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

"Be a force in readiness."

How does a business, along with its leadership and people become a force in readiness, as Kelleher admonishes?

First we need to understand one important thing: readiness can never apply to covering all eventualities. That's not a reasonable goal or purpose. It could only bring frustration and failure. So from the beginning, we need to eliminate that thought.

To be a force in readiness is to understand the 80 to 90 percent of predictable problems a company faces, and then training our people and releasing them to take care of them. That's the first step.

Second, we have to understand the 10 to 20 percent of the rest of the problems will take up the greatest time and be one of the greatest challenges to the company, as there is nothing that can overall prepare us or our people for them.

Assuming we've trained our people and released them to deal with the predictable problems that come about from the type of business we're in, from there we need to give them loose parameters to judge how to handle the rest of them.

I say loose because I've seen too many businesses not trust their people and only allow a very limited number of people to handle unplanned surprises. This takes away from, rather than enhances readiness.

To be a force in readiness means our people must be energized. To be energized means they're empowered to handle the vast majority of problems that come their way. Empowerment comes from flexible parameters developed to give them leeway. There's nothing worse than not having the authority to take care of the frustrations of a customer. Make the parameters too stringent, and we risk creating a scenario where time after time we not only probably could lose customers unnecessarily, but good people as well.

Only the most unusual and potentially costly circumstances should be relegated to management. All others need to be allowed to be handled by our people. They'll never become great if we don't allow them to exercise their entrepreneurial muscles by empowering them to take care of difficult situations on their own.

This is one of the major reasons Southwest Airlines (LUV) performed so strongly under Kelleher.

Other Herb Kelleher Sources:

A Culture of Commitment

HERB KELLEHER

The wild turkey

Herb Kelleher on the Record, Part 1

Herb Kelleher Talks about How Southwest Airlines Grew from Entrepreneurial Startup to Industry Leadership

Belief Model for The Leadership of Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines)

Herb Kelleher, Chairman, CEO and President, Southwest Airlines

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