Lessons - $14 Billion Leadership Lessons | Lisa Lutoff-Perlo - CEO at Celebrity Cruises

In this lessons episode, discover the power of leading with heart and reshaping company culture. Learn how to build high-performing teams by nurturing respect at every level, balancing empathy with business metrics and making tough decisions to align actions with values. Explore why authentic leadership creates lasting organizational success. When people look at your career, incredible career, you've, I mean, what you've achieved, phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal, and people would look at you and they would say, oh, she's shattered the glass ceiling. She's done the thing. But what you just said to me was actually very interesting. So even when you're in those roles and you're leading people, you've, you've had senior roles, not just with as CEO right now, but with pass, with pass organizations as well. So you still get pushback. You still get people that question your leadership, even though how many years have you been in this industry? I think you said 39. 39 years. Yeah. Yeah. So you still get people that pushback and question why you are in the role that you're in? Not anymore, thankfully. And I guess 39 years of proving people were all, or maybe 30 by the time, no, I even think 39. I'm going to say 39. And what's interesting to me and, you know, I'm hoping at some point in time, either now or in another in a future conversation is, I've decided to exit this industry after 39 years. What I'm finding is the body of work and all the time I've spent proving people wrong is serving me really well in my future. And I still am trying to figure out why throughout my entire career in the company that I'm in, I had to do it so many times. It's actually, it's sad and it's disheartening. Like, so when you look at celebrity, obviously you've made massive changes to who they are as an organization. Do you think celebrity is very similar to the rest of the cruise industry? Do you think it's like an outlier in terms of the type of like cultural and organizational changes that you had to implement over your career? Do you think it's like if you're going to, if you're going to rank it in terms of like experience, would it be positive, negative, middle of the road, when you were coming up? Well, what I will say is that I had an amazing career. I've accomplished more than I ever would have imagined or actually more than I ever did imagine. So as that is the back job, what I will say about leading celebrity is it was probably harder to lead celebrity than it would be to lead any other of, especially the larger cruise lines that have been around for a much longer period of time, more established brands, more differentiated brands. Celebrity, I always looked at as the challenger brand trying to find its place. And when, you know, what I came into the role as president and CEO of that was what I was charged with. Celebrity needs to find its place. It needs to solidify its position, pick the position and solidify it in the market and significantly improve the financial performance of the brand. And that was a heavy lift. And when I was acquainted to the role, one of the other things I say all the time is be careful what you wish for because once you get to see out, you know, it's great getting the seat, but it's not easy being in the chair. That's for sure. And no, no, no kidding at all. So, you know, the other point is you mentioned all the traditional metrics that a president CEO should focus on. But you are very outspoken about, and this is where I want to challenge a bit. You are a heart centered leader. You're a heart focused leader. And if somebody just sort of glosses over that as a that's like wish you watch you. It's like it's whatever. Yes, everyone's a good person, right? It's a girl. It's a girly thing. Is that what they say? I'm not saying that. No, I know you're not, but you're saying what other people say. Sometimes that people say, oh, that's a girly thing. Anyway, got it? No, no, the point is the point is, okay. So, you're not an idiot. You're a very smart person. When you put that out into the world, how do you reconcile that against business KPIs? Because we're going to we're going to paint a picture of like what leadership should be. That's what I want to get to. Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, I think leading work heart lit what I learned. Here's what I learned by leading with heart because it was really important to me to lead with heart, especially when I entered operations in 2005. I saw, you know, over a dozen ships with 1,500 to 2,000 crew members from all over the world. These lovely beautiful people who left their homes and their families to make a better life like for themselves. And I saw a hierarchy, somewhat militaristic type of an environment where it was led by stripes. However many stripes you had, you thought you you got respect for that. I came from sales and marketing, a gentle culture. And I, you know, I called BS. And I said, no, this is not what what this culture should be. We're going to invert the pyramid. And the cleaners are more important than the captain. And we're going to get respect because we give respect. And we're going to lead with heart. And we're going to value show these crew members how much