Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

Tapping the Wisdom of Our People

Our study in the methods of Herb Kelleher have led us to the freedom and ownership that people working for Southwest Airlines (LUV) lived and felt, and the open communication encouraged throughout the company.

A simple case study of this within the company was at a critical phase of the direction of the company. At the time the industry was deregulated and any airline could compete with another. The result was that the question arose on whether they should buy 747s and begin nonstop flights from New York to Los Angeles, or Dallas to London.

Kelleher told the story this way: "It was a defining moment. Howard Putnam, our president and CEO at the time, wisely asked people throughout the company to think about our future and the kind of organization we wanted to be.

"We decided not to go head to head with the international carriers, but to build on the strategy that had worked so well for us in the past."

What's impressive to me was that the leadership didn't go into a meeting and make a decision and impose it upon the entire company. Understanding that everybody had a stake in this decision, the CEO solicited the input of his people to get their thoughts on where they wanted to go. That, even more than the eventual decision, was the most important thing that could have happened. Of course it couldn't have happened if the culture to empower this wasn't in place.

It shows agains the importance that the culture that was Southwest Airlines had upon the people and their work. It wasn't a job at all to get them engaged, engagement was part of their matrix and organic to the core of the company. To do it any other way would have actually violated the very thing the company was and stood for.

Tapping the wisdom of our people should be one of the primary goals of any business leadership.