The Southwest Airlines Way : Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance [Hardcover]

Jody Hoffer Gittell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 19, 2002

Management lessons from the world's most profitable airline

"If you want to understand how one organization can change the competitive rules of the game for an entire industry, read this book."--James L. Heskett, Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School and Coauthor of The Value-Profit Chain

Fortune magazine calls Southwest Airlines "the most successful airline in history." With a market value greater than the rest of the U.S. airline industry combined, Southwest Airlines is an amazing company with amazing management practices. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with frontline Southwest employees, managers, and senior executives­­The Southwest Airlines Way explains how Southwest's relationship-based performance principles can be adopted by managers in any industry, with dramatic results.

Full of frontline tales of Southwest's innovative management style, this compelling book explains how Southwest's relentless focus on high-performance relationships and its people-management practices have been the key to its unparalleled success in the airline industry. It reveals how any organization willing to invest the time and effort can learn from Southwest's management style by creating shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect among management, employees, and suppliers. This is the secret of how Southwest consistently outperforms its competitors in the high-pressure, timesensitive airline industry.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"The Southwest Airlines Way is by far the most comprehensive and insightful analysis of the success of this remarkable company. The book has scores of suggestions useful to managers in any industry on how to face competitive challenges."--Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and Author of The Human Equation

"Through extensive research Jody Hoffer Gittell gets to the bottom of what has sustained Southwest Airline's positive employee relations and high performance through good and bad times. Shareholders, employees, and customers would all benefit if companies would learn from this rich story and adapt the lessons to their particular settings."--Thomas A. Kochan, Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Global Airline Industry Program

In an industry that regularly loses billions of dollars, Southwest Airlines has an unbroken string of 31 consecutive years of profitability. How do they do it? In The Southwest Airlines Way, you'll learn the key to Southwest's success--high performance relationships based on shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect among all levels of management, employees, and suppliers.

This in-depth profile, based on eight years of field research on the airline industry, reveals 10 practices that Southwest Airlines uses to build high performance relationships, and how they can be implemented in any organization--with dramatic results. You'll learn how to implement Southwest-style management practices while learning from the successes and failures of American, United, Continental, and other airlines as they have struggled to adopt Southwest's practices.

Why is Southwest Airlines valued higher than all other major U.S. passenger air carriers combined?

How, in the wake of September 11, could Southwest keep all of its employees working and continue its unblemished record of growth and profitability as other airlines laid off thousands, begged Congress for money, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection?

Can the now-legendary "Southwest effect" be applied successfully in other industries?

In The Southwest Airlines Way, you'll find the answers to these questions and more.

The Southwest Airlines Way explores the policies, strategies, and techniques that have led to Southwest's success and explains how these proven methods can be put to work in any organization. It explains how American, Continental, United, and other airlines have tried to imitate Southwest--and why they have failed. Based on Professor Jody Hoffer Gittell's eight years of field research in the airline industry, this book unveils the secret ingredient--high performance relationships--that has enabled Southwest to sustain a steady 10 to 15 percent rate of growth throughout its 32-year history while turning a profit in every year but its first.

Gittell explains why Southwest relies so heavily on high performance relationships--shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect among employees, managers, unions, and suppliers. She analyzes how the company uses high performance relationships to create the enormous competitive advantage Southwest has in motivation, teamwork, and coordination among employees.

You'll also learn how to foster powerful cooperative relationships among your company's employees. Gittell reveals 10 practices that Southwest employs to create and nurture high performance relationships. You'll learn how to:

• Lead with credibility and caring
• Invest in frontline leaders
• Hire and train for relational competence
• Use conflicts to build relationships
• Make unions your partners, not your adversaries
• Build relationships with your suppliers
• And more

For managers looking to increase productivity and profitability, encourage teamwork among employees, and build a fiercely loyal, dedicated, and innovative workforce, here is one way to go--The Southwest Airlines Way.

About the Author

Jody Hoffer Gittell, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of management at Brandeis University and faculty member of the MIT Global Airline Industry program. Her research and teaching focus on human resource and service operations management, and she frequently presents her results to managers, researchers, and policymakers.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (December 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071396837
• ISBN-13: 978-0071396837
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #396,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > Travel > Specialty Travel > Air Travel

More About the Author

JODY HOFFER GITTELL IS A PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She serves as Director of the newly formed Relational Coordination Research Collaborative, which brings practitioners and researchers together to transform organizational relationships for high performance.

