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The Southwest Airlines Way
"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
--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
336 pages, Paperback
First published December 30, 1899
45 people are currently reading
613 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
August 8, 2019
Un libro práctico que explica muy organizadamente cómo fortalecer las relaciones personales-laborales para aumentar la calidad y el rendimiento.
Si bien cada punto es aplicable por si sólo, la percepción final que deja es que las soluciones son tan ajustadas e interdependientes al ambiente, que es poco probable que funcione en otro lado que no sea Southwest.
Si bien cada punto es aplicable por si sólo, la percepción final que deja es que las soluciones son tan ajustadas e interdependientes al ambiente, que es poco probable que funcione en otro lado que no sea Southwest.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 23, 2019
This book shows a lot of management and a lot of information of southwest airlines. I think that this book is to ave geeks the most.
January 15, 2019
It's a very dry management book, probably for a super dry MBA course. Also it sounded very outdated and very industry specific. Maybe specifically for airline industry, maybe transferable to a some other service industry. But there are probably way better case studies to take as an example.
November 3, 2011
Short, but not short on detail. The book effectively gives away the "secrets" of how Southwest has managed to grow every year, be profitable every year, and pretty much lead the entire industry for 30 years without much serious competition. In a nutshell, it's not certain things they do, it's everything they do. The funny part is that after all these years they still appear to be misunderstood by their competitors and others (i.e. they point out how a major union leader said their competitive advantage was not being unionized, when in fact Southwest is the most heavily unionized airline--they just know how to manage union relations better than other airlines).
A good, quick read, and the lessons are certainly applicable to other businesses. Some good stuff in here for those of you into lean startup methodology too.
A good, quick read, and the lessons are certainly applicable to other businesses. Some good stuff in here for those of you into lean startup methodology too.
September 11, 2007
There are about 3 unique principals in this book that are good across industries. The rest is airline specific stats and such and first year management theories.....
November 10, 2013
Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:
1- "How did this remarkable transformation occur? How did Southwest grow from an idiosyncratic Texas airline to an organization that managers all over the world are seeking to emulate? Efficiency...Quality...Controlled Growth Demand for Reliable Low-Fare Travel...Competitive Threats...Success Factors—Leadership, Culture, Strategy, and Coordination."
2- "However, leadership is not confined to the CEO. Leadership is better understood as a process that can take place at any level of an organization.^ Indeed, leadership is needed in today's organizations to motivate, support, and enable employees to work together in support of a set of shared goals."
3- "In their classic book on organizations, James March and Herbert Simon' describe the potentially disintegrative effects when employees in an organization pursue their owm functional goals without reference to the over-arching goals of the larger work process. Shared goals play an especially important role when different functions are involved in delivering the same service."
4- "The three conditions that increase the need for relational coordination—reciprocal interdependence, uncertainty, and time constraints— are increasingly common in the service economy of today. As advanced economies have shifted from a manufacturing to a service focus, work settings that require relational coordination have become increasingly common. Many service operations are characterized by reciprocal interdependence, requiring iterative interactions among service providers rather than the sequential handoffs performed by workers on production lines. Many service operations also have high levels of uncertainty relative to manufacturing due to the difficulty of buffering service operations from the external environment and from differences in customers themselves. Finally, most service settings are highly time-constrained; they are designed to provide a service to customers, real time, simultaneous with the demand, without imposing excessive waiting times on customers."
5- "Not every leader of a successful organization must be charismatic. What successful organizations do need from each of their leaders, however, is credibility— the ability to inspire trust; and caring—the ability to inspire a belief by employees that their leaders care deeply about their well-being."
6- "Leadership is better understood as a process that can take place at any level of the organization."^ Indeed, leadership at the front line can play a critical role in organizational success. Rather than undermining coordination among frontline employees, supervisors play a valuable role in strengthening coordination through day-to-day coaching and counseling."
7- "Increasingly, jobs require not only functional expertise but also relational competence—the ability to interact with others to accomplish common goals. Indeed, people who perform jobs that require high levels of functional expertise also tend to need high levels of relational competence to integrate their work with the work of fellow employees. Organizations like Southwest Airlines that recognize the importance of relational competence, look diligently for employees who have it, then develop it to even higher levels through training, will have a distinct performance advantage over organizations that do not."
