Southwest Airlines: A Culture

Worth Understanding

Prepared by Jim Messina, Ph.D.

The mission of
Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines is dedicated to the
highest quality of Customer Service
delivered with a sense of warmth,
friendliness, individual pride, and
Company Spirit.

(Freiberg and Freiberg, 1996)

Southwest’s Commitment
to its Employees
We are committed to provide our Employees a
stable work environment with equal opportunity
for learning and personal growth. Creativity and
innovation are encouraged for improving the
effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all,
Employees will be provided the same concern,
respect, and caring attitude within the
organization that they are expected to share
externally with every Southwest Customer.

Since January 1988 (Freiberg and Freiberg, 1996)

 What Makes Southwest
Unique?
 Southwest Airlines began operating in 1971
 Much of Southwest's success is due to the willingness of its
leadership to be innovative
 Southwest's primary operating philosophy is low fares and
lots of flights
 Southwest management has created a culture where
employees are treated as the company's number one asset
 The benefits it gives it employees, include: profit-sharing
and empowering employees to make decisions
 Southwest mixes in New Age management techniques,
such as celebrating different milestones, and letting love
play a part in running the airline
 The company's stock ticker symbol is LUV
(Freiberg and Freiberg, 1996)
 Southwest’s Organizational
Structure
 Limited emphasis on formal organizational
structure
 Leadership meetings are taped and shared with
employees
 Leadership is Leadership by example
 Environment combines humor with responsibility
 Worker responsibility programs
 Team environment
(Freiberg and Freiberg, 1996)
 Decision Making Strategies
 Decision making is by worker/management
committees
 Employees are encouraged to be responsible
and are given authority to make decisions
 Employee input into all policies and procedures
 All decisions are weighed against Southwest’s
commitment to honesty and integrity
 Golden Rule Behaviors/Focus on the family
(Freiberg and Freiberg, 1996)
 Southwest’s Achievements
 Southwest Airlines has become a legendary example of the power of
servant leadership principles
 Its achievements are impressive considering the competitive, cut-throat
airline industry in which it thrives
 Southwest Airlines has been named "one of the "Top Five Best
Companies to Work for in America" by Fortune Magazine
 It has had the fewest customer complaints 18 years in a row as
reported by the DOT Air Travel Consumer Report
 The Southwest Airlines has been profitable for 31 consecutive years,
named the "2nd Most Admired Company in America by Fortune
Magazine, and has an average employee turnover rate of less than 10%
 If you made a $10,000 investment in Southwest Airlines in 1972, it
would be worth more than $10 million today.
 It has developed strong employee and customer loyalty - a feeling of
devotion, duty and attachment to Southwest
(West, 2005)
 Southwest’s Culture is
Focused on Relationships
 Southwest’s most distinctive organizational
competency is its ability to build and sustain
relationships characterized by
 Shared goals

