Southwest Airlines Shares 40 Lessons For Business Leaders

Southwest Airlines is celebrating its 40th year and was kind enough to share in its in-flight magazine 40 lessons it learned since 1971.  The lessons provide good tips for business leaders.

If you missed the full list, here are some of the highlights:

• Invent your own culture and put a top person in charge of it. 
• A crisis can contain the germ of a big idea.
• Simplicity has value.  For Southwest, simplicity means using 737s for most of its fleet, which makes maintenance more cost-effective and allows more efficient training for flight crews and ground crews.
• Remember your chief mission.
• Take your business, not yourself, seriously.
• Put the worker first.  For Southwest, that meant being the first U.S. airline to offer a profit-sharing plan, in 1974.  Employees now own 13 percent of the airline.
• The web ain't cool, it's a tool.  Southwest was the first U.S. airline to establish a home page.  By 2010, Southwest.com boasted more unique visitors than any other airline, and ranked as the second largest travel site.
• Get Green.  That means for Southwest embracing conservation.
• Manage permanence.  Southwest knows what not to change, even when it's managing change.
• Keep the idea simple enough to draw on a napkin.
• Never rest on your laurels.
• It's about customer service, not scalability.
• Promote from within.
• Recognize your luck.

One can learn a lot of Southwest!