8- "Organizations should proactively seek out conflicts rather than allowing them to fester. Then managers should bring the parties together to better understand each other's perspective. If organizations do not identify and resolve cross-functional conflicts, those conflicts will weaken critical relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect. When managers treat cross-functional conflict as an occasion for learning, they strengthen relationships between employees and boost performance of the work processes in which those employees are engaged."
9- "The energy and learning that employees gain from building strong family and community ties can be brought into the workplace and leveraged to achieve stronger working relationships and better organizational performance. Organizations should therefore be vigilant to ensure that relationships at work do not overwhelm and undermine the family and community relationships that are needed to sustain strong working relationships."
10- "Though information technology can be a facilitator, it is not expected to be an effective substitute. When a job is mediated largely through a computer or a telephone, an important element of social interaction is lost. The loss of social interaction weakens relationships, and weakens critical performance parameters. These limitations on the effective use of information technology exist because coordination is not simply about the transfer of information. Instead, coordination requires the construction of shared meaning in order to facilitate collective action. As we see at Southwest Airlines, boundary spanners can play this role, building relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect across functional boundaries."
11- "Traditional measurement systems are flawed because they orient employee attention toward functional rather than cross-functional outcomes and because they provide inadequate information for learning.' To orient employees toward cross-functional outcomes and to provide more useful feedback about what to do, cross-functional performance measures should be used to supplement traditional functional measurement systems."
12- "We have seen in this chapter the importance of flexible jobs for building strong relationships and high performance."
13- "At Southwest Airlines, respectful relationships between company management and the unions chosen by frontline employees appear to set the tone for respectful relationships throughout the company.As Southwest's leaders pointed out on several occasions, however, positive labor/management relations are not achieved once and for all. Rather they have to be reproduced every day."
14- "Southwest's partnership approach is radically different from the traditional approach to supplier relations. In the old model, organizations were independent parties who transacted with each other at arm's-length through formal contracts, keeping information close to the chest. Cooperation occurred only within organizations, while careful arm's-length negotiation with minimal information sharing was the normal mode for dealing with parties external to the organization.^ But when there is more uncertainty in the environment, there is much more that organizations can learn from one another. Because of the benefits of learning, both parties have more to gain than to lose from the sharing of information. Although there may be doubt and mistrust at the outset, "nee the cooperative exploration of ambiguity begins, the returns to the partners from further joint discoveries are so great that it pays to keep cooperating." Ultimately, this ability to partner is an acquired skill like any other, and one with potentially significant effects on organizational success".
1- "How did this remarkable transformation occur? How did Southwest grow from an idiosyncratic Texas airline to an organization that managers all over the world are seeking to emulate? Efficiency...Quality...Controlled Growth Demand for Reliable Low-Fare Travel...Competitive Threats...Success Factors—Leadership, Culture, Strategy, and Coordination."
2- "However, leadership is not confined to the CEO. Leadership is better understood as a process that can take place at any level of an organization.^ Indeed, leadership is needed in today's organizations to motivate, support, and enable employees to work together in support of a set of shared goals."
3- "In their classic book on organizations, James March and Herbert Simon' describe the potentially disintegrative effects when employees in an organization pursue their owm functional goals without reference to the over-arching goals of the larger work process. Shared goals play an especially important role when different functions are involved in delivering the same service."
4- "The three conditions that increase the need for relational coordination—reciprocal interdependence, uncertainty, and time constraints— are increasingly common in the service economy of today. As advanced economies have shifted from a manufacturing to a service focus, work settings that require relational coordination have become increasingly common. Many service operations are characterized by reciprocal interdependence, requiring iterative interactions among service providers rather than the sequential handoffs performed by workers on production lines. Many service operations also have high levels of uncertainty relative to manufacturing due to the difficulty of buffering service operations from the external environment and from differences in customers themselves. Finally, most service settings are highly time-constrained; they are designed to provide a service to customers, real time, simultaneous with the demand, without imposing excessive waiting times on customers."
