Latest news with #StephanieMehta
Fast Company
12-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Maura Healey and Christina Romer reflect on how business can be more like government—yes, government
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I'm Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Long before the Trump administration tapped Elon Musk to cut federal costs and headcount via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), business leaders and politicians have been trying to find ways to make government leaner, less bureaucratic, and more like a well-run corporation. In 1982, Ronald Reagan asked J. Peter Grace, CEO of W.R. Grace & Co., to lead a private sector committee to root our government waste. While campaigning for the presidency in 1992, Bill Clinton promised to 'radically change the way government operates—to shift from top-down bureaucracy to entrepreneurial government.' The notion that federal agencies and programs can be run more like businesses has animated the Oval Office aspirations of executives such as Michael Bloomberg, Howard Schultz, and Doug Burgum. Public-sector playbooks for CEOs But are there lessons that executives in the private sector can learn from their public counterparts? Businesses certainly have benefitted from government; tech companies owe a debt to DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, for funding the predecessor to the internet, for example. Local governments can be particularly good at empowering employees at all levels to innovate, something that can confound large corporations. Rick Wartzman and Lawrence Greenspun, when they were with the Drucker Institute, shared the story of how a single front-line employee and two-middle managers in South Bend, Indiana, streamlined the city's application for tax-abatement to four pages from 22 and moved the process online. The mayor who challenged them to innovate? Pete Buttigieg, who went on to become U.S. Secretary of Transportation during the Biden administration. Government has produced and shaped other notable leaders, including Christina Romer, the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration; and Maura Healey, the current governor of Massachusetts, whom I happened to interview last week at Think 2025, IBM's annual event for senior business and technology leaders (Fast Company was a strategic media partner at Think). At a time when many forces are pushing government entities to be more like businesses, I asked both of them to reflect on what business can learn from government. Here's what they had to say: Maura Healey, governor, Massachusetts: 'Nobody has ever asked me that question. In many ways, government can do better by operating like a business, but in other cases that just doesn't hold. Government is the place where things have to get done that the market isn't going to do. As governor, I have to be attentive to the needs of seven million residents, some of whom voted for me and some of whom didn't, many of whom have competing interests. In government you have to find a way to account for all of that. It gets messy; it gets noisy; but at the end, it helps in terms of productive policy formulation when you have that kind of stakeholder incorporation. 'For purposes of creating a better world—I think in big terms—a world where there is an abundance of energy, of housing, of healthcare, of transportation, of economic opportunity and prosperity for every child, it has to come from a broader lens than sometimes might be incentivized by the bottom line.' Christina Romer, professor emerita, Graduate Division, University of California at Berkeley, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers: 'Government policymaking is often chided for being slow, and it can indeed be frustratingly bureaucratic and incremental. But 'moving fast and breaking things' is not what Social Security recipients want when they are waiting for their checks or what the public expects when the FAA is reconfiguring flight patterns and deciding control-tower staffing. At their best, government actions are carefully researched, broadly vetted, and deliberately implemented. This approach wouldn't work in every business setting, but it could certainly help prevent many bad decisions and unintended consequences. 'Something else that impressed me during my time in government was the high quality of government workers. Far from being the lazy, overpaid bureaucrats they are often caricatured to be, I found government workers to be knowledgeable, hard-working, and committed to serving the public. Businesses would certainly benefit if they could generate that kind of loyalty and passion in their workers.' Good enough for government work Are you a business leader who has worked in government? What did you learn from your experiences in the public sector? Send your stories to me at stephaniemehta@ I may include insights in a future newsletter.
Fast Company
05-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Royal Caribbean CEO Jason Liberty says despite economic uncertainty, his company has wind in its sails
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I'm Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. CEOs and other business leaders are scrambling to understand how customers might respond to financial uncertainty brought on by tariffs and other factors roiling the markets. Early signs are not great: the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index in April fell for the fourth straight month, and the Conference Board's April Expectations Index, which measures short-term outlook each month, dropped to its lowest level since October 2011. In the travel industry, some executives are bracing for a hard landing: Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, and Alaska Air recently withdrew 2025 earnings guidance, while United Airlines took the unusual step of offering two sets of profit guidance, depending on whether or not the U.S. enters a recession. A shipshape outlook So, what to make of cruise company Royal Caribbean Group's rosy forecast? In late April, the company reported better-than-expected first quarter earnings and increased the midpoint of its full-year guidance for adjusted earnings by 3.8 %. (Rival Carnival Corp. also beat earnings expectations and boosted guidance, but Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings missed its numbers and signaled softening demand.) In 2024, Royal Caribbean Group reported net income of $2.9 billion on revenue of $16.5 billion. CEO Jason Liberty says his cautiously optimistic outlook validates the consumer's appetite for experiences. 'They treasure vacations, and they're going to lean more [into experiences] than into buying stuff,' he says. Indeed, consumer discretionary spending on experiences, which fell dramatically during the pandemic, has reached an all-time high, according to McKinsey & Co., while spending on 'things,' which ticked up during lockdown, is down again. (Not surprisingly, the pandemic was a low point for the travel industry; Royal Caribbean voluntarily suspended cruise operations and reported a loss of $5.8 billion in 2020.) Experiences aren't recession-proof, of course, and they're not immune to tariff impacts. The United States Tour Operators Association, a travel trade organization, says its research arm predicts that higher import taxes will result in price inflation and declines in tourist sentiment, particularly among international travelers to the U.S. Royal Caribbean's own data, fielded in April, found that 7 out of 10 consumers intend to spend the same or more on leisure travel in the coming 12 months, and that 9 out of 10 consumers are looking for value when making vacation plans. Steady as she goes Liberty is quick to point out that 'value' is different from 'low-budget.' Rather, he says, travelers may value the convenience of being able to access dining and entertainment in the same place, or they may appreciate being able to see multiple destinations in one trip. And Royal Caribbean, which operates cruises under the Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Silversea brands, is adding more experiences to its portfolio. In December, the company will open its first Royal Beach Club, an all-inclusive property in the Bahamas that its passengers can access via an island day pass that's part of a plan to grow from two to seven private destinations by 2027. Liberty says Royal Caribbean doesn't compare itself to other cruise companies; the company aspires to measure up to travel destinations known for their dining, amenities, and activities. 'If you look at our Oasis Class ships or Perfect Day'—a private island with a water park and a zipline, multiple pools, and separate section for adults—'you may ask: 'why did they go there?' We went there to take share from Orlando,' he says. Some ships have added Broadway shows and enhanced gaming activities to compete with Las Vegas, Liberty adds. And while a cruise isn't exactly for the budget-conscious consumer—travelers pay $576 per person for a three-night getaway on Royal Caribbean's Utopia of the Seas, with fares climbing to $6,350 per person for a 12-day trip around the Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean on Silversea's Silver Dawn—Liberty notes that Royal Caribbean travel is about 20% cheaper than comparable land-based experiences. If water slides, gaming rooms, and cabarets seem like a lot to fit on a ship, keep in mind that Royal Caribbean's Oasis Class ships, for example, are more than 1,000 feet long and can accommodate 5,600 guests. 'These are floating cities,' Liberty says. 'Everything that can happen in the city happens on a ship. Everything you have to plan for on a city, whether it's power, whether it's sanitation, whether medical—and then all the experiences that take place—we've got to be able to do that.' What's your experience? Is your company in the experience business? Are you seeing any softness in consumer demand as a result of bearish sentiment? Or are you, like Royal Caribbean's Liberty, cautiously optimistic? Send your thoughts to me at stephaniemehta@ I'd like to share your examples in a future newsletter.
