walk up and talk. And he works from a desk with an old-fashioned wooden in and out box. But there is method to his anti-corporate-perk lifestyle: It’s about his employees.”

(At 02:30, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly appears with another short leadership message about shared sacrifice.)

In 2006, while Haruka Nishimatsu was cutting his own pay to less than that of his pilots, United CEO Glenn Tilton — with his airline still in bankruptcy — collected a $40 million “performance” bonus on top of his regular salary. If I remember correctly, this was an amount larger than the entire profit posted that year by United’s maintenance division, United Services. Every last aircraft, engine, and coffee pot serviced that year for another airline, or the U.S. military, was serviced so that Tilton could collect his bonus.

Even so, at headquarters it wasn’t politically correct to openly criticize Tilton’s leadership. The typical response by upwardly-mobile, young manager-apologists to such an event went something like this: “Think you can do any better? When you become CEO, then you can criticize. Until then ….”

True leadership is often indescribable but, as with pornography, it is possible for one to say with certainty, “I know it when I see it.”

Today, at United, what passes for leadership in the CEO suite is … truly … obscene.