5- "Not every leader of a successful organization must be charismatic. What successful organizations do need from each of their leaders, however, is credibility— the ability to inspire trust; and caring—the ability to inspire a belief by employees that their leaders care deeply about their well-being."
6- "Leadership is better understood as a process that can take place at any level of the organization."^ Indeed, leadership at the front line can play a critical role in organizational success. Rather than undermining coordination among frontline employees, supervisors play a valuable role in strengthening coordination through day-to-day coaching and counseling."
7- "Increasingly, jobs require not only functional expertise but also relational competence—the ability to interact with others to accomplish common goals. Indeed, people who perform jobs that require high levels of functional expertise also tend to need high levels of relational competence to integrate their work with the work of fellow employees. Organizations like Southwest Airlines that recognize the importance of relational competence, look diligently for employees who have it, then develop it to even higher levels through training, will have a distinct performance advantage over organizations that do not."
8- "Organizations should proactively seek out conflicts rather than allowing them to fester. Then managers should bring the parties together to better understand each other's perspective. If organizations do not identify and resolve cross-functional conflicts, those conflicts will weaken critical relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect. When managers treat cross-functional conflict as an occasion for learning, they strengthen relationships between employees and boost performance of the work processes in which those employees are engaged."
9- "The energy and learning that employees gain from building strong family and community ties can be brought into the workplace and leveraged to achieve stronger working relationships and better organizational performance. Organizations should therefore be vigilant to ensure that relationships at work do not overwhelm and undermine the family and community relationships that are needed to sustain strong working relationships."
10- "Though information technology can be a facilitator, it is not expected to be an effective substitute. When a job is mediated largely through a computer or a telephone, an important element of social interaction is lost. The loss of social interaction weakens relationships, and weakens critical performance parameters. These limitations on the effective use of information technology exist because coordination is not simply about the transfer of information. Instead, coordination requires the construction of shared meaning in order to facilitate collective action. As we see at Southwest Airlines, boundary spanners can play this role, building relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect across functional boundaries."
11- "Traditional measurement systems are flawed because they orient employee attention toward functional rather than cross-functional outcomes and because they provide inadequate information for learning.' To orient employees toward cross-functional outcomes and to provide more useful feedback about what to do, cross-functional performance measures should be used to supplement traditional functional measurement systems."
12- "We have seen in this chapter the importance of flexible jobs for building strong relationships and high performance."
13- "At Southwest Airlines, respectful relationships between company management and the unions chosen by frontline employees appear to set the tone for respectful relationships throughout the company.As Southwest's leaders pointed out on several occasions, however, positive labor/management relations are not achieved once and for all. Rather they have to be reproduced every day."
14- "Southwest's partnership approach is radically different from the traditional approach to supplier relations. In the old model, organizations were independent parties who transacted with each other at arm's-length through formal contracts, keeping information close to the chest. Cooperation occurred only within organizations, while careful arm's-length negotiation with minimal information sharing was the normal mode for dealing with parties external to the organization.^ But when there is more uncertainty in the environment, there is much more that organizations can learn from one another. Because of the benefits of learning, both parties have more to gain than to lose from the sharing of information. Although there may be doubt and mistrust at the outset, "nee the cooperative exploration of ambiguity begins, the returns to the partners from further joint discoveries are so great that it pays to keep cooperating." Ultimately, this ability to partner is an acquired skill like any other, and one with potentially significant effects on organizational success".
November 5, 2024
This was fine, but I like Southwest better than I liked the book.
I read this while working on the farm this fall and I had lots of thoughts and conversations on team dynamics, organization operations, and leadership structures. This book fit right into those spaces for me. I found a few interesting anecdotes and insightful experiences that informed how I thought about my own challenges organizationally. Relationally-driven high-performance is my passion and so characteristic of my fall seasonal job and this was helpful and interesting to read in this season!
Insights:
Ch 5
Work teams without supervisors perform better than work teams with supervisors. Roles cannot be clarified in a few minutes. Adding a supervisor to a team takes more time. Higher staffing allows supervisors to work side by side with workers, gaining their respect and becoming sufficiently familiar with the work so they can provide meaningful for feedback and coaching.
