Creating a Great Spirit of Service
at Southwest Airlines:
An Interview with Colleen Barrett, President.
Professor Allan Cohen and Professor Jay Rao
April 2006
Service. Whether you make a piece of hardware, or deliver
a face-to-face service, everything we do to create business
success revolves around understanding our customers,
creating a product or service that satisfies their needs and
delivering that value in a way that builds a lasting
relationship with our customers. There are few industries
that are more competitive than airline travel. Imagine a
business where the products and prices can change every
day and customers can review all competing offers at the
click of a button. Now imagine having to satisfy those
customers, numbering hundreds of thousands each day,
when you have to pack them on a tight schedule into a
metal tube and safely carry them across hundreds or
thousands of miles. On a good day this can be a Herculean
challenge, while on a bad day uncontrollable factors like the
weather can turn even the best service into a bad
experience. Each day here presents thousands of face-toface customer contacts and decisions that impact
customers, all of which decide whether a customer comes
back and some of which can become headline news. Into
this pressure cooker insert your key competitive tool:
30,000 employees who somehow manage to keep the
planes flying, move the bags, ticket, guide, seat and care for
passengers, some of whom are already upset for any
number of reasons, all done on a moment-to-moment
schedule. Then when that plane takes off they turn around
and do it all again and again and again. Yet despite all this,
these employees sing on the planes, love one another and
many would not want to work anywhere else. Now you’re
beginning to get a sense of the spirit, the Southwest Airlines
spirit.
To learn more about this remarkable company, its people
and their incredible spirit of service, we spoke to Colleen
Barrett, President of Southwest Airlines, who is known as
the heart of this
spirit among
the people at
her company.
Colleen
generously
shared her time
with us and we
want to thank
her and all the
people at
Southwest Air
who helped make this interview possible.
Babson: You’re walking in a giant pair of shoes and it’s not
so easy to follow a legend. Can you tell us what is it like to
succeed Herb, and how you’ve gone about making the role
your own?
CB: I almost don’t think of it as succeeding Herb. I don’t
believe anyone at Southwest would ever say that they were
even going to attempt to fill Herb’s shoes because that
would be impossible. I have a particularly unique situation
here that I doubt you could find again in any other
combination of businesspeople that have worked together
for many years. I’m talking about the culture and the
leadership of Southwest Airlines as a company and here
Herb and Colleen have always been thought of as a team.
That’s unbelievably unique. And I say it only because I think
the outside world was a bit taken aback when Herb gave us
two of his three titles. In the inside world at Southwest
there simply wasn’t even a transition in the sense of Herb
and me. I do think it’s important to at least say that we
spoke from the same heart, the same philosophies and core
values. So internally that was not a big stretch for anybody.
know that it would elsewhere. And it’s not that unusual for
us to disagree. We have very spirited discussions.
Babson: Do you find people will try to play you off against
each other?
Babson: How did it come about that you and Herb got so
close that you could work from one heart?
CB: I’ve worked with Herb since 1967, even before
Southwest existed on paper. I’d love to tell you that it was a
brilliant strategic plan, but it wasn’t. Things rarely happen
that way. But sometimes you just form an incredibly natural
business partnership. And I think the ones that are the most
successful are the ones that aren’t really planned. I put my
whole office through the Myers-Briggs personality type test,
including Herb. The facilitator just about died, because she
said she’d been teaching this for 20 years, and she had
never seen two people so far apart on just one of the three
letters. We were both extroverts, but we were two hundred
and six percentage points apart on the one letter we did not
share. She said she’d never seen anything like it and was
surprised that we hadn’t killed each other. I suspect that’s
probably why we’ve worked so well together, we just
complement each other so well.
Babson: What is it that you do that he doesn’t?
CB: He is brilliant, he’s a visionary, and he is definitely a big
picture sort of guy. I am very methodical, very systematic,
pragmatic and not a global thinker or a visionary. I am
definitely a do-er and a firefighter. I’m an A to Z person and
it works. He is totally spontaneous in everything he does. I
don’t have a spontaneous bone in my body. And so it’s been
a struggle, but somehow we’ve made it all work.