 Shared knowledge

 Mutual respect

 Focus on relationships is the fundamental

driver of leadership, culture, strategy, and
coordination at Southwest
(Gittell, 2003)
Impact of Strong Relationships
at Southwest
 Employees embrace their connections with
one another
 Which allows them to coordinate more
effectively across all functions (Gittell, 2003)
 “We at Southwest Airlines foster and embrace
fun, creativity, individuality, and
empowerment. We love our employees. We
trust our employees.” (West, 2005)
 Impact of Shared Goals at
Southwest
 Motivates individuals to move beyond what is best
for their own narrow area of responsibility within
their own function
 Motivates them to to act in the best interests of
the overall process of the organization and
lessens competition between different functions
within the organization (Gittell, 2003)
 “Hire People who can Laugh at themselves.”
(West, 2005)
 Impact of Shared Knowledge
at Southwest
 Shared knowledge at Southwest is about how
the tasks of one person or group are related to
all other tasks
 This enables the workforce to act with regard for
the total process
 This enables the workforce to be more
competent, efficient and coordinated than their
competitors
(Gittell, 2003)
 “The philosophy at Southwest has always been,
‘Never forget where you came from’.” (West,
2005)
 Impact of Respect for
Others at Southwest
 Encourages all employees to value the
contributions of their colleagues
 Encourages all employees to consider the
impact of their actions on others
 Reinforces the tendency to act in the best
interests of the overall work process
(Gittell, 2003)
 Southwest’s 10 Practices for Building
High Performance Relationships
1. Leading with credibility and caring
2. Investing in frontline leadership
3. Hiring and training for relational competence
4. Using conflicts to build relationships
5. Bridging the work/family divide
6. Creating boundary spanners
7. Measuring performance broadly,
8. Keeping jobs flexible at the boundaries
9. Establishing partnerships with the unions
10. Building relationships with suppliers
(Gittel, 2003)
Credibility & Caring
Key to Southwest’s Culture
 At Southwest, credibility and caring are the
two critical ingredients of effective leadership
 Credibility and caring are the ability to inspire
trust and the ability to inspire in employees
the belief that their leaders care deeply about
their well-being
 Southwest’s top management team have
gained the complete trust of managers in the
field, and of frontline employees, by being
forthright and consistent in their messages to
employees
(Gittel, 2003)
 Role of Leadership in
Southwest’s Culture
 Leadership at Southwest is understood as a process that
can take place at any level of the organization
 Southwest believes that leadership at the front line can
play a critical role in organizational success so it has more
supervisors per frontline employee than any other airline
in the industry, despite the fact that many think the
organization is flat and team-based
 It is an approach that directly contradicts many
contemporary management thinkers who argue that
supervisors tend to perpetuate bureaucracy and, thus, get
in the way (Gittel,2003)
 New leaders at Southwest are told, “Don’t try to learn your
job. Your first priority is to get to know your people!”
(West, 2005)
 Role of Supervisors in
Southwest’s Culture
 Southwest supervisors are not obstacles to coordination
among frontline employees, but play a valuable role in
strengthening coordination through day-to-day coaching,
counseling, and participation in frontline work, even
baggage handling
 Supervisors go far beyond measuring performance and
disciplining “bad apples” and focus on problem solving,
advising, and providing support, encouragement, and
recognition to individual subordinates
 Supervisors view their subordinates as internal customers
who deserve help in doing their jobs better
(Gittel, 2003)
 Role of Relational Competence
at Southwest
 Teamwork at Southwest is based on “relational
competence”—the ability to relate effectively with others
 Relational competence is a critical ingredient of
organizational success, though it tends to be undervalued
in the world of work
 Other organizations usually underestimate the importance
of relational competence, especially when it comes to
people who perform highly skilled jobs
 Often excellent performers are hired, but they cannot
integrate their work effectively with the work of others
which results in undermining of the organization’s goals,
which does not happen at Southwest (Gittell, 2003)
 “If you live by the Golden Rule, empowering your people
do the right thing, how can you go wrong? (West, 2005)
 Get and Train Relationally
Competent Individuals
 Southwest goes out of its way to hire those who will
contribute to the “overall operation” of the airline
—“elitists” need not apply
 In recruiting pilots or mechanics they obtain the best who
are also team players and able to relate well with other
functional groups
 They then train & acculturate newly hired-most of whom
come from other, more functionally divided airlines
(Gittell,2003)
 “A candidate who thinks he can “snow” a recruiter during
the interview may have already eliminated himself
because he’s proven to other employees that he isn’t a
“fit” for the system.” (West. 2005)
 Get and Train Relationally
Competent Individuals
 Southwest’s training is geared toward fostering
relational competence, as well as functional
expertise
 New staff learn about the overall work process
and understand where they fit in and how their
job relates to and supports jobs of coworkers
 Those not able to catch on to Southwest’s
perspective are let go (Gittell, 2003)
 “We put every possible support in place to help
trainees succeed, and we work with those who
are truly sincere and put forth the effort.”
(West, 2005)
Training at Southwest

"We often say that Southwest “hires for attitude

and trains for aptitude.” However, besides
teaching technical “aptitude,” we also provide
Leadership training, and our Managers in
Training (MIT) program is a part of that learning
process.“

