"If you look at Southwest Airlines, and I admire what they do, they've been the most successful airline in the industry." --Gerard Arpey, CEO, American Airlines "Through extensive research Jody Hoffer Gittell gets to the bottom of what has sustained Southwest Airlines' positive employee relations and high performance through good and bad times." --Thomas A. Kochan, professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Global Airline Industry Program In an industry with losses in the billions, Southwest Airlines has an unbroken string of 31 consecutive years of profitability. The Southwest Airlines Way examines how the company uses high-performance relationships to create enormous competitive advantage in motivation, teamwork, and coordination among employees. It then goes further to show how any company can foster these powerful cooperative relationships and explains how to: Lead with credibility and caring Invest in frontline leaders Hire and train for relational competence Use conflicts to build relationships Make unions its partners, not its adversaries Build relationships with its suppliers
Twenty-five years ago, Herb Kelleher reinvented air travel when he founded Southwest Airlines, where the planes are painted like killer whales, a typical company maxim is "Hire people with a sense of humor," and in-flight meals are never served--just sixty million bags of peanuts a year. By sidestepping "reengineering," "total quality management," and other management philosophies and employing its own brand of business success, Kelleher's airline has turned a profit for twenty-four consecutive years and seen its stock soar 300 percent since 1990. Today, Southwest is the safest airline in the world and ranks number one in the industry for service, on-time performance, and lowest employee turnover rate; and Fortune magazine has twice ranked Southwest one of the ten best companies to work for in America. How do they do it? With unlimited access to the people and inside documents of Southwest Airlines, authors Kevin and Jackie Freiberg share the secrets behind the greatest success story in commercial aviation. Read it and discover how to transfer the Southwest inspiration to your own business and personal life.
Colleen Barrett began her career as an executive secretary, yet Southwest Airlines' founder chose her to succeed him as president. When asked why, he said, "Because she knows how to love people to success." --
The original low cost operator, Southwest Airlines is now one of the world's most profitable airlines. This book examines the relationship-based performance principles & innovative management that have driven this company to the top of the league.
Southwest Airlines has a secret sauce, namely its incredible workforce of leaders at all levels. Lessons in Loyalty is an insider's clear, concise and energizing teachable point of view on how to build such a winning team.
When Southwest Airlines made its inaugural flight on June 18, 1971, experts predicted that the company wouldn't last more than ninety days. Some thirty-two years later, Southwest is the beleaguered airline Industry's only profitable major company-Money magazine has named Southwest Airlines' common stock the premier Investment of the last thirty years. Now Southwest's founding president and CEO (1970-78], Lamar Muse, offers a definitive account of the airline's scrappy beginning. The principles and practices that assured the company's success were, largely, Muse's own. Those same winning strategies continue to sustain the company through the market's ups and downs, In Southwest Passage, Muse delivers plain facts and informed opinions that replace convoluted outsider accounts of the company's history. For anyone wondering how the air Industry can renew itself, how Southwest achieved its dominance, or how business really works, this unique story has the answers.
