YouSaid · the spoken record

Mario Harik

lines on the record: 112
first: 2026-04-14
most recent: 2026-04-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Much larger terminal, much more space than much less space. So we effectively use data to identify all of these markets, and then we mapped their network onto our network, and we found 28 properties. And for each one of them, then we created a business plan. We created a business plan that says how much efficiency are we going to get in that market. If we are capacity constrained today and we have a 5% market share in that market and our company's market share in the industry is about 10%, how can we grow from 5% beyond that? And what would be the financial flow through the income effectively associated with growing in that particular market? And we were able to effectively identify 28 properties that were the ones that we wanted to buy. And we ended up spending nearly a billion dollars on that real estate. And it was a remarkable acquisition because effectively it's now giving us the runway. So one, it made us much more efficient. They won in those markets. We were able to improve operating margins dramatically. That's not the only reason why, but that was part of the reason. But more importantly, that capacity now is enabling us to capitalize on what could be an industrial.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How much do you buy and what markets do you buy them in? How do you justify the return you're going to get on the capital that you are deploying? One of the things I learned from Brad very early on as a CEO, one of your most important part of the job is to make sure that you are allocating capital in a way that can create the most amount of shareholder value over time. Now when yellow went bankrupt, we started looking at, well, okay, if we look, what is the data telling us? based on different markets, where are we falling short on capacity? Which market is growing that we have X amount of doors, X amount of physical space? And if we look at the growth trajectory of that market, we're going to run out of capacity. And we analyze that in all the markets that we operate in. And we knew that the larger the terminals we buy, the better it is because you can get higher efficiency in those markets if you have a”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of our large competitors went bankrupt in 2023. Very sad, obviously, for the company and for the folks involved. But at the same time, as a less than truckload network, one of the most important forms of capacity to grow and service the customer is the terminal network that you have. So how large are your buildings? And some of these buildings here are a mile-long dock, effectively. So very, very large facilities. having enough capacity in key market is incredibly important and it's very hard to be able to permit and build a large trucking terminal. So effectively when yellow went bankrupt, all of that real estate came up for sale and we had to figure out well how much we want to buy and in what markets we want to buy. So in that particular case now as a new CEO going in there, the question is”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of whatever area you're looking at, and the rest that is involved with it, it changes your perspective of how to deal with risk. But I'd say I have a very analytical view of risk, but I lean towards being more risk-averse than risk-taking. And I do think part of the upbringing, but more importantly, my engineering education is what kind of governs some of that approach.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, keep in mind I was very young at the time, so when you're very young, you're still developing and forming, but it's really when you get to your teens is when you start thinking differently about different levers and risk. I think overall I would probably put myself in the more risk averse category, but I think that's more of my engineering type education, whereas an engineer, you're always assessing risk or you're trying to quantify everything that you are dealing with. So when you look at risk, you're looking at all the information, all the data behind that risk, and you're assigning a probability of what the probability of that risk materializing. Now, if you're only looking at the downside, it's very easy to say, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to go there because that's too risky. However, if you look at the upside and your probability adjust the upside,”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Us with every child want to have in that childhood, which is love, which is a lot of support and a very loving environment. But also we had to flee the country because of the war. We lived in multiple countries. We lived in Egypt for a while. We lived here in Canada for a while. So it's good to be back in ROI. I haven't been back in almost 35 years to Ottawa, but I spent a portion of my childhood here as well. But all of these experiences, at least what they gave me, is a different perspective. When you interact with different cultures and different people, it really teaches you how to look at things from different perspectives. Everybody's going to have a different lens how to look at a certain solution or a certain problem, at a certain, you know, whatever it is that you're dealing with. And I find a lot of entrenchment in that. I seek other points of view and part of it was because I grew up in this environment and I got to see multiple cultures along the way as we live in different countries.