Colleen Barrett , President Southwest Airlines

(West, 2005)
 Handling Conflict to Learn
How to Improve Culture
 In the airline industry, where highly interdependent
work processes span multiple functions, not only are
conflicts the norm, they are likely to have highly
intensified effects
 People in different functions occupy different ‘thought
worlds’ that make shared understanding difficult
 Although many believe conflicts are destructive and to
be avoided, Southwest believes constructive aspects
exist, so actively identifying and resolving conflicts is a
means of strengthening relationships that inspire
effective coordination
(Gittell, 2003)
 Incorporating Personal Lives
into its Culture
 Traditional organizational practices often demand that,
while at work, employees disconnect themselves from the
aspects of their identity related to family, spirituality,
personal pain and tragedy, and race or ethnicity. As a
result individual attitudes and performance often suffer.
 Southwest blurs the boundary between work and personal
life and strives to enhance rather than undermine
employee ties to family and community
 Southwest openly recognizes deaths, births, and other
major events in the lives of employees and their families,
and has established a Catastrophic Fund to provide aid
when needed (Gittell, 2003)
 “Southwest Airlines does many things well. But one of the
things it does best is taking care of its people – in the bad
times, as well as the good.” (West, 2005)
 Incorporating Personal Lives
into its Culture
 Culture Committees were begun in the early 1990s to
ensure that the company’s rapid growth would not result
in barriers between functions. Each station has its own
committee to organize fund-raisers, parties, and ways for
employees to give back to the community. These events
bring family and other personal relationships into the
workplace in a highly visible way.
 Southwest has a long tradition of bridging the
work/family divide by seeking to accommodate the needs
of families through flexible scheduling and ensuring that
managers do not devote too much time to the job at the
expense of their families.
(Gittell, 2003)
 Using Agents as Boundary
Spanners
 Although many different functions play a critical role in coordinating
flight departures, the operations agent’s role is especially central
 An agent is at the center of communications among the various
groups working to unload a plane, service it, reload it, and send it on
its way
 An agent is responsible for bringing together and reconciling
conflicting agendas among the various functions, regarding passenger
needs, commitments to freight and mail customers, and the
requirements of flight safety
 Essentially, operations agents act as “boundary spanners,” collecting,
filtering, translating, interpreting, and disseminating information
across organizational boundaries
 Effective boundary spanners do more than just process information
they also build relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and
mutual respect as a means of facilitating work coordination
(Gittell, 2003)
 Using Agents as Boundary
Spanners
 Since the mid 1980s, many airlines tried to reduce the cost of this
function by reducing the number of agents, increasing the number of
flights they are assigned to, and relying more heavily on computer
technology to coordinate departures-quality and detail of
communication is not very high this way
 Southwest has chosen opposite tack and is unique its operations
agents are assigned to lead only one departure at a time so that they
can interact, face to face, with every party involved in the flight
departure process
 By developing a web of human relationships across boundaries,
Southwest operations agents are able to create a broader sense of
shared identity and vision among previously divided functions,
creating more opportunities for collective action.
(Gittell, 2003)
 Cross-functional Performance
is Measured
 Cross-functional performance measures that Southwest
uses encourage employees to focus on learning, rather
than on blaming, when things go wrong and, as a
result, bolster relationships of shared goals, shared
knowledge, and mutual respect.
 Cross-functional approach to performance measurement
is associated with higher levels of relational
coordination, which, in turn, contributes to improved
flight departure performance, faster turnaround times,
greater staffing productivity, fewer lost bags, and fewer
customer complaints. (Gittell, 2003)
 “Insist your employees live by a ‘doing more with less’
philosophy.” (West, 2005)
 What do we learn from
Southwest?
 The primary lesson is that though “relationships are
relatively ‘soft’ organizational factors and therefore
tempting to neglect under challenging conditions,” strong
working relationships allow organizations to move beyond
the traditional trade-offs between efficiency and quality
and to achieve higher levels of both, simultaneously.
 Relationships are not just a nice addition to the hard
factors, but are powerful drivers of organizational
performance, if they are consistently integrated into
organizational practices over the long term.
(Gittell, 2003) (West, 2005) (Freiberg & Freiberg, 1996)
 References
 Freiberg, K. & Freiberg, J. (1996) Nuts!
Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business
and Personal Success. New York: Broadway
 Gittell, J.H. (2003). The Southwest Airlines Way:
Using Power of Relationships to Achieve High
Performance. New York: McGraw-Hill
 West, L.G. (2005). Lessons in Loyalty: How
Southwest Airlines Does It - An Insider's View.
Dallas, TX: CornerStone Leadership Institute