3BL Blog

Imagine. An airline people actually like to fly. A low-fare carrier that provides friendly service as well as such amenities as leather seats, live TV, XM radio and unlimited snacks. That’s JetBlue. JetBlue also makes money. That alone makes it an anomaly in the dismal airline business.

Those friendly flight attendants, ticket-takers, reservations agents, grounds personnel and pilots (at least a couple who I met) are, as it happens, the key to the success of JetBlue. That was my takeaway after spending some time with the company and its people for a story about JetBlue and its CEO, Dave Barger, that I wrote in the current issue of FORTUNE. It’s part of my year-long series for the magazine on FORTUNE 500 companies.

Here’s how it begins:

Welcome aboard,” says the CEO of JetBlue Airways. “I’m Dave. It’s a first-name-basis airline. My door is open.”

It’s a steamy Florida morning, and Dave Barger, a 51-year-old airline-industry lifer, is addressing a new class of about 160 students at JetBlue University, the airline’s training center next to Orlando’s airport.

In a few days, after a brief history of the airline (it was originally going to be called Taxi), a thorough immersion in its core values (safety, integrity, caring, passion, and fun), a sobering analysis of industry economics (including the meaning of VFR, CASM, and BELF), and mundane sessions on uniforms and employee benefits, these new crew members will go to work as ticket takers, baggage handlers, and ground crew at some of the 56 airports served by JetBlue (JBLU).

The Japanese are one big family, it is often said. Small trends and changes in the family mood are amplified and exaggerated in the press--no matter if the trends are real or imagined. In fact, there is a whole industry, involving TV commentators, the print press, social scientists, and small businesses, that taps into these blips. One of the most salient trends I detected during my recent trip to Japan (visiting Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kushiro) was a subtle shift in the attitudes of young women toward gender equity.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story about a new trend in Japan--again whether it is real or imagined is debatable. The article (titled "With Jobs Scarce in Japan, Women Become Professional Flirts") said that some women are choosing to become hostesses in order to survive during the recession and that the image of hostessing as a job has gained some respectability. The article's sensational photo featured a single mother who works as a hostess (oh no, Japan's mothers are becoming prostitutes!).

I asked a Japanese friend, who is an MBA candidate in Japan, about this article and she said that the deeper issue is that single women in their late 20s and 30s are kicking up their search for financial stability. This drive includes doing previously shunned jobs or searching for husbands by engaging in "kon katsu" or "marriage hunting," which includes the use of websites that help women find men. Given the U.S. media's fondness for exoticizing Japan, what are we to make of this new trend? During my recent trip, I was eager to find out.

After talking with many people during this trip, my view is that this trend is both much ado about nothing and much ado about something very subtle, but not necessarily what one would expect on the surface. Keep in mind my view is based on conversations only, not quantitative analysis.

I just saw my old friend and former colleague Mieko Nakabayashi. She is now a bright star in the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) who is running to represent Kanagawa's first district in Japan's lower house in the Aug. 30 national election. In many ways, she epitomizes Japan's opposition the DPJ: She is hard-working, innovative, and conservative on budget issues.

Mieko was doing "yuudachi" (evening campaigning at subway stations, targeting people coming home from work). This aspect of Japanese elections is the core of democracy here; the candidate and her staff burst on to the public squares near commuter railway stations to make the case for their candidacy. A DPJ politician who introduced Mieko harshly criticized former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's deceptive administration, which he said only focused on postal reform. Today is the first official day of Mieko's campaign and she is working from 6am to 9pm each day to get her message out:

True to her unique background working on budget issues at the U.S. Senate years ago, she is a blue dog (in fact, her campaign color is marine blue, a link to Yokohama's maritime culture), fiscal conservative. In line with the top pillar of the DPJ platform, her key message is, Japan must stop wasting money. It is already the most in debt rich country in the world. Like the GOP in the United States, Mieko compared Japan's budget to a household, asking passersby whether they would feel OK with running a household with such high levels of debt (to income).

This time around I want to share some thoughts and ideas that came up for me this week about CSR and the conversations we have about it (and as a preview, if you keep reading, you’ll get to hear what Elvis Presley thinks of sustainability).

The other day I had the chance to sit in on a conference call and presentation hosted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business Office of Executive Education and their Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability (BSES) program. Part presentation and part sales pitch for the upcoming BSES in October, the webinar entitled “...