Just to complete the picture, in terms of stepping into
Herb’s shoes, he is Executive Chairman, which I think a lot of
people misunderstand. He is here all the time, and although
he only kept two functions, they happen to be immensely
important to our success. He gave up his CEO title, and he
gave up his President’s title, now Gary and I share those
functions. We each have the role and the title, but Herb still
maintains strategy, aircraft, and fleet planning, which is a
huge part of our business. Herb is in the process of trying to
transition those over to Gary.
Babson: It sounds like it makes for a very good partnership.
CB: It does. It makes a lot of sense at our company. I don’t
CB: No, not really. For many years one of the problems that
I faced was that because I was so associated with Herb in
my initial stages of leadership, some people weren’t always
sure that the ideas I expressed were my own and that I
didn’t know how Herb felt on the subject. That was a little
difficult but it isn’t a problem today.
Babson: Let’s talk some about the company and its spirit.
Somehow you’ve gotten a whole group of employees who
feel like they own the place. That’s generally much harder to
do once you become large with many locations. How do you
manage to spread the spirit, keep it going and get new
employees involved?
CB: We start educating people in terms of what it means to
be a Southwest employee when they’re at the applicant
stage. And we’re pretty darn clear on our expectations for
people. No matter what they’re signing on to, whether it’s a
line entry-level position, supervisory, or leadership position,
we aren’t shy about describing what the requirements are.
We do a better job of hiring than most because we spend a
lot more time on hiring than most companies do. We’re also
disciplined and religious about watching people during the
probationary period and getting rid of our mistakes. We’ll
work with anybody that’s trying. But if someone is
exhibiting a poor attitude, or behavior that goes against our
grain and our expectation, we get rid of bad apples as
quickly as we can. If we’re as good about promotions as we
are about hiring, we should be able to perpetuate that
leadership style, the Southwest way of life and core values,
because we’re putting the proper leaders in each location.
You have to work at it every single day, and you have to
hold people accountable. We have a saying at Southwest,
“First yourself, and then everybody else.” That’s why I call
this a way of life.
Babson: Colleen, you mentioned promotions and that
obviously sends a big signal. What is the promotion process
like at Southwest?
CB: If you’re talking about pure leadership positions, it is
very much like an applicant interview process that is done in
a disciplined way. You post a position and let people show a
letter of interest, or a bid for the job, and almost without
exception the interview process would be sort of a team
approach, where you might interview with the person that
was doing the hiring, or the person who had the vacancy.
That person might have several of their direct reports
interview you individually, or together as a team. Our
people department, that’s our human resources group,
would be part of the interview process as well. And at
Southwest we allow the people department to literally have
a vote. They can’t tell you that you must hire someone, but
they can tell you that you can’t hire someone.
Babson: Do they have veto power?
CB: Yes, where the applicant doesn’t have the attitude or
behavior we are looking for. If you want to have a big
quarrel about it you can. It doesn’t happen often, but they
can come to me, or they can go to Gary and try to resolve it.
The idea is that there should be a consensus on the hiring,
or the promotion.
Babson: You were commenting about how much time you
spend on new hires; and it reminded me of how India was
run by the British. They trained people to think like the
Queen, and then sent them out so they didn’t have to ask
questions, they just knew what to do.
CB: I love it! That’s so interesting. I was having a bit of a
disagreement with a fellow officer over whether the word
“integrity” should be part of our leadership expectations.
There are 32 people in the room having this discussion and
fifteen different ideas for what the word “integrity” meant.
Finally I said, “Well, why don’t we just forget all that, and
just describe it as ‘Do the right thing?’” That provoked
another two-hour discussion. I think it’s better to make
things generic, and put the responsibility on the person’s
heart and soul than it is to define things so tightly that you
limit their definition. I’ve never wanted to define the
Southwest spirit.
Babson: The real challenge comes when somebody has
acted in a way they think is within the spirit, or within doing
the right thing and others disagree. And then the question
is: how do you deal with it?
