Coffee, tea or … a chat with the airline CEO?

Inc. Magazine has an article about JetBlue CEO David Neeleman, who regularly puts in a stint on one of his flights, serving and meeting his customers.

As we sat there, buckling our seat belts and checking out the televisions in front of us, a middle-aged man with slightly graying hair stood up in the front of the plane. He had on the long apron that JetBlue flight attendants wear, with his name stitched into it. “Hi,” he said, “my name is Dave Neeleman, and I’m the CEO of JetBlue. I’m here to serve you this evening, and I’m looking forward to meeting each of you before we land.”

This is waaaaay cool. He’s meeting his customers and his employees first-hand. He’s out there sensing and reinforcing company culture. And most of all, to me at least, he’s showing humility. He demonstrates that he’s not above his employees and his customers by serving them.

Every CEO of every company anywhere, needs to consider doing something like this!

Share this

Comments

4 responses to “Coffee, tea or … a chat with the airline CEO?”

  1. Morten Avatar

    Sounds like he has been inspired by Stelios (easyJet founder) who did exactly the same when easyJet started.

  2. Alexander Kjerulf Avatar

    Excellent; nice to see that it isn’t isolated behaviour.

    Question: Why’d he stop? This sort of thing has value far beyond the start-up phase.

  3. Mike Wagner Avatar

    Peter Drucker made this point in 1966 writing in The Effective Executive. cf. pages 13-18. He says, "Unless he (the executive) makes special efforts to gain direct access to outside reality (customer experience), he will become increasingly inside-focused."

  4. Alexander Kjerulf Avatar

    1966, huh?

    The good question then becomes: Why is the practice so rare?

    And what would it take to convince CEO’s of the value of doing things like this?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.


Get our newsletter

“I can’t believe it – a newsletter actually worth reading!”
– Subscriber

Over 6,000 people subscribe to our newsletter with tons of tips about happiness at work.


Get our books

“It’s very, very good. It’s incredibly well written, full of insights, and there are exercises to improve your own happiness at work. You can’t ask for more than that!”
– David Maister, author of Practice What You Preach

“What an inspiring book. Every leader should read it. This type of leadership has been integral to our success and I know it will boost your results too.
– Garry Ridge, CEO WD-40 Company


Get Our Free Newsletter

Over 6,000 people already get our free newsletter with useful tips, videos, links and articles about happiness at work.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.