Her research explores how coordination by front-line workers contributes to quality and efficiency outcomes in service settings, with a particular focus on the airline and healthcare industries. She has developed a theory of relational coordination, proposing that work is most effectively coordinated through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect, and demonstrating how organizations can support relational coordination through the design of their work systems.

Dr. Gittell is the author of dozens of articles and chapters, as well as books titled The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance, and Up In the Air: How the Airlines Can Improve Performance by Engaging Their Employees. Gittell presents her findings from ten years of research in the healthcare industry in High Performance Healthcare: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve Quality, Efficiency and Resilience.
Her newest book, Sociology of Organizations: Structures and Relationships (with Mary Godwyn) compares the relational organizational form to the bureaucratic organizational form, seeking a logically coherent hybrid form that captures the best of both worlds.

Dr. Gittell has won a Best Book Award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a Best Paper award from the Human Resource Division of the Academy of Management, the Douglas McGregor Memorial Award for Best Paper of the Year in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, and an Honorable Mention for the Douglas McGregor Memorial Award for Best Paper on Organizational Change. Before joining the faculty at Brandeis University, Dr. Gittell received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and taught at the Harvard Business School.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Southwest's "Eternal Flame", June 28, 2003

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Southwest Airlines Way : Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance (Hardcover)

Why can't other companies (not only airlines) become as highly admired as well as profitable as Southwest Airlines? Here is an excerpt from Herb Kelleher's presentation at the Risk Management Association's annual conference: "Maintaining excellent customer survives involves a process of  getting people to understand the importance of it to them in their daily lives as well as in others'. We were a little concerned as we got bigger that maybe some of our early culture might be lost so we set up a culture committee whose only purpose is to keep the Southwest Airlines culture alive. Before people knew how to make fire, there was a fire watcher. Cave dwellers may have found a tree hit by lightning and brought fire back to the cave. Somebody had to make sure it kept going because if it went out, there was was the most important person in the tribe. I said to our culture committee, 'You are our fire watchers, who make sure the fire does not go out.  I think you are the most important committee at Southwest Airlines.'   I really do believe that to be the case. We have people come in from all over the world who are interested in our culture because they see it in the customer service aspect of it."

Kelleher then notes that "Southwest Airlines had 162 companies at our last corporate day [open house], which we have twice a year. We started them off that day with the Macarena and they were all wondering, 'Hmmmm....I was looking for E=mc2 and I'm getting the Macarena.' But a fellow from Swiss Air was interviewed when he left and was asked, 'What's the most important message you're taking back to Swiss Air?' And he said 'For everybody to learn to do the Macarena.' Everybody's looking for a single Big Answer, an easy answer such as 'We'll communicate for six months, then get on with something else that's more important.' I keep telling them that the intangibles are far more important than the tangibles in the competitive world because, obviously, you can replicate the tangibles.  You can get the same airplane. You can get the same ticket counters.  You can get the same computers. But the hardest thing for a competitor to match is your culture and the spirit of your people and their focus on customer service because that isn't something you can do overnight and it isn't something you can do without a great deal of attention every day in a thousand different ways. That is why I say that our employees are our competitive protection."

I cannot think of a better introduction to Gittell's book, nor to my comments on her book. Although she identifies "Ten Southwest Practices" and devotes a chapter to explaining each in Part 2, her key point (and Kelleher's) is that high performance relations are the key to Southwest's success. Gittell includes these comments by a Southwest ramp manager:

"One thing we cannot teach is attitude toward peers or other groups. There's a code, a way to respond to every individual who works for Southwest. The easiest way to get in trouble is to offend another employee. We need people to respond favorably. It promotes good working relationships....You find an individual with an upbeat and positive attitude -- and you'll find that everything that needs to be done, will get done. It's very contagious." I have been a Southwest frequent flier since 1976. Not once, even once, have I ever had a less-than-pleasant experience with anyone within the Southwest organization. Kelleher is appropriately praised for his vision, charm, business acumen, inspiration, passion, determination, wit, etc. He should also be praised for the leadership he has encouraged and supported at all levels of Southwest. In my opinion, that is his single greatest contribution. As Jim Collins describes it in Good to Great, "getting the right people on the bus."

