Customer Reviews

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

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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."

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.

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.

My goodness, I sat down and opened this book at about 7:30 pm and before I knew it, wow, it was 10:30!!What makes this fact so very unusual is that I never read books pertaining to business! I'm normally a fiction reader with a few biographies thrown in.

The writing had a very nice flow. Good content means nothing to me if the flow is not there. The author uses various words and sentence structures to keep the book moving. She does not stay on one topic forever and thus bore a reader to tears. It moves. The author presents many facts to back up what she states.

You will learn some about the philosophy of how Southwest Airlines runs their business and thus you'll learn some reasons why it has become so very successful. She takes some elements within the philosophy of the company and gives some details pertaining to those elements. In some cases she will give an example of an element and show you how that element works within the philosophy.

One of the ideas that I gathered from this book that I so very much appreciated was the fact that a core belief within their philosophy is that those who work for Southwest Airlines become family and the individual families at home of those who work for the company are also viewed as a part of the total Southwest Airlines family. The management actually cares for the people who work there and their individual families in their homes. What a concept!! As long as it doesn't hamper them getting their jobs done they are encouraged to be themselves at work. There's much more. Their philosophy has resulted in developing an airline that is over thirty years old now and has never-EVER-had one layoff!! Not One!! They protect their people as much as they can. The author will show that the philosophy works.

For a great read that will leave you encouraged that a business can be both successful and protect their people you need to read this one.

Many business owners often ask the question: How can my business become more successful, more profitable like some specific business they may know of or have read about in a business periodical. There are numerous books published in the "how to" area; Jody Hoffer Gittell's book, The Southwest Airlines Way, is, in my opinion, THE book for any manager in any type of business to not only read but to implement any number of the suggestions made in the book to face competitive challenges faced in their own business. After reading the book I was particularly impressed with the amount of and time spent gathering research for this impressive business book. The author explains very well many practices that Southwest utilizes in it's business that has sustained it's success of 30 years of growth and profitability.
As I read the book, and unlike many books that one reads a few pages at a time, I could hardly wait to turn the page to continue reading about the superior theory of relational coordination as developed by the author. I suppose the author could have chosen some other type of industry and company to research and write about but in a time that many many airlinesare bleeding "red ink", going out of business or filing for bankruptcy, the author writes about perhaps the most successful airline ever in the USA. In the book the author writes: "However, the Southwest model is still not well understood." I can understand why: not enough managers have read this exceptional book! Therefore my conclusion can be stated as: Memo to Managers: If you "Don't Get It"-Get It! -this book. As the Executive Producer and host of the highly acclaimed business tv show, "Business Beat Live" on which Jody Hoffer Gittell was a guest, I have read hundreds of business books and interviewed their authors; in my opinion this book ranks a "10". Read it and you'll see why.

If you've wondered what's behind Southwest Airlines' uncommon success, wonder no more. Author Jody Hoffer Gittell lays it all out in The Southwest Airlines Way. Gittel, a university professor, explains that at Southwest Airlines, relationship building and collaboration aren't just given lip service - they're a condition of employment. This is an excellent case study of the airline and its competitors, wherein Gittell reveals the characteristics that make Southwest shine, traits other airlines have tried hard to emulate. She makes a compelling case for the power of relationships inside, outside and at all levels of the corporate hierarchy. Meticulously researched and offering abundant industry testimonials, this corporate exploration doesn't feel like yet another marketing book. We think this excellent exposition is just the ticket for corporate leaders who want to know not just how Southwest did it, but how they can do it too.

After I read a business book I don't store it by subject or author. Instead I put it in one of three sections (four if you count the recycling bin).
The first is for important manuscripts that I'm glad I've read and may go back to someday. The second is for the authors who've surprised me with an idea or phrase earning a page flag or a highlight. And the third is a messy stack (within arms reach) of books with numerous flags, dog-eared corners, notes in the margins and even a news clipping or three.
I consider this third section my decision making "arsenal". I go to there often to get the firepower I need to keep myself or my clients moving in the right direction.
I just added them up. Jody Hoffer Gittell's "The Southwest Airlines Way" has six flags, 29 dog-eared pages, about a hundred paragraph highlights. That's after my first reading (on the plane to New York). Next week I'll go through it again and (I'm sure) add some more. Then I'm confident it will deserve a place along side "The Service Profit Chain", "Maslow on Management", my collection of Mary Parker Follett's writings and 15 or 20 others (it's too messy to be exact) in my decision making arsenal for 2003 and beyond.
I can't give anything five stars so don't hold that against the author (it's all those years of strict Catholic education). But if you are like me, trying to figure out how to create the requisite level of accountability without losing any of the switched on, highly adaptive, problem solving kind of teamwork you see in the best service organizations "The Southwest Airlines Way" will give you great firepower. 4 and one half stars!
Laurence Haughton
author of "It's not the big that eat the small...It's the FAST that eat the slow"

The book is about how although Leadership, culture, strategy and co-ordination have been critical for SW's amazing performance uptill now the hidden factor is the high performance relationships that permeate the organisation. One person working in isolation does not deliver customer satisfaction. Only a group of people working as a single unit with no friction, hidden agendas or dysfucntional incentives can do that. Above all a group of people with outstanding relationships.

Some of the key practices at SW expanded in the book are:
1. Lead with credibility and caring
2. Invest in frontline leadership (high supervisory staffing levels)
3. Hire and train for relational competence
4. Use conflicts to build relationships
5. Bridge the work/family divide by bringing family into the organisation
6. Create boundary spanners (people at the edges of two divisions who help co-ordinate between them)
7. Avoid finger pointing - measure performance broadly
8. Keep jobs flexible at the boundaries
9. Make unions your partners, not adversaries
10. Build relationships with your suppliers

One interesting similarity between the Toyota way principles and the South West way I noted was that they both believe in long term consistent profit growth (organic if possible) and they believe in not laying off people during hard times. I think this contrasted a little bit with Jack Welch's approach of faster growth through acquisition where appropriate and his belief that you should regularly ask the bottom performers to leave the company to get rid of the deadwood. The other similarity between Toyota and SW was their willingness to get in bed with their suppliers and their belief that culture was everything.

Professor Hoffer-Gittel demystifies the successful Southwest Airlines business plan and in the process debunks the myth that Southwest's success is attributable to a non-union work force. In fact Southwest Airlines is one of the most highly unionized airlines in the U.S. Southwest is successful, in large part because they recognize the value of good relationships with their customers, their vendors and with their employees. Recommended reading for all managers, in particular airline managers who are seeking some inspiration and a plan to successfully emerge from the current economic crisis in the industry.

I got about halfway through this book and couldn't stand the back slapping tummy rubbing view of perfection portrayed by the author. I lent the book to a colleague who has worked at Southwest and they agreed. Perhaps if you hadn't worked in the game it would be a better book. problem is Southwest probably deserves a better book because they are a great success story - just don't have an author crow so hard about it and detract from the true story. I rate the book three stars (possible generous) simply because I couldn't bear to read it all. For the money I recommend 'Hard Landing' by Petzinger as far more worthwhile ('From Worst to First' is also better).