The #1 Principle of Sustainable Business Success Is Simpler Than You Think “Do the Right Thing is about how any company can stay true to its soul. Jim Parker’s deep and abiding belief in the power of people and culture in building a business of lasting worth is evident everywhere; so too is his humility and selflessness as a leader--his stories are not about his own achievements, which are many, but those of the people he led, one of the great success stories of our time.” --Sean Moriarty, CEO, Ticketmaster “Do the Right Thing offers insightful views into the culture, leadership, and decisions that build great companies the right way. A must read for my management team. THIS BOOK ROCKS.” --Kent Taylor, Founder and Chairman, Texas Roadhouse Restaurants “The book is a fun read filled with memorable stories that get at the heart of what it takes to lead in a way that simultaneously satisfies employees, customers, and shareholders. Jim Parker plays the role of eloquent detective and ferrets out the interweaving parts that distributed leadership, culture, values, and teamwork play as the underlying layers of a company’s success. This is a book about heroes at all levels and the environment needed to create those heroes. A must-read for today’s leaders.” --Professor Deborah Ancona, Seley Distinguished Professor of Management and Faculty Director of the MIT Leadership Center, Sloan School of Management “You’ll laugh and cry reading Jim’s book, and probably won’t be able to put it down. It will forever change the way you view the employees in your organization.” --Beverly K. Carmichael, Member, Board of Directors, Society for Human Resource Management People matter most. You know that. But most companies would rather slash costs, cut headcount, replace well-paid employees with lower-paid employees or outsourced workers, and reduce customer service. No wonder so many fail–while others focused on doing the right thing remain profitable and growth oriented for decades. James F. Parker shows why “doing the right thing” isn’t just naïve “feel-goodism:” it’s the most powerful rule for business success. Parker’s stories won’t just convince you: They’ll move you. Naïve? No way. In this book, Southwest Airlines’ former CEO proves why doing what’s right is the #1 rule of business success. James F. Parker tells how after 9/11, Southwest made three pivotal decisions: no layoffs, no pay cuts, and no-hassle refunds for any customer wanting them. The result: Southwest remained profitable and its revenue passenger miles for 4Q01 held steady while the rest of its industry nearly collapsed...and Southwest’s market cap soon exceeded all its major competitors combined. These pivotal decisions grew naturally from Southwest’s culture of mutual respect and trust. Parker offers deeply personal insights into that culture, revealing how those same principles are used by other people and organizations, showing you that it’s really not that hard to Do The Right Thing! Why doing what’s right is the surest way to optimize and sustain value Putting people first...honestly, for real Finding great leaders at every level of the organization Hiring for attitude, training for skills Achieving unprecedented levels of teamwork (and fun!)
The must-read summary of Jody Gittell's book: "The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance". This complete summary of the ideas from Jody Gittell's book "The Southwest Airlines Way" tells the standout success story of the US airline industry. In her book, the author describes the accomplishments of Southwest Airlines and explains how most attempts to copy Southwest have focused solely on operational issues. However, despite following these same strategies, no other airline has yet been able to successfully clone Southwest’s success. This summary provides readers with an insight into the "secret sauce" of Southwest and all of the operational factors that come together to ensure its success. Added-value of this summary: • Save time • Understand key concepts • Expand your knowledge To learn more, read "The Southwest Airlines Way" and discover the secrets behind the success of this major airline company.
Fortune magazine calls Southwest Airlines the most successful airline in history. Full of frontline tales of Southwest's innovative management style, this compelling book explains how Southwest's relentless focus on high-performance relationships and its people-management practices have been the key to its unparalleled success in the airline industry. It reveals how any organization willing to invest the time and effort can learn from Southwest's management style by creating shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect among management, employees, and suppliers. This is the secret of how Southwest consistently outperforms its competitors in the high-pressure, timesensitive airline industry.
A Wall Street Journal Bestseller In a world of unrelenting change and unprecedented challenges, we need organizations that are resilient and daring. Unfortunately, most organizations, overburdened by bureaucracy, are sluggish and timid. In the age of upheaval, top-down power structures and rule-choked management systems are a liability. They crush creativity and stifle initiative. As leaders, employees, investors, and citizens, we deserve better. We need organizations that are bold, entrepreneurial, and as nimble as change itself. Hence this book. In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing on more than a decade of research and packed with practical examples, Humanocracy lays out a detailed blueprint for creating organizations that are as inspired and ingenious as the human beings inside them. Critical building blocks include: Motivation: Rallying colleagues to the challenge of busting bureaucracy Models: Leveraging the experience of organizations that have profitably challenged the bureaucratic status quo Mindsets: Escaping the industrial age thinking that frustrates progress Mobilization: Activating a pro-change coalition to hack outmoded management systems and processes Migration: Embedding the principles of humanocracy—ownership, markets, meritocracy, community, openness, experimentation, and paradox—in your organization's DNA If you've finally run out of patience with bureaucratic bullshit . . . If you want to build an organization that can outrun change . . . If you're committed to giving every team member the chance to learn, grow, and contribute . . . . . . then this book's for you. Whatever your role or title, Humanocracy will show you how to launch an unstoppable movement to equip and empower everyone in your organization to be their best and to do their best. The ultimate prize: an organization that's fit for the future and fit for human beings.