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I grew up in Lebanon in the 80s during that time, the country was at war. And it's remarkable to look back at those times because I remember many, many, many nights where at night we wouldn't sleep at home. We would actually be sleeping in a shelter, in a bomb shelter. And it was a period of time for the country that was a very, very dark period of time. Now, my brothers and I were very lucky because we had parents who were unbelievable. They provided us a beautiful childhood that was surrounded with love. And although the world around us was crazy, we actually were not impacted to a certain extent. But you're still obviously dealing with the trauma of war around you. So it teaches you a lot about how when you're under pressure, it's one thing to be in a bomb shelter and your neighborhood is getting bombed versus any other type of pressure you're seeing in business or in life. But we were lucky that our parents created again a cocoon to a certain extent of safety and gave”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Able to be stuck in a local maximum in whatever area of expertise it is. So when I think about ego, I think it's a shortcoming in somebody's framework of thinking where they think effectively that their knowledge, their skills are the best they can be and that prevents them from being able to break through and wanting to learn more and ask more questions as opposed to tell more about a certain area of expertise.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when that happens and business as in life, it creates a ceiling that then doesn't allow you to create more value to get to better outcomes. So I remember at the time, a few years later, I came to MIT in Boston to do my graduate studies in engineering. And I met programmers that were 50 times better, that just had beautiful minds, how they thought about things, how they problem solved. And that taught me that I'm actually, I'm a good programmer, but I'm no way close to being a great programmer. And that taught me humility. It actually enabled me that then suddenly it opens up many, many doors because suddenly you're saying, well, I might be good at this. However, wow, like look at these other people, how they're approaching that problem in a very different way. And that humility enables you to then learn more and be able to break through ceilings and always get better and not be.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when I get to college and I went for my undergrad degree in Lebanon, in the country of Lebanon at the American University of Beirut, where I thought I was the best programmer that has ever existed because I was doing it, I was training on it. And I used to love writing beautiful code, efficient code. And I used to think I'm really good at it. So naturally, in my mind, what ego is, you think that you're so good at something that you stop learning.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to give you a personal experience. So I started coding in the early 90s. I was a young kid and I built a passion for it. And over time, I started with Basic on a Commodore 64. And then over time, I had an older brother who studied computer engineering. So then in my, you know, call it early to mid-teens, I used to read all of his books. So I became so passionate about programming that I used to spend the lion's share of my time.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Example, they don't go deep enough into their area of expertise. An example could be how they manage their team members. An example could be that they were effectively being very critical of the people that they worked with over a long period of time. An example can be how they switch jobs and why they switch jobs. So many of these could be examples of things that people identify. Part of it could be also that they are, that they have an ego. They're not a kind person. They're not going to treat their teammates or people who work for them with respect. All of these would come up in that feedback if they are obviously on the negative side. And I think it's very important to be in tune not to try to brush these things under a rug at the contrary to actually take them out and test for them and figure out, is this going to be a deal breaker? Is this going to be the reason why somebody's going to fail after you hire them?”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I also get, before I actually do my interviews about a 50-page document on a person based on the notes of every single person who interviewed them. And I usually take subjectivity out of it and I look at every area that somebody has identified as potentially being an issue. And I very objectively assess it. And a lot of times what people have identified as potential areas of issues end up being the reason why somebody fails at work. So I look at these and then in my interviews I try to double click on those areas as well to make sure that they don't, that person has a shortcoming that could detract from being able to create value or raise the vibe of the team.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Questions that they looked at that work and how they think about that personal life versus that work life. I find the best professionals, you don't have a distinction between the two to a certain extent. Work as part of life the same way that life is part of work. So effectively it's a circle. You do these things in a very interchangeable way, whether you're spending your time with your family or you're spending time at work. All of these are very intertwined in how a person lives that life. So I tend to see how they perceive work, how they look at actually work as a part of life. And then I always apply the airport test after spending an hour or a few hours with a person. If I get stuck with that person in an airport, am I going to enjoy that time or they? Do they bring the vibe up? Did I felt uplifted after that interview or that I felt emotionally down? But that's the structure of the interview. And for some of the rules, by the way, I go also around intellectual questions to be able to test their intellect, how smart they are. But then after all of that is done.