The airline industry, in its many permutations, is fascinating. Not only is the very idea of flight amazing (How many tons of equipment get up in the air?), but equally so is crafting a business that can profitably move masses of people around the world safely, inexpensively, and in a timely manner. When one flies different airlines and routes, too, questions are easily provoked. Why do certain airlines do what they do? What makes for the differences? How does one manage such a complicated organization?
Southwest Airlines has been an extremely profitable airline for decades, more so than its competitors, especially in the years up to the early 2000s. Herb Kelleher, who passed away at the beginning of the year, founded the airline. Kelleher has been written about and studied many times. He was an innovative business leader, a larger than life figure.
Southwest’s success, however, extended beyond Kelleher and after his departure as CEO. In 2003, Jody Hoffer Gittel, a professor at Brandeis, published a book on the airline. The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Industry Award, many accolades, and remains relevant today. The book mixes quantitative and qualitative research, journalistic inquiry, and a keen insight into management and the airline industry as a whole. It also has relevance for many other businesses, including higher education. Gittell’s prose is crisp and her argumentation and presentation are outstanding. It is a model of clarity.
Gittell begins the study by highlighting ways that Southwest stood out from other large carriers. It doesn’t operate with a hub and spoke model, it is more unionized, it only flies one aircraft (Boeing 737), and it consistently moves passengers on and off airplanes significantly faster than its competitors. It turns out that when it comes to airline profitability, ground time is lost revenue. The more time than an airline can keep its fleet flying, the better the bottom line. Southwest does this more effectively than any other carrier.
Digging into how Southwest functions, Gittell highlights practice, organization and culture. The operations of getting a plane to a gate, the passengers and luggage off, the plane cleaned, fueled, checked, boarded and then away from the gate are complicated and involve many different functions and employees. Southwest’s model involves lots of teamwork, lots of supervision, and lots of shared information. Contrasting Southwest with competitors, Gittell identifies shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect as critical differences. She explores how frequent communication often focused around problem-solving – and not about apportioning blame – is woven into the airline’s culture. This, she asserts, is essential. Gittelll examines how Southwest’s management invests in its people, from recruitment through exit interviews. That care extends to training, development, and building a “family” culture. Care and trust don’t happen immediately. However, over time, they can provide a significant advantage.
Southwest has long maintained a no-layoff policy. It built trust with employees. After 9/11, the entire airline industry faced tremendous challenges and relied on federal government support to maintain operations. Every other major carrier, except for Southwest, used the opportunity to lay off or furlough staff. Southwest, which had significantly more cash on hand than its competitors, bit the bullet and kept everyone on the payroll employed. The business community thought it foolish and old-fashioned. Southwest management ignored the criticism, accepted the short-term losses, and maintained strong loyalty with staff. Gittell stresses that these values and actions are critical in Southwest’s resiliency, its effectiveness at addressing address change and competition, and its relative advantage.
High level, Gittell calls out ten mutually supportive practices that establish “relational coordination” – the real key to what makes Southwest different. Relational coordination is the Southwest way, the company’s advantage. The ten include leading with credibility and caring, investing in front line leadership, hiring and training for relational competence, using conflicts to build relationships, bridging the family/work divide, creating boundary spanners (people who work across areas/functions), measuring performance broadly (it’s about team output, not finding blame), keeping jobs flexible at the boundaries (requires trust with unions), making unions partners, and building relationships with suppliers.
Relational coordination is more than getting people off and on a plane quickly – though that’s a great example. Relational coordination is the outcome of shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect. It is supported by frequent, timely and problem-solving communication. It’s a philosophy of how to run the company. Gittell provides an example of relational coordination in health care, but it also resonates with much of what works well in higher education.
Successful practices in higher education are always collaborative. Enrollment management, the movement of potential applicant to applicant to matriculant to student to graduate underscores the many offices, functions and people invested in the student’s journey. The analogy extends further to the classroom and student learning. Faculty need support to deliver high quality instruction and students benefit from a host of support services. Effectiveness increases tremendously if there is coordination. While this isn’t to suggest that colleges mirror Southwest – there are many factors in academia that are particular to academia – we can learn from the ten practices Gittell highlights. At bottom, success in higher education is consistently collaborative.
Gittell’s subtitle explains what’s important: “using the power of relationships to achieve high performance.” It is a very valuable lesson.
David Potash