CB: To me that’s what leadership’s all about. I don’t want to
write a 72-page memo, or a book that sets out every
scenario. People basically know what’s right and what’s
wrong. There are differences between integrity, ethics and
morality, but we shouldn’t spend 3 weeks on something
that could have been done in 20 minutes.
Babson: Many would say you’re now the number one
company in your industry. Do you face specific challenges in
attracting employees who fit into your mold as you grow?
CB: We’ve been very lucky. As a matter of fact, some of our
publicity about our uniqueness is a bit of a downer because
people so want to be part of what they consider to be an
unusual group, a maverick sort of place. We were covered
years ago on 60 Minutes and I received about 17,000
applications the next day. Many of these were from people
who were drawn by a belief that our culture was so
different and unique, they thought we were looking for
comedians and that’s not at all what we do.
Babson: External visibility and reputation can be a blessing
and a curse.
CB: You can’t imagine some of the application letters that
come in, and the things people add just to get your
attention. We pride ourselves in our uniqueness, but I don’t
want people to misread what that uniqueness is all about. I
think one of the best freedoms that we offer to our
employees is the freedom to be themselves, the freedom to
be an individual. Most of corporate America wants robotic
people who look alike and act alike, but that’s the antithesis
of what we want.
Babson: Can you tell us about the Culture Committee at
Southwest? What do they do and how does it help the
company?
CB: I decided to form the culture committee because I felt
one of the most important things we could do for a new
hire in their first year was to bring them through
headquarters. Here the history and our culture is all over
our walls, you have to see it, you have to feel it, you have to
touch it. You can’t do memos about it. I don’t know if
you’ve been to our headquarters, but it’s like an open
scrapbook and that’s on purpose.
Babson: It sounds like what you’re saying is that the culture
committee serves two purposes. The first of which is to have
people rotating through the committee and then
evangelizing. Is that how it works?
CB: That’s right. They were able to receive some culture and
meet their department heads. But the more we grew, the
further our locations were from the Dallas headquarters. So
if they were in California, or Seattle, they would have to
spend three days traveling in order to have one full day
here. I thought we needed to bring our culture to them. The
first year I literally selected 48 people that I knew
exemplified everything about our customer service
approach and our family spirit and basically walked our core
value talk. I asked them to go out for a year and then tell me
what we need to do in order to enrich the culture, improve
it, or just keep it going. The amazing thing is that they did
this all on their own time.
Babson: You’re getting feedback and ideas from them?
CB: Yes. My goal was that eventually we would have local
culture committees in every location, which we now have. I
still use the company culture committee because I try to
have it represent basically all regions and all primary
disciplines that we have within the organization, just to be
sure that we’re all communicating from the same page.
Babson: Can you think of an example where, as a result of
this process, something major changed in the company?
CB: I can’t think of a huge change, but I can think of many,
many influences that the culture committee has made. One
of my favorites is our Heroes of the Heart program where
we recognize a group of unsung heroes, people that are just
not in the limelight. We’ve turned this into an annual event
for the culture committee and hold it on Valentine’s Day
because we are the love airline (Southwest Airline’s stock
symbol is LUV).
During the first couple of years we had so many public
contact people that it was much easier for them to get
recognized for positively outrageous service. One of the
things that came back was, “I work in a back room and I
punch a keyboard all day, how am I ever going to get any
recognition?” Well, that was a very good point. So now one
of the things that we do is to have a sub-team that works on
soliciting nominations for the Heroes of the Heart. In this
way we can recognize a work group, or a work team that
gets very little recognition because of the nature of their
work, but that work contributes mightily to our overall
success.
We celebrate everything here and this is a very big, big
thing for us. We’ve been doing the Hero’s program since
1990 and we’ve been able to keep the awards secret every
year except for one. So 99% of the time it is truly a surprise
to the work group. Everybody pours into our lobby. We
make a big introduction and one of the great things about
our people is that they are just as happy to see someone
else getting recognition as if they were getting it
themselves. You know we do hire pretty good, caring
people.