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Revenue at your last company. I asked them questions of how did you structure your sales force? How did you manage leads? How did you manage your pipeline? How do you convert your pipeline? How did you manage revenue realization? So I go deeper, much deeper. How did you manage account plans? And if somebody's not doing it, what were your targets for face-to-face meetings for your sellers per day? A lot of these, when you start double and triple clicking, you get a much different perspective about how all in was a person in their subject matter. And the deeper you go, the more you actually get a really good perspective, not only asking the headline question, but double clicking and triple clicking and quadruple clicking, because now you can actually get, yep, this person was fully in command and had that area locked tight in terms of that understanding of it. In terms of testing for seriousness or dedication or hard work, that's a bit harder to do. But I also ask a lot of questions.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're hard workers? Are they somebody who, when they go to work, do they take it very seriously? Do they put in the hours? Do they wake up every day thinking about how can I do my job in a more effective way? And then number three would be, are they a kind person? Are they somebody who's going to raise the vibe of the team? Are they a loving person? Are they somebody who would love their employees and their teammates and the company and the customers and the shareholders? Are they somebody who has, again, was going to raise the vibe of the team or somebody's going to take away from that? And usually whether it's being collegial, whether it's being humble and having a thirst for knowledge, all of these fall in that category of the personal side and how they will fit with the rest of the team. So when I interview people, I test for all of these pieces. So let's say you're interviewing somebody who oversees sales. I usually go very deep in my interviews. So I don't just ask them, well, how have you grown?”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great question because in business, one of the most important levers that you have is who's part of the team. Who are the individuals who ultimately are working together to deliver a great amount of value? And as a public company, your number one goal is to creating shareholder value. But going back to how you interview, for every person on the team, there are certain levers based on their skill set, on their role, but one would be what is their technical ability. And technical ability, in my mind, has a components of their actual core skill set or their core job. Number two could be their intellect, how smart they are. Number three could be the passion that they have for said area that they are responsible for. But there's an area around the technical know-how, skill set, experience. Number two is”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Typically, the last part of the meeting that I personally like to do is actually have everybody give their takeaways. And what I find fascinating is that everybody, then as they walk through it, you can see how they interpreted everything that they heard. And I always find it very fascinating to see what every person took away. And I usually do it in two ways. What are your broader takeaways? But then what are you going to do differently as a person coming out of this? But this is, again, for the larger type meetings. But usually for smaller meetings, it could be just walking through the action items we discussed, or it could be at the end of the discussion, we got to where we needed to get to.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Elaborate or involved type sessions where you're spending two to three days with the team to change your strategy. And that particular case, we use AI and then we send back out the action items and then we effectively use that to inform or change the levers of our strategy. But then you still have to summarize them and come up with the key themes in terms of how we address that. So depending for something that elaborate where you're spending a lot of brain power over a few days to potentially change the direction we're going in as a company, we use AI extensively for those kind of sessions. If we're having a weekly staff meeting where we are actually going through the key KPIs, how they perform for the prior week, how they are performing month to day, how they are performing quarter to date, obviously AI becomes a bit less important because even the actions that come out of those meetings typically are a handful where it's very easily understood that, okay, I'm going to take this and do something about it.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think overall, so if you look at late last year, typically on a once a year basis, we get together the team and then we walk through the strategic levers that we have as an organization and we give ourselves a score, an assessment. How did we do in this area, that area, that area. But then we think about how should we evolve the strategy? Should we do something different when it comes to that part?”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depending on the meetings, not all of them we use AI, but any type of structured meeting where we are discussing effectively, say, an operating review, we do use AI to both take notes and summarize the meetings. And in many cases, we send back out the takeaways to the team so they actually get to see what was discussed and what were the key things that we focused on as a team. But I would say for any meeting where it's more structured, where you have more attendees, et cetera, then I'd say it's consistent how we use AI. If it's a small get together to figure out something that we get a status update or a progress update, then we might not use AI for that.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because what you don't want by giving your perspective somebody, somebody who's junior on the team who might have fantastic insights is going to be biased to think as part of the group. So usually the more junior people get to speak first so they can actually, we can hear their perspective there as well.