Don’t let trubulence do you in
Sweaty with desperation, sleep deprived, and wearing the clothes they had slept in on the terminal floor, I doubt any traveler in an airport, flying Southwest airlines in December 2022 would’ve talked about the silver lining in the experience.
Once, Southwest was the protagonist in the stories business coaches told about how to use the business model canvas, or as an example of a company that excelled at dominating a niche and exploiting a gap in the market left by incumbent competitors. Its mission statement has probably been cited in countless MBA classroom lectures. Its legendary people-oriented culture is evident in every punchline filled safety presentation or spontaneous gate-side dance party, the envy of many, lauded by flyers and employees alike.
Now we will add the Southwest meltdown of 2022 to the library of cautionary tales about what happens when a business stops using its values to make decisions, rewards short-term gains over long-term investments, and no longer takes time to empathize with its customers.
We've all heard these stories before. The ones about delaying repairs, replacements, or upgrades until something horrible like a mine explosion or derailment happens. Or the ones about big companies losing touch with employees and customers as they grow, conducting mass lay-offs via email. Some might write the Southwest debacle off as just another example of big business gone bad, forsaking customers and employees for shareholders.
I believe that while being a publicly traded company with shareholders to please made Southwest's leadership more susceptible to poor decision-making, it would be too easy, dismissive and reckless to think small and mid-sized companies are immune to their own pressures to make short term decisions without fully considering long-term costs.
Regardless of how many people you employ, how much revenue you earned last year, how your net profit stacks up to the competition, or whether you operate locally or nationally, Southwest's missteps provide important reminders about leadership, risk analysis, understanding your business and revenue models, being accountable, and being a good steward of relationships.
So what can we take away from everything Southwest, its employees and customers endured during the great meltdown that will help us build stronger businesses?
There may not have been a silver lining but I offer you four golden nuggets, aka what we can all learn from Southwest Airlines:
Great people can't succeed in broken systems. Systems work as designed. Southwest's scheduling system wasn't designed to handle the volume, complexity, uncertainty or volatility of current air travel. Workarounds reached the limit of what they were capable of. Highly skilled and deeply committed employees filled in the gaps, responded to customer needs in real time, and took a direct hit when no amount of kindness or flexibility could counter the brokenness of the system. The decision not to invest in technology sacrificed two of the company's most valuable assets, the trust and confidence of its customers and employees.
Golden nugget: Put away the duct tape and chewing gum you’re using to hold things together. You know what’s not working well. What’s holding you up or slowing your team down. Identify which systems are 1) non-existent or 2) need improvement to support your business moving forward and develop a plan for building/fixing those systems. Using a work plan and financial projections, you can pace improvements and investments to align to your revenue goals. Putting it off won’t make it go away so figure out how to fix it.
Know whose ass will have to cash the checks you write. I can't imagine being a Southwest gate or customer service agent over the holidays with people screaming in my face, sobbing into their hands, and trying to find luggage and lodging while changing a diaper on the terminal floor. Airline employees had seen some unthinkable behavior on an average travel day. What they witnessed in the great meltdown was a Defcon 5 level chaos that no amount of training could prepare them for. Chaos that was the result of decisions made by suits in conference rooms who were far away and emotionally removed while their employees’ asses were on the frontline.
Golden Nugget: It costs you nothing to get feedback and input from your team on big decisions, especially those that they will need to execute and/or live with the consequences of. Your team has a wealth of knowledge. They can help you avoid unintended consequences or have a plan in place for if/when things go sideways. They can have your back if you have theirs. Consider what you might be asking someone to deal with, manage through, or work around. Don't blindside them. Give them support and cover. Put your ass on the frontline with them.
Make meaningful apologies. Southwest got slammed for the technology meltdown. But its response, whoa baby, that’s what really did them in! From being slow to offer refunds, track down luggage, and cover incidental expenses to then touting all the ways they were helping customers on social media, they missed the mark at every turn. People will remember how you respond when things aren’t going well. Learn how to say your sorry and understand what it will cost to make things right. If penny pinching got you into hot water I can promise you that the cost will only grow the longer it takes to make amends.
Golden Nugget: Good news - we humans make mistakes all the time so there are plenty of opportunities to practice making meaningful apologies when the stakes are relatively low. Better yet, you can use this time to do some scenario planning to help you evaluate the direct and indirect impact of specific decisions. That allows you to anticipate the risks and benefits, as well as your response plan, before the dumpster fire begins. Sometimes you have to apologize for things you never saw coming. But when you know there is a high probability that a decision can result in bad things happening and you choose to roll the dice, you have to also be willing to pay the premium required to make things right when the worst case scenario happens. Think through what happens if things go bad before they do.
4. Live your values. Southwest's employees trusted that they would be given the people, systems, processes and policies they needed to fulfill the promises the company made to its customers. Customers trusted that Southwest would fulfill its promises to be safe, focused, and reliable and to win the right way. Anyway you slice it, the decision to delay mission-critical technology investments violated the company's own values and promises. Had the leaders been using their values to make decisions, the crisis could have been avoided.
Golden Nugget: Your greatest decision making tool as an owner are the values on which your business was created. They are your foundation. You and your employees should be able to give everyday examples of your company values in action. Customers too (that’s what people write rave reviews about!) Consistently acting in alignment with your values creates trust. Behaviors that deviate from or directly violate those beliefs cost you the trust and performance of employees, and the trust and loyalty of your customers.