Ch 7
Increased dialogue between pilots and ramp agents by having pilots work on the ramp for a week to increase understanding - quite positive effects.
Ch 8
Self presentation and The managed hearts - congruence with how one presents oneself and identifies with the organization
Ch 14
Flexible job descriptions - employees do whatever needs to be done - relational competence is needed for the fuzzy boundaries - asking employees to leave the safe territory of their boxes
I read this while working on the farm this fall and I had lots of thoughts and conversations on team dynamics, organization operations, and leadership structures. This book fit right into those spaces for me. I found a few interesting anecdotes and insightful experiences that informed how I thought about my own challenges organizationally. Relationally-driven high-performance is my passion and so characteristic of my fall seasonal job and this was helpful and interesting to read in this season!
Insights:
Ch 5
Work teams without supervisors perform better than work teams with supervisors. Roles cannot be clarified in a few minutes. Adding a supervisor to a team takes more time. Higher staffing allows supervisors to work side by side with workers, gaining their respect and becoming sufficiently familiar with the work so they can provide meaningful for feedback and coaching.
Ch 7
Increased dialogue between pilots and ramp agents by having pilots work on the ramp for a week to increase understanding - quite positive effects.
Ch 8
Self presentation and The managed hearts - congruence with how one presents oneself and identifies with the organization
Ch 14
Flexible job descriptions - employees do whatever needs to be done - relational competence is needed for the fuzzy boundaries - asking employees to leave the safe territory of their boxes
October 24, 2022
It's a great summary of all the valuable attribute that make Southwest so successful in the airline industry. Before Covid two years ago, I use Southwest exclusively for all my work and pleasure travel domestically unless a destination that I travel to does not cover by Southwest. Their service is excellent even though you will have to make a few connecting flights sometime.
Another book I would recommend to read either before or after this book is Great by Choice by Jim Collins. This book also cover keys characteristic of 10x companies which Southwest airline is among them.
Another book I would recommend to read either before or after this book is Great by Choice by Jim Collins. This book also cover keys characteristic of 10x companies which Southwest airline is among them.
January 2, 2018
It's nice to see that industries other than IT also came to a conclusion, that the relations are the fundament to a good prospering comapny. Too bad, that this book repeats this all over again in every tense ;) The book is poorly written I think, bored me a few times, so not particulary good lecture, although it was also time not wasted
January 24, 2018
Great book. I’ve heard the Southwest was great but not the exact things they did differently. This book provides a guide to anyone who wants to take on their processes and procedures that make them stand apart. From pilots to baggage personnel, attitudes, disagreements, unions, checkin and employee welfare, this book covers it all.
July 14, 2018
All about the culture and key decisions made at the top of the organization. Great stories about how Southwest has empowered its employees to go above and beyond. The story about the couple getting married and flight cabin crew handing out napkins for everyone to write down advice and collect them. Pure gold
January 4, 2021
I love this book, mainly because I LUV Southwest. I wish that it was updated as some of the revolutionary practices are more common in today’s industries. I think there are some things that southwest still does very well but I want to know the 2020 updates. It was published in 2003 so it was slightly outdated. But the principles that guided southwest today are those of 20 years ago.
February 6, 2025
There will be a better book on Southwest Airlines. Anyone who has used their services or even googled about the airlines will find information on their secret to success. Apart from that, the book highlights how the airline industry works. From that perspective, there should not be a problem to invest a few hours reading this book.
February 3, 2020
I love how they used unconventional thinking and methods to build exceptional culture. Basically, they put their people and customers first.
Instead of blaming individuals for problems, they embraced problems as an opportunity to improve.
In the process, they built the best airline.
Instead of blaming individuals for problems, they embraced problems as an opportunity to improve.
In the process, they built the best airline.
February 3, 2025
The success of Southwest Airlines, the most successful airline in America, is relationships. And those relationships are built through shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect. Good, short read.
May 29, 2018
What makes Southwest Airlines a company to watch? This book reads like a fan letter to Southwest.
June 4, 2018
3 stars for the book, 5 stars for the content.
July 29, 2018
There are some good concepts introduced in this book, but some of the chapters are repeating. Could be much shorter. I especially liked Part 2.
