Herb Kelleher

No one's there worthy of treatment.

And you were the only man, like Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, he said, the only secret to lower prices is lower costs.

And when you drive down the cost of airlines, so grandma can afford to go see her granddaughter.

Absolutely, make it accessible.

I don't know, it's Southwest.

W- what if in honor of Southwest founder Herb Kelleher, the, they only served Wild Turkey bourbon and they also had a specific smoking section?

Yes.

[laughs]

And they've also shown us how do you sustain that culture through transitions in leadership.

So Herb Kelleher and Colleen Barrett really were the architects and embodiments of that culture, but then everybody who has come since has actually sustained it and evolved it as well.

Uh, Trader Joe's, I think all of us can relate to that as well.

Kind of a fun culture that they have.

Maybe they do it consciously, maybe it just happens, right? People start emulating the behavior and the attitudes of leaders.

So leaders are architects, consciously or unconsciously, they are the stewards, and they are the embodiment of the culture.

Right? Uh, Herb Kelleher and I got the chance to interview him some years ago, uh, and, uh, at the end of our interview as he was walking to the parking lot, you know, it took him 40 minutes to get from his office on the third floor to the parking lot [chuckles] because he kept getting stopped every three feet by somebody saying, "Oh, Herb." Because he had already retired, he had just come in, you know.

And they wanted a picture with him, they wanted to get a hug from him, right? I mean, this is just...

These are the people who will be able to pirouette and pivot and situation, but also be able to enhance the mood of a journey that's going well.

I also like one of my favorite stories about Herb Kelleher was to reinforce how important his people were in delivering the right culture.

He was also prepared to call out bad customer behavior.

So it's a famous story he tells of how he got a letter from a customer who complained about the service she had received.

Come up, figure out what it is that you do best in the world or best in class and do that relentlessly.

So Southwest Airlines, the example there is they, Herb Kelleher said, they want to be the number one discount airline.

That meant you were going to not get an assigned seat.

You were not going to have first class seating.

So yeah, so that obsession around core values.

And then they asked Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, how do you get all your employees to be so happy? He said, we hire happy people.

Well, how do you get employees to live the core values, hire people that already live those core values, which means you have to train your people and certify your people on how to uncover the core values and the level that people are obsessed about them before you hire them, right? You have to make that a part of your recruiting, part of your interviewing, part of your onboarding, not wait three months and say, well, someone, you know, Jimmy's not living the core values.

Well, why did you hire him? You must have known that in the beginning.