How to Fast Track Your Career: The Art of Disciplined Opportunism

1. 0:00 – 6:45

   Introduction to the 5 P Framework

   1. SGSadiq Gillani0:00

      [audience applauding] Today, I'm going to introduce you to the art of disciplined opportunism. So sit back, relax, and enjoy as we take off on a flight of self-discovery. I'm honored to be the protagonist of a Stanford MBA case study entitled Sadiq Gillani's Airline Career Takes Off. This is part of Jeffrey Pfeffer's Paths to Power class. In discussions with the class, Professor Pfeffer came up with the term disciplined opportunism to summarize my approach to spot and pursue exciting opportunities. Through reflecting on my life experiences and learnings, I developed this art into a five-part framework, which will also help your career reach cruising altitude. I will also give practical advice on pursuing a portfolio career. And just like we're flying, if you want to reach cruising altitude, which is the most efficient part of the flight, you need to know where you're heading, be well prepared, then pursue your target, and if necessary, pivot in the event of turbulence. I'm going to be sharing with you the tips I have learned, which you can apply in your lives today. This framework can also be applied to an industry, and in the second half of my talk, I will share with you how I expect the travel and airline industry to evolve post-COVID. So the story begins with the birth-- with my birth in inner-city London to a single mother from Trinidad and Tobago and an absent father from Pakistan, who met after immigrating to London. From an early age, I was fascinated by flying, and we would travel to Trinidad every summer with my mother to visit family. My mother would always inspire me with these words throughout my childhood, "Good, better, best. Never let it rest until your good is better and your better best." She came to London in nineteen sixties to train as a nurse and wanted her only child to have the education which she was never able to. She gave birth a week before her forty-second birthday and worked hard to provide for us. It was her dream for me to study at Cambridge, and she was incredibly proud when I graduated with two first class, first class degrees and was even featured in the university prospectus. I learned in my youth that I had to stand out to fit in and be accepted, just like with many insecure overachievers, and I'm sure there are many here. Consulting firms are a natural extension, mostly hiring these types and getting the most out of us through playing to our insecurities through the fear of up or out. I was lucky to be applying for graduate jobs in the peak of the dot-com bubble in the year two thousand, although I received just one job offer. So I joined Bain & Company in London, and the consulting toolkit provided me with a great foundation. After two and a half years working in London, I moved to Johannesburg for a transfer. I was really inspired my colleagues to do an MBA and was lucky to be accepted at Harvard and expected to return home to London just after that. Seventeen years later, I've yet to return back to London. My MBA experience was transformational and confirmed my passion for aviation. After graduating, I joined a group of ex-Bainees at a new boutique aviation consulting firm, where I would have the chance to focus only on airlines and help grow the business from ten to sixty consultants. I had the chance to, first of all, be based in Sydney for two years and then moved to New York for two years. After working as a Partner, I decided to move to Brazil to join a low-cost airline preparing for an IPO as the Chief Commercial Officer. However, the IPO was called off within a year, and the airline was sold. So I decided to look for an airline role back in Europe. I joined Lufthansa and sen-- spent seven years living in Germany. Then most recently, two and a half years ago, I moved to Dubai to join Emirates. So it's quite the journey, and during this time, it provided me the opportunity to visit a hundred and twenty-four countries, which you can see shaded in red. But my big moment came when I received my offer to join Lufthansa as Chief Strategy Officer at the age of thirty-two as their youngest ever Senior Vice President. At the time, this was my dream job. The new CEO, Christoph Franz, valued my international experience and strong education and saw me not speaking German as a chance to make the mu-more-- the company more international and change the culture. Until that point, it was rare for anyone to join on a senior role from outside the company. I remember my first meeting of the top fifty executives, looking around the room and seeing forty-five German men over the age of fifty. They were being forced to speak English in that room for the first time just for me. I remember my boss, Joe Schottland, saying to me, "Your Chief Strategy Officer role is a platform. Think about how you use it." So during this time, I was able to join the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council for Travel, start an MBA class at Stanford, get on the board of three subsid-subsidiaries of Lufthansa, and deliver a TED Talk. During that time, I also worked on the strategy for developing the low-cost segment of the Lufthansa Group and became one of the first employees into the new Pan-European low-cost subsidiary, Eurowings. I will now share with you the tools of disciplined opportunism that I learned that helped me fast track my career and land these opportunities using the 5 P Framework of Purpose, Prepare, Pursue, Partner, and Pivot. We'll discuss being clear on your purpose, how to prepare yourself and create opportunities to arise. I will share some tips on pursuing opportunities. We'll talk about the importance of partners and your personal advisory board. And then we'll discuss pivoting in the face of setbacks. I will show you how to apply the five Ps to your life to help you reach cruising altitude.

