Herb Kelleher

[Brian Turner]

Herb Kelleher set up Southwest Airlines in 1972.

That is the only year it was not profitable.

Even after 9/11, Southwest Airlines remained the only US airline to remain profitable.

In 2003, it reported its 31st consecutive year of profitability, which no US airline has ever matched.

How does he do it?

Easy - he focuses on: employees first, customers second, shareholders last

The guy pushes the idea that work should be enjoyable, and that if your staff are happy, they'll give the best customer service, which in turn will benefit shareholders.

Anyway, there's an interesting interview if you've got a few minutes:

Interview with Herb Kelleher


A couple of interesting quotes:

One of the things that I want to tell you with respect to a mission statement is that a lot of people hire outside people to prepare their mission statements. My suggestion is that if you need someone outside your company to prepare a mission statement for you, then you really don't know what your mission is and you probably don't have one.

But that's another thing with respect to entrepreneurs that they need to understand, that you can't just have a fabulous idea. You've got to have a lot of tenacity, stick-to-it-iveness, to buck the tide of the general wisdom, because if it's general it's probably not wisdom and if it's wisdom it's probably not general.

[kundalini]

Southwest are a fascinating company - always coming up as case studies in HR books.

They have a huge number of people wanting to work for them.

[Shellybobs33]

When I did my first year in uni *computering BSC* we compared the company employment structure of Apple and microsoft and Microsoft came out on top each time and they looked after their staff. they treat them all on a level or course there has to be some authority but generally microsfot is supposed to be a great place to work

*waiting for contradictions*

Shell x