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mismanage it or that director level person or maybe individual contributor who have a long runaway and they're impressed by them and how this is what they are seeing in the performance of that particular person. And I think this is a more effective way because you get a wider perspective from a group of people, specifically about talent development as opposed to the small window by which you're evaluating content, you're evaluating takeaways, and you're evaluating questions. By the way, also Shannon, one other thing that you mentioned that I do in those meetings is I have this For me personally, I call it Round Robins, but where people either give a question or a takeaway, if let's say it was a meeting where we didn't submit those ahead of time, I always subscribe to the fact that the senior folks, including myself, I always speak last. I always ask, give my takeaways or my questions at the end of the meeting to make sure that there's no biased thinking. I think Jeff Bezos had a similar perspective where always you speak at the end as a lead.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You definitely can use it for identifying talent, but I do think generally to identify talent, you need much more touch points than just a takeaway or a question. And the way we think about talent development is a lot of touch points. So for example, a lot of companies do performance reviews once a year or maybe twice a year. I don't believe in that. I think performance reviews should be done on a daily and weekly basis. You got to give a person feedback that what you're doing here is fantastic and what you're doing here needs improvement. But at the same time, doing it on a constant basis, you can identify also who's trending in the right direction, what their core skills are, where they need to improve, how they're improving, and you can identify talent that way. But also we have leadership team discussions about talent that goes beyond the first few layers of the company, about who is up-and-coming talent. So then members of the leadership team can give their feedback on.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they're all giving you feedback on whether it's a takeaway that they saw from what you are all the information you sent out or what a question that they want to ask. Then when these takeaways and questions are ranked, this is where the magic happens because now automatically every person in the senior leadership team understands what are the good things and the bad things in that particular subject matter. They also understand based on the questions that they saw, well, that's interesting. I saw that's a person ask about this and this and this. I didn't see that in the information. I didn't see that in the data. So now the group of people who are in that meeting can contribute in a much more effective way because they're getting the wisdom of the team, the wisdom of the crowd, and how they are actually doing it.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in that particular case for our operating reviews, typically we schedule those on a monthly basis and a week ahead of the meeting, we send all the material out. And then we send a survey that has in it where every person can submit what their top takeaways were, and they can submit what their top questions to ask during the meeting as well. And then we send another survey once we get all this information back where every attendee of the meeting gets to rank from a scale of 1 to 10, what they believe is the most important takeaway and what they believe is the most important question. Now, I'll tell you, Shane, what's fascinating? Because think about it this way. Let's say I run pricing at our company. The people attending an operating reviews are not necessarily only pricing people. You have sales people, you have operators, you have technology folks, finance folks, HR folks. So they're looking at all of your data and all of your content.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Constructive conversation. And the third area is to be it's okay to disagree. And actually, this agreement is encouraged, but you have to do it respectfully. You have to do it in a way focusing on the problem, on the information, not on the person, not on the subjective. And I find these kind of create a framework of freely constructive meetings where at the end of them, we're solving real problems of how we can make the numbers better and how we can improve service and how we can improve employee satisfaction. And it leads to a much better outcome there as well.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then the other one is takeaways based on the material that we sent out. What were your key takeaways? Good effective use of time because everybody's engaged and contributing the agenda of the meeting. What are the key topics? What are the biggest levers that we can be driving to make said area that is covered in the meeting be a better area over time? For other meetings where we effectively don't have the time to send the information ahead of time or it's a brainstorming meeting as an example, it's typically whoever again is responsible for a given area, they start by reviewing predominantly data information in some cases it's an Excel spreadsheet. In some cases about the thing that we're trying to solve for and then everybody contributes to it. And there are a few things that usually I do in meetings. One, there's a rule of not using devices and being focused on the person speaking. Number two, only one person speaks at a time. So there is something very powerful of giving somebody your full attention and listening to what they are saying because that leads to a much more”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends on the meeting. Different meetings have different structures. But generally, every meeting starts with obviously every meeting has a certain set of goals. Usually a lot of our meeting starts by being very grounded in data where we send all the materials ahead of time to the meeting attendees. Now, not every meeting is that way, but if you think about monthly operating reviews or weekly staff meetings, all of these are effectively the material is sent ahead of time, which has a lot of information going back to what I mentioned about the KPIs, about every KPI, how it's trending, and then reviewing the action plans associated with making that KPI get to a better outcome for the company as a whole. And we also source, depending on the meeting, in some cases we source questions ahead of time from all the attendees of the meeting, and they actually get to rank those questions in terms of importance. And there are two things that we do.