Babson: We have been talking about culture and how it
permeates the experience that the customer sees and
receives.
CB: Oh yes, they see it, feel it, and touch it. And we’ve been
very good about under-promising and over-delivering.
Probably the best lesson that Herb ever taught me as a
leader is the importance of storytelling; he’s a great
storyteller so we tell stories all the time. And when we tell
stories, we celebrate everything. We celebrate the smallest
positives for proactive customer service delivery. This is
how we teach, or lead by example. I know it’s changed the
last couple of years, but for years we were the low fare
carrier in the United States. We literally had no amenities.
We were very honest about who we were. But it’s not like
we had lots of ways to earn tremendous commendations,
and write-ups in the paper. The only thing that could
accomplish that would be the goodness of the hearts of our
people. And the only reason that it was noteworthy is
because other airlines weren’t doing it and they did have
amenities.
So this became the focal point of the way customers started
talking about us. Later we went on the campaign to be
proactive about it. That’s probably my best contribution to
this company. My goal in life was to reach a customer who
has had a really bad experience, especially if it’s something
more emotional or traumatic, a really scary or unpleasant
experience. My goal in life is to reach them before they can
reach us. Now that is unbelievably labor-intensive. The only
way I can do that, or the only way that a company can
accomplish it is if every employee out there takes
ownership over it. My goal is to have something in their
hands in 72 hours in writing, with an explanation, with a
“We’re sorry” gift. And it just doesn’t happen in other
businesses. You do it because it’s the right thing to do. But
the value is that it wins us customers for life.
Babson: Southwest has always been known for the way its
cabin and in-flight crew deliver great experiences. But now
there are some new entrants that seem to be giving
travelers a very different type of in-flight experience. Jet
Blue’s satellite TV, for instance. Do you see a change in
customers’ expectations of what they want for their in-flight
experience?
CB: I will tell you that we are not being bombarded with
requests for in-flight entertainment. We talk to our
customers all the time, we listen and we observe. I won’t
tell you that we will never put that stuff on our airplanes.
But that is my personal opinion.
Up until a couple of years ago we were probably 85, 90
percent short haul or medium haul service. So adding long
haul service to our mix may change what a customer is
willing to give up for price. I sound like I’m preaching, and I
do preach to our employees a lot about this. We can’t own
the low fare niche if we don’t own the low cost niche. The
reason we’ve been able to own the low fare niche is
because we have always had the best cost. And now that
we are a mature company of 34 years old, we have many
cases where we have the highest paid employees. Jet Blue,
being a new carrier, has a much lower salary scale.
We could never afford to put TVs on all of our 436 airplanes
and expect to be able to still charge the same price, even if
we had people pay for it. What I would like to provide is sort
of wireless access to people so that they could bring their
own DVDs, and use them all on the plane, instead of wiring
436 airplanes. We’re certainly looking at all of it.
Babson: You have confidence that the processes within the
company can let you make the smart decisions calling for
more complexity and differentiation?
CB: Yes. While we have to constantly fight bureaucracy,
which may be a little harder today than it was ten years ago,
for our size we have to have some structure. But I don’t
want to be too structured. We certainly have to think
strategically. As long as people just keep going back to the
basics and revisit the list of strategies, which traditionally
we’ve done every 5 years. With every new suggestion, or
every change, you measure it against the list of strategies
that you’ve agreed to.
Babson: So do the disagreements get more protracted as
you’re bumping up against the culture?
CB: No matter what our profession is, I think most of us
tend to hire people that share our basic philosophies and
strategies. Usually when people join you, they’re joining you
because they want to be there, not just because they’re
looking for a paycheck. Certainly for a leadership position, I
wouldn’t offer a job to someone that wasn’t dying to be
part of Southwest Airlines. If you’ve hired people that have
managed to build up some tenure with you because they do
subscribe to your leadership philosophies and you promote
from within, then chances are that you’re not going to have
too many difficult disagreements with people. Of course
you don’t want a bunch of yes-people.