2. 6:45 – 9:59

   Purpose

   1. SGSadiq Gillani6:47

      So let's start with purpose. Dr. Joe Dispenza, a neuroscientist and author, has researched the impact on the mind of visioning your future in contrast to living in the negative experiences of the past. The body will start acting as if the vision is already happening and opportunities will come to you. Carl Jung also wrote about synchronicity, that opportunities come up if you set the intention. And what I believe is in order to achieve your long-sighted vision, you need to have short-sighted focus, so it's combining both. I'm going to show you how I set out a North Star vision and applied short-sighted focus to identify opportunities within reach to support that vision. I've always been passionate about travel and decided to make my profession my passion. It really helped me to articulate my own personal vision in the HBS Portrait Project, where a handful of students are selected each year to publish what they want to do with their one wild and precious life. In my personal mission statement, I said that I'm going to apply my energy to help transform the airline industry to enable others to share in the beauty of travel. This was a refined version of what I had outlined in my H- HBS MBA admissions application. And I was able to develop my personal airline brand during my MBA. When I started at Harvard, I had zero airline experience. But I took the chance to cross-register at MIT for two airline classes. I invited airline CEOs to come and speak. I worked for two startup airlines. So by the end, everyone knew me as the airline guy. So I became a focal point for the other MBA students interested in travel. Energy attracts energy, so be a magnet. I also outlined in my Portrait Project that I wanted to be a role model to other minority groups and inspire them. I've addressed thousands of students through diversity conferences and visited high schools to share my story. So it starts with having passion and focus. It could be an industry such as the airline industry. It could be a function like marketing, or it could be a transformational theme, for example, AI. Within an industry, hot topics will emerge such as digital or the future of travel post-COVID, and I've immersed myself in these topics. There is a natural energy flow and interest around these topics. I decided to go to a boutique airline consulting firm rather than back to Bain because it was closer to my purpose. So as part of this reunion, reflect on your purpose. Ask yourself now, how easy would it be for your classmates to describe your purpose in just a few words?

