#129—Oscar Munoz: United's Strategic Revival Through Employee Empowerment

Oscar Munoz, is the former CEO and Chairman of United Airlines. Oscar has led an accomplished career, spanning senior financial positions at Coca-Cola, Pepsico, AT&T, and US West. He also served as President and COO of North American rail-based transportation giant CSX Corp. He is also an independent trustee for Fidelity and a CNBC Contributor. A first-generation college graduate with degrees from the University of Southern California and Pepperdine, he was twice honored by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of its ‘100 Most Influential Hispanics’, honoring his journey as an immigrant who is the first person of Hispanic heritage to run a U.S. airline.  In this conversation, we get to glean Oscar’s incredible insights from his Wall Street Journal best-selling memoir, Turnaround Time: Uniting an Airline and its Employees in the Friendly Skies. Having joined United, he had quite a task ahead of him, uniting the very fragmented workforce the airline faced at the time.  At the core of this immense turnaround was Oscar’s steadfast belief, that employees are as important as customers and shareholders in ensuring a business succeeds. In this podcast we discuss: His journey throughout his career that brought him to United, and the insightful takeaways on leadership he gleaned along the way  His human-first approach in taking over the reins, which put each and every employee at the core of United transformation The Core4 policy that emphasizes each employee operate by the four pillars of safe, caring, dependable and efficient, emphasizing the human part of customer service over business objectives _______________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Highlight from today's episode01:14—Introducing Oscar+ the topic of today’s episode04:45—If you really know me, you know that...05:52— How Oscar's core values were shaped 07:32—What is your definition of strategy13:11—Oscar gives insights into how he became CEO of United19:22— Oscar steps into the CEO role 24:12— Economic factors shaping airline strategy 26:58—The Core4 policy as a strategy for growth 35:12— Bottom-up leadership: building a company from the employee level  38:10—How can people follow you and continue learning from you? _______________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources:Personal website: oscar-munoz.com Link to book: Turnaround Time Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/oscarmunozua Instagram: www.instagram.com/oscarmunoz Thank you to our executive producer Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Homayoun Jam and our editor James Pearce. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.Follow us at outthinker.com/podcast