Babson: Yes, that’s the other side of it.
CB: I doubt you’re going to have too many knock-down,
drag-out fights. Because if they’re as passionate about the
company as I am and the fights are really bad, then
somebody’s going to part ways. I don’t want that to sound
like it’s a dictatorship, because it’s not.
Babson: I understand that they just won’t feel they fit.
CB: If you’re not a touchy-feely person, or have a sense of
humor about yourself, you’re going to be so uncomfortable
in this environment that we’re not going to have to let you
go, you’re not going to be comfortable and you’re going to
leave on your own.
Babson: Do regional differences present a challenge for
company culture and spirit?
CB: The reason I’m laughing is I was raised in Vermont.
When we were going to go into Providence and
Manchester, Herb was a little worried that perhaps the area
was a little too provincial for our laidback style. I was upset
over that because to me people are people; they just want
to be treated with respect. New Englanders also really want
a good value for their dollar. So I figured we would be fine if
we treated people the way we always do, with respect, and
if we showed them they were really going to save some
money because they had been overcharged for so long. But
I was still a little nervous about it because he was nervous
and felt so strongly. I knew I was right on this when I got a
call from a Providence ramp agent, the guy that loads bags.
And he told me that he was in a grocery store in Providence
with his “Southwest” baseball cap on and a woman came up
in her farm clothes and gave him a big hug saying “I am so
excited. Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming to my
community.” And she went on about how she had not been
able to see her grandkids because she couldn’t afford to fly
more than once every two or three years and now she could
go once a quarter. Well, it just made my day.
We have also gone into parts of the country where we’ve
had a real problem. When we first went into California, my
flight attendants were all coming back to me in tears saying,
“I don’t want to serve those flights.” I asked “Why?” And
they would say, “Well, they hate Texans.” And I said,
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” And they said, “No, they
make fun of our accents and they make fun of our hair.” I
said, “Come on!” And then we had to change how we
provisioned our airplanes, because everyone in Texas drinks
beer and whiskey, but in California all they drink is wine. So
we’ve had to learn to make a lot of changes.
When we went into Chicago, we found it was a heavily
unionized part of the world, and when people got mad, they
were very confrontational. I mean they would literally
almost jump over the ticket counter at you. Back in those
days, for the most part, our ticket agents were tiny little
woman. I had to go find a couple of big, burly ramp agents
and talk them into becoming ticket agents just to put them
out there at the ticket counters.
Babson: It sounds like you don’t necessarily start with a plan
up-front for fitting into a new market. You go in and then
watch and see what the reaction is.
CB: That’s right, you really don’t know until you get there.
You also have to realize that we’re 83 percent unionized.
Which most people find surprising because we’ve had such
a good reputation in terms of our employee relationships.
But when you’re unionized there is a process when new
jobs open up and they get to bid for new locations. So it’s
only the leadership positions that you have any say about.
We’ve got a pretty young work force and they love to move
around, so the more attractive the destination, the more
interest they have in moving. We have some people that
move every year. I can’t imagine that kind of life, but some
people like it. Actually there are very few local new hires. I
can’t think of a city where we’ve ever had to hire more than
8 or 10 new people because of the interest our people have
in moving to our newest city.
Babson: There can’t be a lot of companies in the United
States where people at the top would easily talk about
heart. How do you account for that, or is that just the way
your people talked all along?
CB: I can’t tell you how many times I’m asked that question
and I’ve given this answer more thought than you can
imagine. The reason goes back to our values and the
beginning of the company. This is Texas and they have to do
things bigger and better than anyone else. We had to make
a huge splash with the media to get any attention, but we
had no money. It was back in the seventies and we
capitalized on the word “love,” because we’re based at Love
Field, so love was our theme and we had girls in hot pants.
We did all that flamboyant stuff and saw that it worked.
Then we took that word “love” which was our stock symbol
and we stretched it about as far as you could. Over the
years it has evolved into a wholesome sort of American and
apple pie.
Herb and I always had a big thing for teamwork and family.