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Overall, the response is very good, but there's a reason for that. It all depends what you do with the information. It all depends what you do with it. If let's say somebody causes a damage and you're coaching them and telling them where they went wrong and how they can do better, that's a very uplifting experience. Let's say I've been on the job for three months or six months. I've been trained, but at the same time it still takes that muscle memory to be better that enables us to coach and train that person, how they can be better at what they do. And usually people, when they get better, they actually see that very, very positively as well. So I think it all depends how you use the information. If you use it just to hold people accountable and have a very strict set of rules, then of course you're not going to have a lot of satisfaction with that. If you're using it as a way to elevate your team, to coach them, to teach them how to do things in a better way, that can be very uplifting.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The supervisors have a system as well, very modern platform, all proprietary, our own engineers build these solutions where effectively they can see then the performance across the entire workforce or a certain shift and how they can actually manage that more effectively.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the way we make it work and we implemented those tools as well. And that's one thing everybody goes to work every day wanting to do a good job. And when you get feedback and positive reinforcement, obviously you're going to do it in a more effective way. But every time one of our drivers or doc workers scans a pallet on the dock, they automatically see two dials on their handheld. The first one tells them what their productivity is versus their peers. So they can see effectively if you had 10 people working the dog or day number one or are they number five. And if you're number one, there's a lot of bragging rights that go along with that. But that's more on the productivity side. And then the second dial shows them how many damages they could have caused by either not strapping the palace or not. So every time you scan a palette to move it across our docks from one trailer to another trailer, we actually show folks what their numbers would look like. And similarly,”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somewhere. So I would average weight per shipment is approximately, call it 1400 pounds, and it varies in the range that you mentioned. So a couple hundred pounds all the way to 10,000 plus pounds. But usually once you start getting to 15,000, it makes sense to send that on a full truckload where you are booking an entire truck effectively to go from point A to point B.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the reason if you think about our service in a trucking company, one is making sure because as a less than truckload carrier, what we do is a customer could be shipping one or two pallets, but then we get it to one of our terminals where we consolidate that freight with other people's pallets, effectively. So, and then you're moving that freight across a network of 300 locations across North America. So one of the KPIs would be, we call it service quality, which is not damaging the freight because when you are consolidating and deconsolidating freight, that could lead to quality issues as people handle that freight over a longer distance. So that's one measure. The second measure is providing on-time service that when if the customer is expecting a pickup today, that you pick up that freight when it is intended to be picked up. And then if they're expecting it to be a destination in three days from now that you're getting it three days from now as well. But these are the two primary measure of how we measure the service.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Month, but effectively as a supervisor, whenever I take the photo, AI automatically tells you what it found wrong in your trailer. And now we can actually fix that before you actually send that trailer over the road.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Historically, we've done it where you are looking at it after the fact. So historically, we manage all that data through the shift. You are still getting it in the system in real time, but the person taking the photo was not getting immediate feedback. So let's say I'm a supervisor. As I close the trailer door of a given trailer, I would take a photo and then I would actually rank the quality of loading of that particular photo. So in that case, it's not AI doing it. And then the next day, we can tell which supervisor, because then the next person in line in our terminal network, when they open up your trailer, they take a photo and they rank your quality of loading. So you're effectively getting somebody, if you think about software development, it's almost like doing a code review, but you're doing a trailer review for the next person who's actually opening up that trailer. But now with AI, with the new versions we are launching, we actually are intent, it's not live yet, it's going to go live over the next few.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The customer gets that palette. If the customer says, you know, this is a scratch, it's fine, then effectively no harm, no foul. If the customer gets that palette and the customer says my freight is damaged, now we can track it back to the last person who reported that damage and who was the person before them who handled that freight. That's historically how we did that. But now moving forward, what we're also doing, we're actually using AI for that purpose. So every time we close a trailer door, a supervisor takes a photo of the trailer and we're using AI to inform the quality of floating, to be able to say that this palette was not strapped to the wall of the trailer, which means it could tip over and it could cause a damage as an example. So we're also using technology to be able to have a much better identification on what shift something happened, but also tying it back to the person that could have caused that particular damage in that case.