3. 9:59 – 15:40

   Prepare

   1. SGSadiq Gillani9:59

      So the second P is prepare, creating the space and knowledge to be able to pursue your purpose as well as looking after your body. To start, there's a quote here from Seneca, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." So first, create the space. I freed up my time through ruthless eighty/twenty efficiency, focusing on the most important tasks which have impact. I always say with my teams, any piece of work has a one, has a one-week answer or a one-day answer. Work will fill that space. So I time block my assignments and complete them one at a time. I develop the blank slides story outline for presentations and then reuse templates, which saves me time. It requires efficient planning and execution, and for example, I use the rule of one touch. If I receive an email, I get a task, I try to do it with one touch. This meant that I didn't work late hours often, but I worked very efficiently. And since my side activities are aligned to my passion, it never felt like extra work when I was doing them. But I was willing to step up to deliver surge capacity and sprint when needed. You need to have work-life balance to provide the mental bandwidth to be able to cr- to be creative and to be able to pursue these ideas. It also helps to prepare and train your team, make your expectations clear. Share with them your personal user guide. With every team I've worked in, I personally deliver training content through boot camps, weekly training sessions on the tools which I've learned. It makes it much easier to delegate and empower your team also through providing regular feedback. I've also learned that the best way to learn something is to share it with others. We are lucky to be born in a time when we have so much access to information and knowledge online. We're all talking about machine learning, but human learning has been built on the collective knowledge of over 100 billion people who have lived on this planet, which we are uniquely able to access now. I give you a quote from me, "Before you chase the sun, prepare yourself with the works of Carl Jung." I've worked extensively, extensively with a, an executive coach to apply Jung's tools to myself and my work. Let me give you a flavor of some of this. So when it comes to inner development, we start by looking at the self, and 90% of the mind is the subconscious mind. Only 10% is your conscious mind. And in that conscious mind is your ego, and that is what you present to the out to the world. But 90% of the world, of your inner world, is the unconscious mind, and that's where complexes and your shadow can be, can be a driver. Daniel Kahneman also talked about System 1 bit- versus System 2, which was talking a lot about biases which are playing out in the shadow. This has helped me to work on myself. Another useful framework from Jung is type psychology. You'll know the terms introvers- introversion versus extroversion, and this is how we process either outside or inside. Now, this framework has also been developed into Myers-Briggs today, but the original tools came from Carl Jung. And the other important dimensions are thinking versus feeling, so making decisions with your mind or with your emotions and with your heart. And it also talks about how we gather information ver- versus using sensation, gathering facts and figures, versus intuition, which is connecting the dots and seeing the big picture. For me, naturally, I'm more of a thinking type and more sensate. Over time, I've now learned to tap more into my feeling function and my int- into my intuition. It's like developing more muscle, so working with two arms and two legs to be more balanced. This has helped me understand my complexes and my shadow, as well as understand other people. Now, it's just, it's not just inner knowledge and inner development, it's also your body. It's important that your body is well-prepared in terms of nutrition and fitness. Aircraft go through regu- rigorous maintenance programs to ensure safety and longevity. But there's cultural pressure to keep pushing ourselves, to ignore the physical needs of our bodies, which invariably leads to burnout. I personally make sure to get eight hours sleep a night, go to the gym three times a week, and I'm focused on healthy eating, which means when I walk around the Stanford campus, people think I'm some MBA student. Listen to your body, the... how it reacts to different food types. I also practice regular meditation and yoga. I personally love yoga. It's good for the mind and the body, so why not stretch yourself? [laughs] Reunion's also a great time for reflection, so ask yourself right now, how satisfied are you with your sleep, with your fitness, with your nutrition, with your time for learning and your work-life balance? The better prepared your body and mind are, the more easily you'll be able to pursue your purpose.