That was probably the central core of what we wanted
Southwest to be. We wanted Southwest to be a very
egalitarian airline from the very beginning. We felt that
people were just being gouged on price and that only the
elite could fly. We wanted to be the airline for the people.
We wanted everyone to be able to fly within the state of
Texas and we thought there was a big enough market to do
that, if the price was right. That was our goal in life.
So it’s not unusual for us to be talking about company spirit
and to also talk about family. We do things as a business
that you would do in your normal families, and we just try
to get our people to think of work and home as being the
same sort of environment. That was our biggest point of
difference compared to most of corporate America. We tell
our people “Don’t leave your real personality on the
doorstep when you come to work. Bring who you are to
work, and share that specialty about you with each other
and then with your customers every day. And if you do that,
it won’t seem like work.”
I am a very simple, hardworking person who has had to
work hard for everything in my life. So this was basic grade
school stuff to me. Herb would go out and talk about the
teamwork and the warrior spirit, because Herb’s very
competitive and sports-oriented. And I would talk about the
basics. Together it all rolls into what people today say about
servant leadership. I think we were servant leaders before
we knew what it meant. One of our ways of life is to lead
with a servant’s heart. We’ve been talking about this for
years, way before I ever read anything about “servant
leadership.”
Babson: Like many things, it’s painfully obvious once you say
it or do it, but most companies just don’t get there.
CB: Yes. But you have to talk about it every day. Even here
in this little Southwest world there are naysayers. I have
people who will sometimes talk to me about their concerns
for drinking the Kool-Aid. By that I mean they’re worried
that maybe our culture and spirit go too far. I have gotten
upset a couple of times with these people and said, “Well, if
you like Kool-Aid, there’s nothing wrong with drinking it.”
To me it’s pretty simple and if they don’t agree, fine. I’ll
even help them find a job somewhere else. It’s not a matter
of them being a bad person. But if you don’t want to sign on
to this way of life, don’t, but don’t pull down people who
want to drink the Kool-Aid.
Babson: How do your people have such a strong notion of
co-operation? Is there a process you use that shows them
periodically the importance of all of the other roles and how
they fit together? How do they get that collaborative spirit?
CB: I really think it goes back to the whole family thing. First
of all, we talk to our employees all the time about it and we
do this with stories about real people as well. I continually
have people talking to others about the need to love and
respect our people, to promote from within and much
more. Of course not everyone will have that same feeling,
so there are times when somebody will say: “I don’t see the
love”, or “Where was the spirit when you disciplined or
terminated me.” My answer to that is the same as what I’d
say to my son when he was at a difficult age. Applying
discipline doesn’t mean you love them any less, so I’d say to
him, “Look, you have to practice tough love too.” When we
have these problems, I try to walk people through things
from a family perspective and get them to realize this is
your Southwest family. For me it’s a matter of treating
people by the Golden Rule and embracing the family. We
try to recognize our strengths and weaknesses and realize
that we’re not perfect, but if we’re all looking at what is
best for Southwest as a whole, versus for me or my
department individually, then we get the sort of teamwork
and selflessness that we need. You have to keep working at
it because everyone has to think this way. In some
companies they say, “We want to be a big family here.” But
in their family, the executives are on a floor that has locked
doors. We just don’t have barriers like that. It is not at all
unusual for us to have a meeting here with three line
employees, five supervisors, and ten officers.
Babson: With all the changes in your industry, do you see a
world where there are just fewer airlines?
CB: I think that’s true. Ten or twelve years ago Bob Crandall
(former CEO of American Airlines) said to me that in ten
years you’re going to carry the most domestic customers. I
just couldn’t believe he said it. Well, it’s true today. So yes, I
think there will be fewer carriers and although I can tell you
what I want for Southwest, I can’t tell you what will happen
for Southwest. I want to just grow as much as we can on our
own from our own. And I have no desire to purchase
anybody, or merge. I can’t tell you it will never happen,
because you just can’t see the future.
