Good morning,
Running an airline during a pandemic is tough enough. But Delta’s Ed Bastian made it more challenging by also becoming the poster boy for conservative politicians and journalists decrying “woke” CEOs. Bastian first landed in their crosshairs in 2018 by cancelling a discount program for NRA members after the Parkland high school shootings. Then the real attacks came in 2021, when he criticized Georgia’s proposed new voting rules, which were seen by many as an effort to depress Black voter turnout.
Many of his fellow CEOs looked at the attacks on Bastian and privately vowed not to follow in his footsteps. But he is unbowed. In an interview with Michal Lev-Ram and me on Fortune's Leadership Next, here’s what he had to say about the episode:
“Our goal is to keep ourselves out of the headlines. We don’t want to be seen as politicians. We want our customers to love us…But there are times where the values you stand for, particularly for your employees, matter. And you need to be their voice…And what I’ve learned is if you are always clear about who you are, and what your company stands for, when those times come, it’s appropriate to speak up in the right way.
“And no, I don’t regret it. What I did wasn’t fun. It was an awful, awful experience…But we stood by our people, which was the most important…Our African American community felt targeted, and we are the largest employer of Black Americans in the state of Georgia.”
You can listen to the full interview on Apple or Spotify.
Separately, which companies on the Fortune 500 do the best job of driving purpose through their organization? That’s a question our partners at Indiggo have attempted to answer with their new Return on Leadership ranking. The data mavens at Indiggo use a wide array of publicly available information in an attempt to measure a company’s clear and meaningful purpose, its strategic clarity based on that purpose, the alignment of its top leaders around that purpose and strategy, and focused action in support of that purpose and strategy.
The top-rated companies? In order:
1. Microsoft
2. IBM
3. Cisco
4. Thermo Fisher Scientific
5. Pfizer
6. Deere
7. Coca-Cola
8. HCA Healthcare
9. Elevance Health
10. UPS
You can find the full list here. Indiggo’s research also found that those companies with high ROL rankings also demonstrated better economic outcomes, stronger employee experiences and better external impact. More on that here.
Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