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On our docs, then you can actually go into a specific training program and get coached to make sure that that doesn't happen in the future as an example. How does this system? My performance. Every time we move a palette across our network, you have people who are interacting with that. By the way, you need a really good systemic platform. You need a platform that is modern, that can actually get data directly from a handheld device a user can use into a system that you can then aggregate and take action on. The way it works usually, if let's say I'm a doc worker and I see Take a photo of that palette and I say I saw that this palette is damaged. Now, in some cases, it could be a smallish ring wrab having a small scratch on it as an example. But then we know who the last person that handled that pallet was.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Example that comes to mind of something you've heard in a break room and you were like, We need to pivot, like it's not working Give you a couple of examples. The first one was around when we were on a very strong journey of improving our service product, one of the first things that we did was change compensation plans so effectively as opposed to compensation be driven only by growing, say, revenue and profits to have a portion of the compensation plan to be driven by improving our service product to the customer. And you can think of that as being the carrot, by improving service, you as a say, supervisor on the dock can effectively bring home more pay. But when we talk to our drivers, a lot of it went back to accountability. What they were telling us, well, you know, listen, I take care of the freight of the customer, but so on, so on. The dock is actually, they're not taking care of the freight for the customer. So then we build systems where we can actually track back our service performance to the person level. And then we actually created coaching so that if you cause a damage as a person...”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Weeks we can be doing in our processes and procedures to improve the business. We get feedback on technology, the handhelds that they use, how we can make them better, how we can make them more efficient. It's really remarkable. What I typically do is actually have a notebook with me. And every time I hear all these ideas, I write them down. And then when I get back to the office, we actually put them in an email that I sent to the top 100 people in the organization and say, these are the things that I learned from the people who matter most in our company. They are the ones who are actually moving the freight for the customer. And that leads to better action plans. And in some cases, we change the action plans that can impact the output metrics. And in some cases, we actually change strategy or we at a level to the strategy or we do things a bit differently there as well.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Truly remarkable. So when you look at our, say, our workforce here in North America, we have about 23,000 people, 18,000 out of the 23,000 are either truck drivers or dock workers. They are people who are, they are the folks who are the closest to the customer. So each one of our city drivers or pickup and delivery drivers is interacting with half a dozen to a dozen customers per day. And if you think about their feedback, you get real-time feedback on decisions we are making and how to make them better. But to give you an example, it could be small things. It could be things like the type of tires we're using, the type of parts we are putting in our trucks, what kind of trucks we are buying, and what makes a difference versus not. To having issues at the local service center, all the way to our compensation programs, our benefit programs, how we compare to the peer group, how are we doing from a service perspective? What are some of the tools?”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On that portion. The second portion of it, though, goes back to the people. So I spend a lot of time in the field. I actually like to go to our docs, to our terminals, where I get to sit with our drivers and dock workers. And usually I go there early in the morning and I sit in the break room. And I sit with our drivers and I tell them, tell me what's going on in the business. Tell me what's working well, what's not working well. So there's a people component of it of how you can keep on getting that feedback loop of how to do things in a more effective way and a more structured framework of how you can actually get to the best outcomes based on what I just mentioned. Break You don't see”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meetings or processes to manage through that. And then eventually looking at the action plans, the inputs, what are you doing differently to be able to get that KPI from that point to that point? Now to do this effectively, you need great systems chain because without the ability to get real-time information, you're not going to be able to make it change quickly enough in some cases to address whether it's shortcomings or whether something accelerating beyond what you expected and being able to control that. But I think it's one having a platform where you can get that data in real time. Number two is having a very clear view of what is it that you are monitoring every day that aligns with your big strategic goals that will enable you to create a ton of shareholder value over time and then managing the inputs from an action plan perspective of who's responsible for each one of these actions to be able to actually improve how we move the business forward in the right direction. So that's the framework. That's effectively on.