4. 15:40 – 24:36

   Pursue

   1. SGSadiq Gillani15:41

      Which takes us to the third P, Pursue, which is all about how to go about pursuing opportunities. I'm going to share with you now three things which helped me in building my career portfolio. That's being global in my search for opportunities. It's about creating opportunities, and it's about filling the void in companies. But it's also important to bear in mind, learn how to be happy with what you have whilst you pursue all that you want. So let's start with going global. So where do you think most of the alumni on this call, where do you think most of you live? Actually, 43% of you are living in California. Dean Paul Oyer says when searching for jobs or a partner, thick markets produce the most matches. I define my addressable market as the world. I was willing to move countries or travel long distances to build my career portfolio. Jeffrey Pfeffer says leaving California is considered a radical move for most Stanford MBAs. In contrast, I was willing to go almost anywhere. Now, being industry-focused forced me to have an international focus because most airlines are spread over all over the world. It required me to learn Portuguese and German, and I became fluent in each. But there's a cost. I remember sitting in Rio at lunchtime, six months after joining, and I had tears in my eyes because the IPO had been called off and the Brazilian economy was starting to turn, and I'd struggled to make friends. I remember thinking to myself, "Who moves to Brazil not knowing anyone where hardly anyone speaks English?" I want to ima- you to imagine now that you're back for a college reunion. How would you spend your one free day? Would you explore the campus, buy presents from the gift shop, meet an old professor, meet a local startup, or catch up with your section mates? It's about being thoughtful in using your time and thinking ahead. I'm gonna give you some real examples of how I did this. So first of all, I'd like to encourage you to be bold. When I had that low point in Brazil, I decided I wanted to move back to Europe, and I sent my CV to six European airline CEOs just out of the blue. I didn't know them, just said, "Here's my CV. I'm interested in a job. Do you have anything?" Interestingly, Christoph Franz had just become CEO of Lufthansa, and he responded. Actually, these days I'm even more, uh, refined in my approach in that if I wanted to do something like that, I would get one of my mentors to send that email on my behalf. It's even more impactful if one CEO is writing to another CEO and saying, "I recommend this guy. Go speak to him." Um, the hit rate then drops to h- it increases to a hundred percent. So when I achieved this, uh, platform of joining Lufthansa as str- chief, chief strategy officer, I realized that we had a partnership with the World Economic Forum, so I became the representative of Lufthansa to the World Economic Forum. Through this, I was invited to join one of their Global Agenda Councils for Travel. During this time, I heard about a program called The Young Global Leaders, which is a program for around a hundred people every year under the age of 40 to join and participate in the work of the forum and also attend the annual meeting in Davos. Now before even getting involved with this organization, I hadn't even really appreciated the, the significance of the annual meeting at Davos. Also, through my time at Lufthansa, I was able to get on the boards of three subsidiaries. Uh, I told you about this example of being at a reunion thinking ahead. I remember being at one reunion and meeting a, meeting a friend and saying, "I've got this board e- prior board experience, and I'd like now to get on an external board. Maybe one of your portfolio companies might have a, have an opening." And, uh, he was a partner at CVC, and, uh, he said leave it with him and, um, introduced me to one of their portfolio companies. I had some interviews, and after a while, I was offered a position to, to join their board. Again, from just being at a reunion speaking to someone I knew and putting that out there, I was able to get, uh, on this board. Now, the third pillar was Stanford. So my journey to Stanford, um, I was actually just invited by the Hospitality & Travel Club just to give a one-off speech about the travel industry. I was there for three days, and whilst I was still down there, I heard about compressed classes and I thought, "Wow, this fits perfectly for, uh, a busy schedule." So whilst I was still down there, uh, I met with the dean and developed a proposal to start the first Ivy League MBA program dedicated to travel and airline industry. The dean thought, "Okay, well, let's try it. If it works, we can keep it. If it doesn't, we'll stop it." This was 2014. This class has been instrumental for me in building my profile in the travel industry. It's also given me the opportunity to meet travel industry CEOs, um, and bring them in every year. One of my heroes is David Neeleman, and he's been joining, uh, the class every year. He's the founder of Azul and JetBlue. So I've been able to use this class as a calling card to bring in, uh, travel industry veterans. As part of my time at Stanford, I asked my friend, "Who's the best professor that you have?" And he said, "Jeffrey Pfeffer." So every year when I've been going back to teach, I've had lunch with Jeffrey. After five years of these lunches, one day he said to me, "I'm thinking about writing a new case study, and I'd like to make you the protagonist." Jeffrey's now writing a book called The Seven New Rules of Power, and he's going to be featuring me in this book. Through all of these engagements at Stanford, actually, this is how I've been invited to speak to you today. And to give you a real-life example of how I apply disciplined opportunism, I'm now thinking if this talk is a success, how can I apply it to writing a book or developing a podcast series? Now in addition into these int- these, uh, activities, as part of my vision of being a role model, I also nominated myself to the Financial Times Top 100 Leaders List and was included on those lists for, for three years in a row. I also, uh, got to meet, uh, the organizer of TED in Germany, and in 2014, he invited me to give the first airline TED Talk. So I hope I shared with you some really practical examples there about how I was able to create opportunities and use one platform to open up another. Let's now talk about within a n- within a company, how you can fill the void. Within companies, not all roles are filled. Fill that void. Figure out what the company needs to do to win and pursue it like it's never been pursued before. So for example, when I was at Lufthansa, I recognized the importance of innovation and digital, and I was able to convince the board to allow me to build a team to drive innovation and create an innovation hub in Berlin. At Emirates, there's no strategy function, but I've been proactive at initiating strategic dialogues and providing a regular outlook on the industry across the business. So Pursue is all about being global in your search, being creative about spotting opportunities, and filling the voids in companies.