they're valued and how much we appreciate them. And you know, when I learned through that, Scott, and I really built that muscle when I went into operations, I really, you know, I've always had a big heart, maybe somewhere today, a bleeding heart. But I learned how to lead with heart when I went into operations. And I feel like it got me so much discretionary effort. And these crew members had a quilted me as a main part of the success I was able to achieve. And this amazing brand I was able to build. And I think the leaders over time realized it was a great formula as well. So accomplishing business goals through heart is I believe one of the best ways to do that. How do you, so how do you actually translate empathy into action? Like, so you said, yes, everybody is respecting each other. We got rid of, and by the way, it's so interesting because even like traditional corporate culture is very, it's derived from military to a degree. I mean, even like chief executive this, it's a very, but I was assuming like a nautical environment is probably even further because there's literally ranks. And it's so, it's so closely tied to like military ranks. And so it's not even that removed, right? No, it's not right. So, okay, so how do you? Okay, so if you're saying lead lead with heart, someone's listening, they're like, yes, I understand. Everybody wants to treat everybody. Well, what do you actually do in your organization? How do you get that capped in? Or, or is it, this could be a hard conversation to do? Is it like, you get rid of the people that aren't on board, pardon the pun, with that, that's so bad, all that jokes keep them. Yeah, but there's so many. I mean, they're so, it's okay. I use them all the time. But yeah, so, okay, so we want people to respect, we want people to respect the, you know, the, the, the cleaners and the, and the, the, the weight staff and the people that are running the entertainment on board to the same degree as they respect the captain, easier said than done, especially when people are entrenched in an industry and they're entrenched in their idea of what a role is. And I think that's probably what most people come up against, because it's nice to say, but then you're dealing with people, you're dealing with egos and you're dealing with caniering, you're dealing with experience. So what do you do? How do you actually execute? Culture, culture, culture, right? First of all, it starts at the top. No doubt, no question. But I believe in trickle-down culture. And so what happens is, it might start with me, but it certainly can't end with me. And the team that, and, and lead by a set of values, I hold a team accountable, they hold me accountable, we hold each other accountable. They very much revolve around nurturing people, playing as a team, communicating, doing the right thing, because we have our business vectors. Every day, you're looking at traffic lights. Are they red, green, or yellow? Are you doing well? Are you, are you not? What's your offing cop? How much is it increased? What's your yield? How many cruises are you selling? How many need to sell? We do that all day long. But then there's you have to overlay some set of values that transens the numbers to figure out how are you achieving those numbers? So are you doing it the right way? Your question was, you know, what if people aren't on board? You know, you're pun, you're bad pun, then they ultimately aren't going to stay. They're either going to self-select out because the environment isn't for them anymore, or we're going to have to tell them this isn't the right place for you because what I learned is your culture is only as strong as your weakest link. If you, as a leader, say, this is what we stand for, and this is what we believe in, and then you put up with it at some, in some, you know, on some link of the chain, then like credibility is shot, I've got nothing. And so believe me, I have to make some tough decisions regarding the culture that that we were needing to create and live by for people that were highly confident in what they did. At the end of the day, every decision you make either validating or invalidates who you say you are and what you stand for. You think people have a hard time with that? I mean, you work with probably tons of business leaders now after 39 years in the industry and people probably come to you for advice. Do you feel that people have a hard time pulling the trigger on on letting people go that are highly technically proficient, but do not support the company culture? Is this something that you see at, I don't know, at the level that you play at and at Fortune 500 Fortune 1000? Yeah, I do. I think that's, I think it's hard war. It's hard to make those decisions. I struggled with them. And I even struggled with people sitting with me telling me what a situation was and presenting pros and cons. But at the end of the day, as hard as it was, I had to make that decision because it was related to culture. But I do just see that. I've seen that numerous times, either throughout like rear and certainly in other companies. Even when you see what you see and you know about different companies, you think why do they do that or how do they do that? Because the bottom line is really important. The links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.