FASTCOMPANY.COM 67 WINTER 2019;2020 ILLUS TRATION BY AISTÉ S TANCIKAITÉ
Time she gets up
Between 4: 30 and
5 a.m.
First thing she does
in the morning
“I have three four-legged children.
All those things that
some parents do
for their kids, I do for
my dogs.”
Productivity tools
“I always know what I
need to be doing. I
really don’t want to
construct a to-do list,
so I just do it, and
that’s part of the reason I’m working all
the time. I don’t want
to save [it] until later.”
What she does
while commuting
“If people are calling
me from different
time zones—like the
West Coast—I’ll take
that call on the commute home. That
gives me a whole
hour to have another
meeting that I can
start at 6 p.m. In the
morning, I have a lot
of conversations with
people in Europe.
But my favorite thing
that happens every
day on my commute
is that my baby sister
calls, and we have
our daily chat, somewhere between 7: 37
and 7: 40 a.m.”
How she handles
social media
“I’m on Twitter com-
municating all the
time, and I have lots
of wonderful conver-
sations with people
through LinkedIn. I try
to manage how
many communities
I’m in, because it’s
time-consuming.
If I’m going to
engage, I really want
to engage.”
Best habit
“I try to respect people’s weekends. All of
us have such little
time [with our fami-lies]. I’m traveling
somewhere between
30% and 40% of my
time. So whenever I
can be home, I
choose to be there.
My husband is retired,
and he’s home often.
So I always want to
stay home, and he always wants to not
stay home.”
Worst habit
“I text and email in
the wee hours. I know
it’s terrible. I don’t
expect a response.
Because I’m terrible
at making lists, I just
do it in the moment—
and sometimes
the moment is not
the best moment
for those who are
receiving it.”
Last thing she
does at night
“I’m a big football fan,
so if it’s Monday
or Thursday night,
I might put the
game on—or just
rewatch my own
team’s game.”
Time she goes
to bed
9 p.m.
LISA LUTOFF-PERLO
President and CEO,
Celebrity Cruises
“IF YOU HAVEN’T RESPONDED
IN 10 MINUTES, PEOPLE
WONDER WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU.
I try to handle my email myself. I’ve found that I am a victim of my
own efficiency. When you’re [known for responding] really fast, if you
haven’t responded in 10 minutes, people wonder what happened to you.
I’m going from meeting to meeting, either every 30 minutes
or every hour—all day long. And that’s when I’m not traveling to
the ships, or around the world. Because we’re such a complicated
business, I’m resetting every 30 minutes to focus on a new topic.
And there is a whole other dimension to what we do. We were fortunate here in South Florida that we were spared the storm that wreaked
havoc in the Bahamas. We needed to mobilize and help, because they
were helpless. They’re our friends, our neighbors. We canceled our
guests’ last port of call [in Nassau] in favor of going to Freeport, and they
were so understanding. In three days, we served 50,000 meals. Our dining room was full of all of our guests helping our crew pack the meals
that the kitchen had prepared, and there was this big assembly line. One
great part of my business is the humanity that we see and the people
we get to know because of what we do. —As told to Pavithra Mohan