5. 24:36 – 32:15

   Partner

   1. SGSadiq Gillani24:37

      Let's now look at Partner, the fourth P. The fourth P is all about relationships inside a company. In order to have impact, you need the support of colleagues, mentors, and friends, and also to understand the power dynamics in companies. There's a great quote from Gandhi, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." And that's obviously with the support of those around you. Let's dive into a couple of areas around power dynamics and building promoters. At HBS, I learned the twenty sixty twenty rule. That's twenty percent of people will be your promoters, sixty percent of people will be undecided, and twenty percent of people will be your critics. So the first thing to think about is understanding personal agendas. When it comes to critics, they have their own agenda. When I was doing consulting, we always were told just to focus on results, but moving into a big corporate, you start to understand people are very scared about change and losing their positions, and driving change is, um, divisive. So the key is to identify and engage your promoters and get them to help you in influencing those who are undecided. The objective with critics is actually just damage limitation and not wasting too much energy with them. And they're generally driven by insecurities and in fact, all the critics I had, uh, in my career often ended up leaving quite early because they were insecure in their positions. Another thing to think about is identifying narcissists, either the charming types or the dictator bullying types. They're very common in senior positions in big companies because they're willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead, and so you have to be able to identify them and work with them. Another thing to think about is ensuring that your team has your back. Otherwise, it'll be like flying with a full payload. Your speed and range will be compromised. Watch out for biases in recruiting people similar to you. You need a mix of skills in your team. Partnering is also true in our personal lives. Who do you spend time with in your free time that you can learn from? Due to COVID, we've all had to be more selective about the people we spend time with. So when it comes to sensing power dynamics, another great quote from Jung, "Things which irritate us in others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves," and this works both ways. If there's something you don't like about someone, that could be something that it-- they're able to demonstrate which is something you're not comfortable ab- in yourselves and if they don't like you, there's something about you which is also triggering a complex. The reason why I bring this up is this is heavily about psychology and understanding power is understanding psychology. Let us now look at how we can build promoters. I like to ask yourself, who's on your personal advisory board? I'll ask you now just to think down the names of three to five mentors or advisors who you would assemble to help you prepare you for something like an exciting new job opportu- opportunity. Ask yourself, how often are you in contact with them? Who's your agile team that you can assemble to solve problems? As Stanford MBA graduates, you've got an amazing network to tap into. If, for example, I have to give a speech like this one, I'll, um, speak to my friends in the industry. I actually tested the title for this speech using an Instagram poll. As an outsider joining Lufthansa, I always joke that it felt like joining a game of Monopoly halfway through, just going around and giving money to everyone with the hotels. Through my experience at Lufthansa, I learned eight tips and I was able to learn a lot from CEOs how to build communication to build partnerships, and especially from Carsten Spohr, who's the c- the CEO of Lufthansa. So the first tip is understand personality types. We've talked about the Myers-Briggs or Jung type, um, typology. Understand what drives people. The second tip is to identify common interests and build bridges. I remember Carsten Spohr would say to me, "We're both the young guys here," when we're in board meetings. The third tip is sharing articles and regular updates. Relationships should be two-way, so if you read something interesting, share it with those close in your network. Give them regular updates of what's going on in your life. And also the fourth point, seek their help and the best is if you can become a personal advisor to them and again, it's a two-way relationship and in order to advance, you need to meet regularly and have a lot of contact. The fifth point is amplifying. Again, I learned this from Carsten Spohr. He was great. You would meet him in the corridor and he would say to you, "Oh, Mr. Gillani, you're smiling. What numbers have you seen that I haven't seen?" He made people feel good and was always smiling. It's also about empathizing. And again, he is great at saying when he's addressing an audience, imagining the flight attendant and the work that they're doing, creating that image. Another point which he's great at is referencing and building upon others in meetings. "Ah, Mr. Gillani, you're always the one that's saying that we should go buy this company." Also using metaphors, building upon prior experience that you've had in your career, or providing a worse option. For example, I could say to you, "You can either share this talk with your friends or ignore everything and fail in your careers." Now, these are not two like-for-like options, but providing a worse option can influence people towards another option. And the last tip is summarizing any actions or takeaways from the meeting, both one-on-one meetings and in group settings. This shows you've been listening and takes control of the messages coming out of the meeting. Again, these are eight practical tips for building relationships. And our partners and allies are really important to us and they can help you fi- fly higher. However, things don't always go according to plan. It's not about liking or disliking your colleagues, it's about trying to make critical relationships work. But sometimes these are outside of your control and that's where the fifth P comes in, pivot.