Babson: If you had your wish, what big problem at
Southwest Air would you like to solve right now?
CB: I would like to own the domestic United States market. I
would like to have good facilities in every airport that we
serve. And I would like to do whatever could be done to get
rid of the nonsensical security requirements and lines that,
in my opinion, produce very little.
Babson: Has the turnaround time of your planes from flight
to flight been affected by these security procedures?
CB: System-wide it’s probably added 5 minutes to our turns,
which is huge. Could I ever prove that on a piece of paper?
No, because there’s so many things that go into it, but
we’ve certainly had to add people. It’s so maddening for our
employees who can see that the customer experience is just
not pleasant, particularly for our station people who take
great pride in their customer service delivery. It’s really
been hard.
Babson: It’s been said that the real measure of what people
value is to see how they actually spend their time and
money. If you had several hundred million dollars that you
found tomorrow, what would you spend it on?
CB: This is not a good business answer, but you’re asking me
personally, so I’ll tell you. I would probably spend it on a
few more meaningful and sentimental ways to say thank
you to our 32,000 people.
Babson: Do you have a favorite Southwest spirit story?
CB: I have them every week. I love to see someone really
grow and blossom. I love to see people with problems turn
them around. I love to see a person who is just as giddy with
excitement over the accomplishments of others as for their
own. I love to see people celebrating other people’s
victories.
There are so many examples of the Southwest Air spirit. You
know, the hurricanes of 2005 just about killed us -- Katrina
and Rita in particular; not only with internal but external
customers as well. And to watch the way our employees
worked just made me so proud. After 9/11 our employees
did some phenomenal things because they knew they
wouldn’t be challenged.
You can see another example of this just this week when we
flew Rosa Parks’ body to three different states for her
memorial services. How did that come about? It happened
because a line employee asked a manager and our station
people took care of everything. I’m so proud of the fact that
they didn’t even have to call for an approval to make this
happen.
Babson: As you look out into the future, what does it take
now to start a great new idea? Is anything different from
when you were younger?
CB: I don’t think the skills are any different if you’re starting
out again. That’s not what I thought you were going to ask. I
thought you were going to ask whether I share the
philosophy that entrepreneurial people should probably not
stay at companies for long periods of time. I think that
people do tend to become old fogies. And while they may
have been absolutely fantastic leaders with an early idea,
it’s better for people with a real entrepreneurial spirit to be
out creating.
Babson: At Southwest is there a process that keeps your
people energized and thinking innovatively?
CB: One of the challenges that I threw out to our leadership
group two to three years ago was that we needed to bring
back some of the adolescent in each of us. That’s really
funny coming from this old Yankee who was raised by nuns.
I had to laugh at myself. But I think we have to do that. One
of Herb’s qualities is that he still hasn’t decided what he
wants to be when he grows up!
Babson: It sounds like maybe the idea is to keep bringing in
the younger people and that keeps the older people
energized.
CB: Yes, I think there’s a lot of merit in that. You know, I’ve
got an 8 year old grandson and he has probably done more
for me and my spirit, just to see things from a youngster’s
eyes again. Many people go through real serious health
issues that cause them to maybe rethink a bit. I’ve been
through that myself and I think you always have to be
listening, watching, and paying attention. I’m a great
studier. I’m really sort of an airport groupie, or a people
groupie. I just love to sit and watch people.
Babson: That brings us to another point; I’ve watched that
TV show about your airline. Do you use anything that comes
out of the show?
CB: Yes. Maybe you won’t be surprised, but I’m just
thunderstruck over this. 96 percent of our feedback on that
show is positive. I’ve been all over our system this summer
and in every function there has been at least one person in
the audience that has told me how much they love that
show. I can’t even watch it, it drives me crazy. I watch it on
video after it’s over. But people love it. The employees love
it. They want to be the next city covered. I get thank you
notes from employees at other airlines saying, “Thank you
for trusting your people enough to show what they have to
go through. My management would never do this.” And I
just sit in shock over all of it. Every Tuesday after the show
our Internet applications go up about 300 percent.