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

Management lessons from the world's most profitable airline"If you want to understand how one organization can change the competitive rules of the game for an entire industry, read this book."--James L. Heskett, Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School and Coauthor of The Value-Profit ChainFortune magazine calls Southwest Airlines "the most successful airline in history." With a market value greater than the rest of the U.S. airline industry combined, Southwest Airlines is an amazing company with amazing management practices. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with frontline Southwest employees, managers, and senior executives­­The Southwest Airlines Way explains how Southwest's relationship-based performance principles can be adopted by managers in any industry, with dramatic results.Full of frontline tales of Southwest's innovative management style, this compelling book explains how Southwest's relentless focus on high-performance relationships and its people-management practices have been the key to its unparalleled success in the airline industry. It reveals how any organization willing to invest the time and effort can learn from Southwest's management style by creating shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect among management, employees, and suppliers. This is the secret of how Southwest consistently outperforms its competitors in the high-pressure, timesensitive airline industry.

Jody Hoffer Gittell is an assistant professor of management at Brandeis University and faculty member of the MIT Global Airline Industry program.