6. 32:15 – 37:40

   Pivot

   1. SGSadiq Gillani32:18

      When you reach cruising altitude, switch on the autopilot, enjoy the view out the window, but be prepared for turbulence. There's a great quote from Steve Jobs, "Pursue your dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks." When you get your life to cruising altitude, everything starts flowing automatically, but something unexpected can happen requiring adaptability, patience, resilience, and reinvention. And a question for you, how many of your bosses left the company after hiring with-- hiring you? Now, this is important because s- when supervisors leave, in general, a supervisor rates the people they hired much higher than inherited employees. So if a boss leaves, that is a big deal. I'd like to now go and take you through, uh, a crucible mo-moment. Christoph Franz, uh, when I joined Lufthansa, had brought in five senior leaders from outside to bring in fresh ideas. Under his leadership, I received the highest performance rating of any SVP and initiated a profit improvement program which is cr- credited with turning around the company. However, there's a quote here from, uh, the German media that said, "Franz in the past two years brought in specialists from outside on whose loyalty he can count on." This includes me and the rather cumbersome and highly German business swirling around with ideas that traditionalists must consider an affront just to set the context. However, three years later in April two thousand and fourteen, Christoph Franz announced he would be leaving to become chairman of Rush and his rival, Carsten Spohr, would be taking over. I had a crucible moment at his leaving party when I got the call that my father had passed away. My mother had developed Alzheimer's shortly thereafter, and as the only child, I had to take care of her. This, uh, article came out again in the German media, "People who know Spohr well believe that there will be no major people moves with one exception. No one expects strategy chief Sadiq Gillani to remain. Franz appointed Gillani in order to shake things up, and Gillani had done this intensively, more than most people liked, Spohr included." This shows you the importance of promoters. It was actually my mentor who convinced my new boss to keep me. Three months later, the German media reported, "The question of whom Spohr will appoint in top roles is closely watched, and the new CEO knows this. That's why there's one thing he does not do, the thing that everyone expects from him. His chief strategy officer may continue to develop new concepts. On the other hand, many of Spohr's allies await their next career step." So from this point in time after three years with Lufthansa, I was able to stay on for two more years working as chief strategy officer for Carsten Spohr and then two years moving into Eurowings. Moving to Eurowings was an interesting move for me. It was moving into a fast-growing subsidiary and into the core of the airline which is managing network and fleet. In some ways it was a bit of step down, but I was focused on learning and had a long-term perspective. So you have to work extra hard to impress someone who's inherited you and also be patient. There's a quote from Rumi, "Patience is not sitting and waiting. It's foreseeing. It's looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Know that the moon needs time to become full." I enjoyed spa- expanding from being an airline guy to a travel industry guy through this time through my work with the WEF, through Stanford and my board positions. We can start getting exposure to new domains by many avenues, like boards, universities, mentoring startups, or investing. So think about what's in your portfolio. There's ways to start now getting access and building that portfolio. So that was the final P, Pivot, and COVID has required many of us to adapt our flight path. It's al- also healthy to reinvent yourself every decade so you stay fresh and relevant. If you feel that your career has plateaued, this is a good chance to think about pivoting to an adjacent field. If you're later in your career, it may be time to start thinking about what your retirement portfolio might look like and start pivoting there for a soft landing. I started early looking for opportunities to build relevant experience to expand my portfolio, leveraging the platforms which I had, but I also created the space to pursue them. So this was an overview of how I applied disciplined opportunism in my life to build my portfolio career.

