STARTUPCENTRAL

Speaking this week at Semafor’s World Economy Summit, Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan said his team dropped a finalist for a high-level post after noticing the candidate treated a front-desk employee poorly. The person had performed well in formal interviews with executives, but a single negative interaction with building staff prompted the airline to move on. Jordan framed the decision as part of a broader hiring approach that prizes humility and putting colleagues’ needs

A Washington farm taught one CEO that steady, season-by-season attention and protecting core assets matter more than flashy moves — lessons he brought to building a calling platform for sales teams. I learned leadership among rows of concord grapes long before I ever ran a software company. The farm where I grew up sprawled across hundreds of acres southeast of Seattle, and my teenage summers were spent cutting back vines, fixing trellises and watching weather windows for the

Many executives assume stalled work means teams need more briefings. The bigger problem is that decisions often leave meetings without a clearly named owner, and that gap turns momentum into muddled action. Too often a major program gets signed off inside the executive room and everyone walks away thinking the job will proceed. Months later, teams are still asking questions that should have been resolved. One unit treats the outcome as direction, another treats it as optional