July 4, 2019
Meh. This was so boring, I’m fairly certain it was once a research paper that was later published as a book. Could have summed up the whole thing in about 20 pages.
July 22, 2021
Great team working examples, a book to dip in and out of.
November 27, 2015
I'm interested in the book because I am in airlines. I wish there are more books that are up to date. The secret to Southwest's success seems simple: based on shared goal, shared knowledge and mutual trust. It is basically build high performance relationship with the employees and suppliers. To make it happen consistently though is not easy. The book explained 10 Southwest organisational practices that make it possible, which can be applied to any organisations. Many resonate very well from my own personal view and experience. E.g Leadership need to lead with credibility and caring; invest in frontline leadership: engage in active coaching and feedback rather than simply monitoring for non compliance; Hire and train for relational competence; create boundary spanners; measure performance broadly: design a performance measurement system that focuses on process outcomes rather than functional outcomes.
July 25, 2012
This book should have been edited down to about 1/3 its length. The author describes ten fundamental principles of Southwest Airlines and how that has allowed them to be very productive and profitable. However, the discussions of each are very similar. A lot of the phrasing was very repetitive.
Much of it seemed very obvious- for example, that if you want to get people to work together efficiently, they need to understand each others' roles and how they fit together- but since the other airlines do not do this nearly as well as Southwest, it apparently isn't that obvious. Or rather, as the book tries to explain, it is very hard to achieve.
I have never flown Southwest Airlines, so I cannot attest as to whether the family spirit shows through to passengers (Gittell claims it does). The book did make me never want to fly American Airlines again though.
Much of it seemed very obvious- for example, that if you want to get people to work together efficiently, they need to understand each others' roles and how they fit together- but since the other airlines do not do this nearly as well as Southwest, it apparently isn't that obvious. Or rather, as the book tries to explain, it is very hard to achieve.
I have never flown Southwest Airlines, so I cannot attest as to whether the family spirit shows through to passengers (Gittell claims it does). The book did make me never want to fly American Airlines again though.
March 4, 2023
Relational competency as a differentiator and supported by a family like culture. Simplicity in the way business model is being articulated to help everyone in SW understand their role - to get the plane off the ground as efficiently and as fast as we can without comprising on quality and service.
Informative but could be shorter and made more concise.
Informative but could be shorter and made more concise.
October 17, 2007
Reading this book I felt like I was reading about a cult, everyone was so....so happy. A great place to work, everyone gets along and if you don't it is suggested that you leave. Aside from that I thought the book had some great points about the ultimate goals of any business: to have a happy customers and the bottomline. While I thought some of there ideas were a bit much, I thought about the outcome and in that environment it works. Not a bad read but sometimes she droned on and was repetative.
February 22, 2008
As an aviation management major in college, I ate this book up. Southwest is a company who really has their act together and it is always fascinating to read about their success. If you're an MBA candidate looking for uses of complex business models, you won't find any here as Southwest's claim to fame boils down to one simple fact: be good to your employees and they will be good to your customers. The difference between Southwest and other companies is that they actually put this theory into action and it has turned them (an airline, no less) into a national success story.
September 24, 2013
Union section helpful
pg 181 182Union represtation can also provide an avenue fo employee voice in the the organization, potentilally creating a greater sense of shared goals with their emplouer, so long as employees are not forced to choose between loyatlyt to their union and loyalty to their employer.
also pg 168-176
pg 181 182Union represtation can also provide an avenue fo employee voice in the the organization, potentilally creating a greater sense of shared goals with their emplouer, so long as employees are not forced to choose between loyatlyt to their union and loyalty to their employer.
also pg 168-176
August 5, 2007
Interesting. Provides a strong generalizable case for the competitive advantage of a vision and mission that is truly embedded within the company, as well as the power of employer-employee relationships and an engaged workforce.
March 2, 2008
I just finished this one on CD as well, it's a great book for understanding how successful businesses could be run. Good ideas for relationships in the workplace. I wouldn't mind working with South West Airlines one day. :)
September 26, 2008
good insight to a groundbreaking business model
Read
August 4, 2011Very interesting view into Southwest!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews