The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance

This book offers management lessons from world's most profitable airline. 'As a former Southwest insider, I often wondered why other organizations couldn't duplicate business model. Anyone who wants to understand how it works should read this book' - Libby Sartain, Senior VP of Human Resources, Yahoo. 'Professor Gittell has tackled one of hottest and most important topics in business circles today - why some airlines continually fly high over economic wreckage of rest of industry' - Thomas Winkelmann, VP - Americas, Lufthansa German Airlines. 'Through extensive research, Jody Hoffer Gittell gets to 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.Fortune magazine calls Southwest Airlines the most successful airline in history. In an industry that regularly loses billions of dollars, Southwest has had 31 consecutive years of profitability. The Southwest Airlines Way reveals secret to Southwest's remarkable success - high performance relationships - and it creates enormous competitive advantage in motivation, teamwork, and coordination among Southwest employees. Based on Professor Jody Hoffer Gittell's eight years of field research, this book explores Southwest's innovative policies, strategies, and techniques, showing how these methods can be implemented in any organization, and explains how to: lead with credibility and caring; invest in frontline leaders; hire and train for relational competence; use conflicts to build relationships; and, encourage mutual respect among employees, managers, unions, and suppliers.