7. 37:40 – 49:35

   Disciplined Opportunism in the Travel & Airline Industry

   1. SGSadiq Gillani37:42

      Let's now pivot and apply the same 5 P Framework to the travel and airline industry. So I'm going to start by asking you, what do you think we're lo- most likely to experience in travel in 2022? Do you think we're gonna experience higher ticket prices? Fewer nonstop flight options? Less relevance of loyalty programs? PCR testing required before flying? Or most countries still closed to visitors? You can think about multiple of these. As we now go through, I'll give you some insight into all of these topics. The first thing when it comes to purpose is travel purposes are changing. Unfortunately, travel is gonna remain a hassle, with PCR tests and masks likely to remain with us for some time. Most travelers will still be concerned with limiting exposure to people in the coming years, preferring beach and outdoor destinations. Travelers are thinking carefully about their first vaxications. That's the first vacation people will take after being vaccinated. I personally am most keen to go back to Thailand. I spent my first decade in my ninete- in, uh, in my 20s adding new countries, wanting to reach 100 countries before the age of 30. Since then, I prefer going back to places I like, where I have memories, where I know the best spots, and I have friends. When it comes to travel, our minds are reminiscent, enjoying returning to the familiar. But they're also comparative, setting the baseline as the best of all previous experiences for our enjoyment. Because of this hassle of PCR tests, we will take longer but fewer trips, an average of nine days versus four days in the past. We'll also be more purpo- purposeful and meaningful about selecting our travel experiences. We expect leisure and visiting friends and relatives as a type of travel to come back first. People will have a higher disposable income for travel spend, be willing to upgrade their experiences, and splurge more on luxury. On the other hand, there's gonna be a reduction in business travel. McKinsey are predicting a 20% long-term reduction in business travel, for example, through the reduction of day trips. And because airlines and hotels make the majority of their profits on these travelers, this is very disruptive. We're also seeing an erosion of the middle, with trips booked either last minute, within seven days, or well in advance, more than 365 days in advance. Lastly, the topic of sustainability is becoming more relevant. So, for example, Google is just getting a way to show the flight emissions in Google Flights to help nudge people towards choosing flights which have lower emissions. So, for example, if you're thinking about a business class flight, that's gonna show three times as many emissions as an economy flight, and a nonstop option will show far fewer emissions than a connecting flight. Forward-thinking travel companies have already spotted the opportunity to take a leading role in sustainability and embedding that as part of their mission, even in the middle of a pandemic. This is a topic I personally have been driving at Lufthansa and Emirates as well. To give you some examples of what the industry is doing, um, JetBlue in the US has now made all of the domestic US flights carbon neutral. The owner of British Airways, IAG, is committed to powering 10% of its flights with sustainable aviation fuel by 2030. Carnival Cruises is targeting a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030. So that's purpose, and to say, to say travel purposes are changing, sustainability is becoming more important. The second P of Prepare is to say the industry is preparing like it's never had before, and winners will emerge. The industry has responded through permanently retiring older aircraft, especially older four-engine widebodies, which will mean fewer nonstop options. Airlines are also adapting their product to a post-COVID world. For example, at Emirates, we're offering c- customers free COVID insurance, removing change and cancellation fees, increasing cabin cleaning, and most of our crew are vaccinated. At the same time, we've introduced the first biometric contactless airport experience in Dubai. But a big issue for, uh, for the airline industry is there's a huge debt burden now. The average debt burden of the industry will double, and has doubled, um, by the end of the pandemic, and it was gonna take us until 2030 to repay that debt using the free cash flow which we were generating pre-crisis. Now, winners are made during the time of a crisis. Geographically, US airlines will emerge stronger due to having a strong domestic market, high government support, and strong returns going into the crisis. In contrast, European airlines and emerging market network carriers will be the worst off. Low-cost airlines will emerge stronger due to reliance on short-haul leisure flying, and airlines with the strongest balance sheets, like Southwest, Delta, and Emirates, will emerge as winners. For example, Delta's strategy pre-COVID of flying mostly older aircraft, which is quite unique, meant that they have been able to ground or retire forty percent of their fleet during the pandemic without major write-offs, unlike any of their peers. They can now benefit from replacing those older aircraft with newer aircraft in a depressed market. Now that is disciplined opportunism. And it's interesting that forty airlines have gone out of business since COVID began, and an additional ten airlines went into bankruptcy protection to restructure. But this is a tiny fraction out of the thousand airlines which are out there. And at the same time as airlines are exiting, other airlines and entrepreneurs are thinking about pursuing this market. So that brings us to pursue. And we're seeing disruptors preparing for takeoff. We've seen an unprecedented number of startups gearing up to enter the, the aviation market. And actually, it's greater than the number of exits, almost twice as many entrants, new entrants, startups coming in, as exit the market. Now, COVID