Southwest Fosters Its Organizational Culture

Southwest fosters its organizational culture of "Luv" by ensuring that the spirit of love manifests itself in everything that the company does. Southwest sees treating its employees like family as a key starting point in this endeavor since it enables the company to foster the kind of intimacy and informality that builds strong relationships. The familial atmosphere then extends to the manner in which the airline expects its employees to conduct business internally and externally, namely, in a loving, kind, patient, and forgiving manner (p. 148). Indeed, it is this emphasis on a loving culture that explains the company philosophy of hiring for attitude and training for skills (p. 151). Besides hiring, the company builds a caring culture through aligning its systems, policies, and practices with its core values. Thus, employees are supported in their decisions to help customers even if those decisions break company policy. In addition, Southwest ensures that its employees feel like family via practices such as profit sharing; frequent celebrations, encouraging employees to have fun while working, an informal dress code, and encouraging personal interactions rather than paperwork and committee decision making (p. 149-53). In fact, Southwest ensures that every achievement is celebrated since celebrations are opportunities to reward and recognize employees; build a feeling of participation (174-189); and reinforce memories. Family memories are also reinforced through display of photographs, ads and letters at the corporate headquarters, which is appropriately called Luv Field; gifts and acknowledgements; story telling (p.160-4); and most important, communication through a newsletter called "Luv lines." (170-1) Besides these internal practices, Southwest reinforces its culture to the external public as well. For instance, its stock exchange symbol is "LUV," and the concept of "luv" has also been central to both advertising (p. 216) and community building efforts (p234-45).

2. In order to prevent "groupthink," Southwest emphasizes the virtue of individuality. In other words, Southwest works hard to stimulate diversity of thought and opinion. In fact, Southwest positively encourages its people to think like mavericks and to be unafraid of expressing their thoughts and talents (p. 149). In addition, Southwest does not favor committees and has few standing committees in order to avoid complex decision making structures and "groupthink." (p. 152)

3. In my view, Herb Kelleher was both a born and learned leader. Kelleher was a born leader because right from inception, he understood that only the commitment of his team would allow a low cost airline to succeed. However, it can be said that he was more of a learned leader because he clearly understood that leadership is a dynamic relationship based on mutual influence and common purpose between leaders and collaborators (p. 298). In other words, Kelleher was a learner who taught his people (p. 318) to be inquisitive, think creatively, do the right thing, use their common sense, and exercise their judgment. Considering Kelleher's leadership of Southwest, I believe that he falls in the "team leader" quadrant for the simple reason that he emphasized the importance of both task and relationships, led by example and built an organizational culture, which encouraged people to realize their full potential.

4. Southwest believes that employees come first. However, unlike many other organizations, this is not merely a slogan at Southwest that the company pays lip service to. It lives, breathes and practices the philosophy through aligning its systems, structure, policies, and procedures so that employees know that they do truly come first. More important, the leaders at Southwest lead by example so that employees come to learn what the right thing is and that the company truly believes in encouraging its people to "do the right thing." Southwest also lets its people know that they come first through ensuring that they have all the information they need to understand their job and the company better; encouraging people to transcend the rules if their common sense tells them that by doing so, they would, in fact, have done the right thing; and by making living legends out of "service heroes." The central concepts in this chapter are not surprising because the success of any organization depends on motivated, committed people. This axiom is especially true of organizations like Southwest that are in the service business. Other business courses do seem to emphasize the importance of stakeholder groups such as shareholders and customers over employees. But this is short sighted since focusing on employees will, in any case, deliver shareholder value and ensure customer satisfaction.