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And for each one of those KPIs, not only we look at the first derivative change of that KPI, the first derivative is it's up 5%, it's up 2%, it's down 2%. But also, but the second derivative looks like, which is what's the slope, what's the rate of change? Is that KPI accelerating in the direction you want it to, or is it decelerating in the direction in the opposite direction? And then for each one of those, you have an action plan, a list of projects or initiatives or actions that you are taking to take that particular KPI from point A where you are today to point B where you want it to be. So part of running the business on a daily basis is being able to, again, identify the goals, have the key performance indicators that you are watching every single day, obsess over them on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, and we have different set of whether it's”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think high level, if you break it down as a business, we have a plan, we have a strategy. And by the way, your plan cannot be very rigid. You have to be open to change that over time as new information comes up, as you execute on it. But that plan has high or big levers of how you're going to improve the profitability of the company ultimately and how you're going to create shareholder value subsequently as a result of that. Now, for each one of these big levers, then you have a number of KPIs that you are driving to be able to deliver on that particular lever. So number one is actually defining what is it that you want to achieve. And for each one of these levers, what are the KPIs that would lead to that particular outcome? So number one is having a set of systems where actually it's daily. We obsess over them. I mean, every single day there's approximately 10 KPIs that we monitor.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Done effectively was meaningfully improve our service product through the years. And this has led to effectively us being able to either gain market share or expand margin with customers as well. Now these things in business are easier said than done because especially in trucking we have 40,000 people in the company. Here in North America we have about 23,000 people. So you are influencing the behavior of tens of thousands of people in terms of every time they touch a customer they touch a customer's freight that they want to handle it as if it's as if it's our own as if it's going to our own house. And that has a cultural component, has compensation components, has systems components, how we track it, how we hold people accountable to it, has investments that we have made in multiple tools along the way as well. And we've improved our service product tremendously through the years.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we've always had is service focused culture, the way we think about it in business. Your customers are everything. Ultimately, a customer has a choice. A customer can either decide to use you or use one of your competitors for the service that you are providing. But what was different is that we actually split the company into three pieces. And now the entire management team was focused effectively on our less than truckload business. And part of our strategy was to make sure that we are delivering the best service possible for the customer. Because ultimately in business, you have to make a very conscious choice about what is your product that you are selling to the customer. In our business, a higher service level enables you to sell supplemental services to the customer. And these typically come at a higher margin. It also enables you to gain more profitable market share because your customers want to do business with you.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, it's very tough to compare yourself to somebody who's, I mean, he is one of a kind. I mean, he's somebody who started eight multi-billion dollar companies. I think it's more around every person is also different in how they were brought up and how they think about problem solving. So I think it's more that a lot of the methods that I learned from him, you always have slightly different ways in how you apply them based on who you are as a person.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, getting along, however, is that we can disagree, we can disagree on you might think this solution is better than my solution or vice versa. However, it's a very respectful disagreement. It's a disagreement where when we leave that room after debating, after looking at the numbers, after looking at the data, we all agree that this is the go forward path that would lead to the best solution to whatever problem or whatever thing that you're trying to solve for.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What it means in practice, by the way, it's not necessarily consensus from the onset because in business, as in life, whenever you are trying to solve for something big or something small, whenever you have something that as a team you want to address, I usually worry if I'm in a team meeting and everybody is aligned on a solution. And the reason why, because the first question I ask myself, did we look at that problem or that solution in 10 different ways to then have different perspectives of how to solve that problem? Because if you want to create alpha, it's not about only settling for a local maximum. It's about looking at a problem from different angles and being able to get different voices around how to solve that problem, analyzing each one of them, having data behind each one of these perspectives, and then being able to land the plane on what is the right outcome to get to the right place.”
2026-04-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · The Magic of Thinking Big | XPO CEO Mario Harik · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source