is triggering that because that's created excess aircraft, it's created slots, and it's created gaps in the market. We're also seeing new technologies around aerial mobility using SPACs, that's Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, raising billions with just a business plan. Now, one thing we're seeing is that it's a challenge for airlines to ramp up. Given the investment backlog they had, they haven't been spending anything to s- preserve cash for the last two years. And they have this debt overhang on top, which is going to lead to a long ramp-up and an undersupply of airline capacity relative to demand, which is actually gonna rebound strongly, particularly on the leisure side. Now, this is in contrast to the relative oversupply of hotel rooms and cruise cabins. So expect higher flight ticket prices in the coming years. But you'll be able to get bargains on hotel rooms and cruises. It's also interesting that the demand for alternative accommodation, such as Airbnb, continues to grow year on year. And even during the pandemic, it has been growing, partly due to things like remote working, which is likely to continue. So many, uh, players within the aviation industry are seeing the crisis as an opportunity to pursue. We're also-- Players, players are also thinking about partnerships in different ways. This pandemic has required the travel industry to work together like never before to coordinate and support the reopening of travel through initiatives, for example, such as the IATA Travel Pass. Partnerships are becoming even more important for airlines because they have smaller networks. Players are also thinking more about system collaboration between airports and ground, for example. We're seeing air rail bookings being able to be booked in one ticket. Many, uh, transport companies are thinking about becoming super apps. For example, Lime is trying to become a platform which will enable to be-- you to book multiple forms of mobility. Partners are also thinking about adding capabilities outside of their core business. So for example, many travel players are talking about end-to-end travel. Booking.com wants to expand from just offering hotels and alternative accommodation to also offering flights. But they've chose to do that by partnering with a company called eTraveli, which is the best in the industry flight search platform, rather than do it themselves. So partnerships are becoming more relevant, and many travel players are really thinking about pivoting in light of the pandemic. European airlines in particular, as I said, are gonna be the ones to struggle the most, and they're pivoting their business more towards leisure because, as I said, that's gonna come back first and there'll be less, fewer business travelers. We're also seeing that challenged airlines who were struggling for profitability even before COVID are reviewing their business models. So for example, Norwegian has now ended long-haul flying. Hotels are also looking to launch new products, such as work from anywhere. And they're also looking at wellness programs to try and compensate for some of the lost business tr- traffic. I also believe frequent, frequent traveler programs for hotels and airlines are gonna struggle to become re- relevant, and they're gonna have to accelerate the pivot towards becoming consumer loyalty businesses, which was started before COVID. Meaning appealing to a broader range of people beyond just people who are flying often or traveling often. One way to do that is to include credit card spend as part of status, uh, recognition. So don't worry just yet about losing your frequent traveler status. We're also seeing, um, an interesting opportunity around regional aircraft being converted to hydrogen propulsion to be, uh, efficient and, and green. There's a great example of Surfair, which originally was a private aviation California-based membership club. It took the first step of pivoting to becoming a platform to book private jets. It's now pivoting again to become Surfair Mobility, and it's pursuing regional aircraft conversions to, to enable regional aircraft to convert to hydrogen power. And again, it's an amazing pivot at this time as this technology now becomes proven to be able to change the, the, their business again. So the main message is that players in the travel and airline industry are being forced to adapt their business models for a turbulent post-COVID world. Travel volumes are likely to take until 2024 to return.

8. 49:35 – 51:25

   Closing summary

   1. SGSadiq Gillani49:36

      So in closing, I hope that you took away some practical ideas to fast track your career, and you've got a glimpse of what's to come in travel in the coming years. I hope that I inspired you to apply the art of disciplined opportunism by, being clear on your purpose, by preparing your mind, body, and soul, by being alert to pursue opportunities, by having the right partners to support you, and by pivoting to adapt to new situations. Remember that we put ourselves through permanent career comparison by going through an MBA. So at times of reunions, we should be careful of falling into that trap. My career success came from taking advantages of opportunities which came up, which were aligned to my purpose, and which I had the time to pursue. So create that space. Start thinking now about how you want your portfolio career to look like. I'll leave you with one quote from Rumi: "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I'm wise, I'm changing myself." This also reflects a bit what Carl Jung said about there being two phases of life, and the second phase of life being around individuation and looking inner. To close, if you've enjoyed what you've heard today, I'll be sharing more tips and recommended reading on the art of disciplined o- opportunism on my LinkedIn page and on Instagram. So please follow me for more tips. Also, if you've enjoyed this talk today, please share it with your friends, uh, once it's published on YouTube. Thank you. [audience applauding]

Episode duration: 51:25