Air Herb's secret weapon - Chief Executive of the Year - interview with Southwest Airlines Chief Executive Officer Herb Kelleher - Cover Story

Chief Executive, The, July-August, 1999 by J.P. Donlon

Then there's the question of what becomes of Southwest without the extrovert-in-chief? "There's no question Herb's an institution," says Jim Parker, Southwest's general counsel, who lawyered with Kelleher before the airline was formed, "but we have a whole cadre of leaders here. They may not wear funny hats or drink Wild Turkey, but they're here just the same."

- J.P. Donlon

FINDING A LASTING ESPRIT DE CORPS

Much of Southwest's continued success seems to derive from its unusually intimate labor-management relations. What's your take on why that works and the process you used to sustain this bend over time?

Well, first of all, we don't talk about labor-management relationships at Southwest Airlines. We eschew the words "labor" and "management" as much as possible because the very utilization of those words, in my estimation, sets up two different groups within the company with two different labels. So we simply talk about the people at Southwest Airlines. The titles and positions are somewhat incidental to the fact that they are people.

Some years ago, one of our vice presidents said, "Herb, it's easier for a ramp agent, a flight attendant, a pilot, or a mechanic to get in to see you than it is for me." I said, "Let me explain the reason for that. They're more important than you are."

We try to value each person individually at Southwest and to be cognizant of them as human beings - not just people who work for our company. We try to memorialize and celebrate and sympathize with and commemorate the things that happen to them in their personal lives. What we're really trying to say is, "We value you as people apart from the fact that you work here." That approach has been very helpful to Southwest. We have not been prescriptive as to how people can or should behave when they're on the job. Fundamentally, they can behave the way that their basic natures influence them to behave. If they want to tell jokes, they can tell jokes. If they want to play practical jokes, they can play practical jokes, and they can, in effect, be a liberated spirit within a working environment. We've never thought that you should have to come to work and assume a mask, be different from who you really are, look like you're a bunch of little lead soldiers stamped out of a mold, and I think it makes people feel good about themselves and good about what they do, and it also gives vent to their creative energies, their imaginations.

I've frequently made the statement to our people: The intangibles are more important than the tangibles. Another airline can go out and get airplanes. They can acquire ticket counter space at the terminal. They can buy baggage conveyors and tugs. But the hardest thing for a competitor to imitate - in the customer service business, at least - is attitude; esprit de corps is the way that you treat customers and the way that you feel about people. And it's very difficult to emulate that, because you can't do it mechanically, and you can't do it programmatically, and you can't do it according to a formula.