The value of character: in conversation with oneworld CEO, Nat Pieper, at the World Aviation Festival

In the second of James Parker’s fireside chats at the World Aviation Festival in Lisbon, he spoke to the oneworld leader about his vision for the company, what’s in store for the airline, and his approach to talent strategy.

Nat Pieper has been building and coaching teams his whole life. Whether it’s been playing for them, training his daughter’s sports clubs, or assembling talent in aviation, the main thing he looks for is character. ‘You cannot teach it, and for me, it’s non-negotiable,’ he says. ‘I want the highest-character people that we can find, and then you balance that with the second ‘C,’ which is competency. Ideally, you’re shooting for 100% grades in both – but we can develop competency. Character, I can’t teach.’

He knows whereof he speaks. Over the course of a long career in aviation – having been CEO of oneworld at the time of the event, Nat has now just been announced as CCO of American Airlines – he has had plenty of experience building out strong teams with an emphasis on providing stellar customer service. He explained his vision to our Aviation Director James Parker during their fireside chat at the recent World Aviation Festival in Lisbon, which highlighted and focused on oneworld’s blueprint for providing unified and elevated customer experience. Read on for a summary of their conversation.

Aviation in a globalised world

Nat has more than 25 years of experience in aviation, spread more or less evenly across alliance work, core finance, and ‘all sorts of things airplane-based.’ His career has taken him all over the globe, including stints at leading carriers Northwest, Delta, and Alaska prior to his becoming CEO at oneworld. The company celebrated its 25^th anniversary last year, and currently comprises Alaska, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Fiji Airways, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Oman Air, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian, and SriLankan Airlines. Having grown from five founding members, the alliance now covers some 95% of global aviation demand. ‘The game has now changed. How do you deliver this virtual global network across 15 members to guests as if it’s operated by just one?’ Nat asks. ‘That’s the key to the customer experience.’

Digital unity

Technology is central to this approach, with Nat revealing that oneworld is in the latter stages of developing what he calls ‘a common digital platform.’ This programme, which oneworld is working on with the assistance of Deloitte, connects each member airline to a core hub to share customer and journey data consolidated in one location across the various different carriers.

For Nat, this digital integration is very much the future of aviation. He compares his ‘dinosaur’ 84-year-old father – who always wants a paper printout of his ticket and to speak to a human when checking in – with his 24-year-old daughter, ‘who doesn’t want to talk to a human at all. She wants to look at her phone and use one app for the entire connection journey.’ Catering to both customer experience types is a challenge for oneworld, though Nat predicts that his daughter’s preference will be the default a decade from now.

A unified approach

You might think that applying consistency at an alliance comprising 15 carriers across the world is not easy; what works in the US might not in, for instance, Qatar. Nat explains that oneworld manages through close collaboration across the various airlines, with a governing board and chairs placed on two-year terms. ‘Collectively, with that group, they’re very clear with me that my task is to figure out ways to deliver value to member airlines,’ he says.

Strategic discussions among the board always come back to customer experience. After the common digital platform, the next step for the group is moving into revenue ancillary products, ‘whether it’s bag tracking, buying paid seats on other airlines – CEOs really buy into that,’ Nat notes.

Close collaboration

He has been in the job for 18 months and meets the CEOs of oneworld’s member airlines twice a year. The first of these occasions came just 60 days into Nat’s tenure, so he did a whistlestop tour to meet most of the leadership teams in person before presenting to them. ‘What I wanted to understand was, how does the alliance help you win?’ he recalls. The three main points he took from these conversations – customer experience, digital, and initiatives at scale – he then presented to the CEOs.

In self-deprecating fashion, Nat took the fact that his company keycard was still working the day after that presentation to be a good sign; the various airline leaders were on board with his vision, despite offering little or no feedback in the moment. However, creating the structure to allow this was another story.

Talent strategy

Nat and some trusted colleagues took three months to come up with organisational pillars, which they then presented to oneworld leaders again before the part he considers most important: ‘I needed to hire a rock star to lead each of these things: a customer experience VP, a digital leader, a communications and marketing leader, finance – across the board, it meant going out and doing that.’ 

This is where Nat’s insistence on character truly came to the fore, helping him to build a team to take oneworld to the next level. ‘Whatever we’re doing, we’ve got to then sell it to the 15 global cultures and CEOs in the alliance team. You can’t be worrying about ego number three or infighting.’ He admits to being choosy, but this is just as important to Nat as his belief in personal integrity – not to mention his vision that the alliance should be a truly innovative place to work, rather than the kind end-of career post that such roles might previously have been associated with.

There’s lots for Nat to look forward to, from further digital innovation and loyalty programmes to sustainability initiatives, and he’s only getting started. After all, his keycard still works – ‘so we must be doing something right.’

The Venari Partners Aviation team would like to thank Nat for his time at this wonderful event, and for choosing to work with Venari Partners to build his team at oneworld; we truly appreciate the partnership.

If you would like to discuss talent strategy for your airline, please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.