A case study of the airline’s talent strategy.
In December 2020, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and his leadership team were deciding whether or not to commit to recruiting, hiring, training, and advancing one million Black Americans into stable, well-paid jobs over the next decade, as part of the OneTen coalition.
on the HBR Podcast Network. Linda Hill’s research focuses on leadership development, building agile, innovative organizations, and implementing global strategies, and she is a first timer onBRIAN KENNY: It’s a great case, I think that … People are talking so much in business circles about DEI these days, but clearly, it’s a subject that has been around for decades and longer, and one that needs to be addressed in a whole multitude of different ways.
BRIAN KENNY: Everybody’s familiar with Delta Air Lines, we’ve probably all flown them at some point or another. It’s a mammoth organization, and so, addressing those kinds of questions within Delta, I would imagine has its own set of challenges. They’ve been around for a long time, though, and I was interested to see in the case that this has always been sort of part of the culture of the place. Can you talk a little bit about the founder, who was C.E.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. The case talks about the virtuous circle leadership philosophy. Can you describe that? Because I think it’s important. BRIAN KENNY: We’ve heard a lot about what leaders and companies have been doing since the murder of George Floyd, but what I found interesting about this was that Ed started to move down this road well before the murder of George Floyd. He started to pay attention to this. So what were some of the early DEI steps that they started to take? And at this point, the case introduces Keyra Lynn Johnson, who was chosen to lead these efforts.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, and it certainly sounds like Ed is the right person to be at the helm in that situation. Well, let’s talk about when the pandemic hits, because they’re getting some momentum, they’re making some progress on the DEI initiative, and then, the rest of the world, everything sort of hits the brakes because of the pandemic.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And some of our listeners might remember, we discussed a case by Professor Kash Rangan about OneTen when they first launched a couple of years ago. And so, Delta was one of the several major firms that signed on at the Kens’ insistence. They were pretty convincing to participate in this initiative, and it certainly made a lot of sense, in the case of Delta, in particular. You mentioned earlier that the E didn’t become part of the DEI until a little bit later on.
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