In Part 3, Gittell explains how the "Ten Southwest Practices" reinforce (or undermine) each other; she then suggests what can be learned from Southwest, briefly discussing efforts by competitor airlines; next, she examines how Southwest responds to pressure and manages crises (e.g. September 11); finally, Gittell offers a number of suggestions as to how other organizations can implement high performance relationships. There is nothing wrong with any of those suggestions. However, obviously, listing the "Ten Southwest Practices" is far, far easier than convincing or inspiring most (if not all) people in another organization to follow them all day, every day, year after year. And it is even more difficult to create such buy-in when an organization is undergoing extensive growth and sustains it profitably as Southwest has. Especially in the ferociously competitive airline industry, the Yoda's admonition is correct: "Do or do not. There is no try."

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Research shows that relationships fuel high performance, June 21, 2003

By 

Libby Sartain (San Carlos, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Southwest Airlines Way : Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance (Hardcover)

Much has been written about the legendary company, Southwest Airlines. As a former insider, I often wondered why other organizations couldn't duplicate Southwest's business model. There really weren't any secrets, but while other airlines and companies tried, few succeeded. In many ways Southwest defies conventional business thinking. Based on extensive research, Jody Hoffer Gittell's The Southwest Way is filled with actual examples of business process at Southwest as compared to other airlines. The reader can easily see how basic practices based on internal values at Southwest, such as, investing in leadership development and people have made such a big difference. In fact, the findings from eight years of research of the airline industry reveal that Southwest's success is due to building high performance relationships with their people, customers, unions, vendors and suppliers, and the public in general.

Dr.Gitell includes real-life inspiring stories from insiders, which makes the book a more entertaining read versus your typical analytical reference text written by an academic. But, this is not a touchy feely book based on anecdotes, it is academic and the ideas presented are fact-based. The reader gets a glimpse into day to day practices and people who run the company and work on the frontlines, but also Gittell has compared and contrasted these practices and people to those of competitor airlines and other industries. This is where the reader can easily see why Southwest's basic values have given the airline a significant competitive advantage. And, this is where readers can see Gittel's theoretical premise in action.

The Southwest Way is a book that will most certainly appeal to general business audiences, to airline leaders, and to any business person who is engaged in efforts to build a legendary organization and organizational culture. Human resources professionals will identify secrets to creating value in organizations through people practices, leadership development, conflict resolution, work-life balance initiatives, performance management, and building a culture that fosters productivity, innovation and organizational success.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Southwest Way Revealed, May 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Southwest Airlines Way : Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance (Hardcover)

Several books and countless articles have been written about Southwest Airlines. They highlight its structure, its culture, its CEO, its low fares and other reasons as to why it is the bright spot in an otherwise dismally performing industry. None, however, have completely captured the real explanation of why Southwest succeeds.

In this book, Dr. Gittell has managed to identify and even quantify the powerful formula of Southwest's success. Simply stated, it is the company's ability to achieve high performance relationships by sharing goals and information in a climate of mutual respect. This allows the coordination and communication necessary to attain efficiency and customer service in the complex and multi-functional environment of an airline.

Lest this appear too simple or 'soft', Dr. Gittell provides detailed analysis of Southwest's approach. She identifies ten specific practices used by the people of Southwest to achieve their incredibly consistent performance. These practices range from those that might be expected in a successful company such as credibility of leadership, emphasis on hiring and training, and positive relationships with unions and suppliers, to those that are contrary to today's accepted wisdom such as increasing frontline leadership positions and creating human 'boundry-spanners' as opposed to relying on electronic interfaces.

The good news is that Dr. Gittell clearly identifies and explains each of these elements in a highly readable way that is also backed with data. The hard part is that these are not quick fixes and that the evidence indicates that most, if not all, of the practices must be adapted/adopted if another organization is to duplicate the success of Southwest. Nevertheless, thanks to the author, the lessons are revealed for all to benefit.

I would recommend that the value of this book not be limited to the airline industry. These concepts and practices are applicable to any organization or industry that is striving for quality, efficiency and customer service in a complex, competitive environment.