Nuts! Southwest Airlines' crazy recipe for business and personal success
 

Kevin Freiberg, Jackie Freiberg
Please order yourself a copy, only a few dollars plus shipping, while you wait:

• NUTS! High Quality [96.5Mb]
• NUTS Medium Quality [49.4Mb]
• NUTS! Low Quality [25.9Mb]

Please share this as widely as possible, get the message out, this book is too important to remain unread in the industry.

(Unfortunately, one copy was harmed in the process to bring this to you)

BB, It is an excellent book for managers through to the front line workers and a great example of how to engage a workforce by 'sharing' organisational profits with mutually attainable goals and milestones which in turn ensures everyone gets a taste of the pie. I bought it about 5 years ago and it certainly opened my eyes as to how to manage a work force more effectively.

Unfortunately Southwest and Herb Kelleher himself are unique in their own right and the methodology and mindset that they employ is a far cry from anything that QF would or could ever entertain as there are too many egotistical penis measurers and arrogant nufty's blinded by their own self importance.

Gobbles. Your second paragraph made me laugh. :ok:

I was hoping not to be too harsh so that line was worded as nicely as humanly possible !!

Great Job BB...

If only Qantas management could read and had some real ability.
I know AIPA gave copies of "From Worst to First" the book by Gordon Bethune. I think the problem was AIPA assumed the intellectual pigmies were able to read.

It is interesting to note the Rio Tinto are actively undoing The Clifford union busting diatribe. Not to mention his tanking of a great company, buying any asset at the top of the business cycle and then when returns couldn't be sustained parachuting out as CEO 18 months early...

Rio Tinto 'will still deal directly with staff' | The Australian

I think you could clean up Qantas, and I've thought about what I would do if it was me doing it.

The first place to start would be the HR Department, and clean them up. Then we would have to progressively build a business environment where the narcissists simply would not want to work, and would leave of their own accord. It would be something like an Australian version of Southwest - but different.

I have some ideas about that, and I know at least one academic who might help me build it......

......"managers" working at the coal face with their people at least once a week would be part of it.

So might these guys:

Hamish & Andy


....And my first public act on day one would be to get on a scissor lift with a spray gun full of red paint and physically spray a Jetstar tail Qantas red, then graffiti out the word "Jetstar" on the Fuselage with a spray can and replace it with "Qantas" in black.

..in fact hiring some graffiti artists to repaint Jetstar would be a good idea.

“It would be something like an Australian version of Southwest - but different.

....."managers" working at the coal face with their people at least once a week would be part of it.”

Sunfish, your implication that QF can adopt a Southwest Airlines approach to the workplace by simply changing the way managers behave.

This would be almost as difficult as changing the way the employees behave.

Good luck getting crusty old captains to load bags on tight turnarounds in the rain. And we already know how ozmates feel about self-funded type training.

The change you seek would only occur with a dramatic shift in mindset from both sides.

Let me know how it goes.

Oicur, I did say "different", I can't see pilots chucking bags either, not if they are setting up for the next sector....

" I can't see pilots chucking bags either"

So you want Southwest management but NOT Southwest staff.

Back to my original point. Southwest pilots do stuff QF pilots would NEVER dream of.

So be careful making the comparison.

I'm guessing you don't actually know any QF pilots.

"I'm guessing you don't actually know any QF pilots."

Many.

I am guessing you know very little about Southwest or other LCC ops in the US?

Where did anyone say they were going to copy Southwest???

Sunfish, the title of the thread refers to SWA.

Comments like "like an Australian version of Southwest" Different, of course, this goes without saying.

and

"It is an excellent book for managers "

and

"Unfortunately Southwest and Herb Kelleher himself are unique in their own right and the methodology and mindset that they employ is a far cry from anything that QF would or could ever entertain"

.....pretty much indicate that this thread, while maybe not wishing QF to copy SWA, is very much trying to compare the two.

As has been pointed out, be carefull what you wish for.

An, if I go back to the 1970's, there was a little bit of the "Larrikin Australian", at least in the cabin crew. They seemed to have a lot more autonomy and tended to do things "The Australian way" for better or for worse.

It was not "shrimp on the barbie" hoganistic folksiness either, nor was it servile. There was initiative, drive and a sense of them being ambassadors for the country.


....well, at least on the good days ;)

I suspect that has been beaten out of the cabin crew by now.

You also knew you were "home" when you heard that confident Aussie voice from the cockpit.

OK, call me an incurable romantic, but that is the "je ne sais quoi" QF had and seems to have lost in an orgy of bonus driven cost cutting. It would be good and profitable to bring it back.

Sunfish , dream all you like and post here all day everyday ( as you currently do ) you will never be in a position to do anything in Qantas , but you can continue to dream and post . I suppose it fills in your day , you appear to have no other life given the amount of time you spend on here.

I read the book many years ago and while it is a bit of a puff piece it does have some good points on engaging the workforce, however it left me thinking about whether I would want really work there.

Basically your life stops for Southwest was the message I got from the book. People are giving up days off, public holidays to come and 'chip in' for no extra pay. It is because they love the airline and their job. Whether Herb actually loves his people or whether the whole thing is a ploy to squeeze money out of it I am undecided. There is certainly a 'Big Brother' kind of mentality going on at Southwest.

Ociur12 is right in that it is a totally different setup and attitude to what happens in Australia and other Airlines around the world.

Say for example you're in SYD delayed by thunderstorms you have been sitting on the ground for 2 hours at the gate. You're ready to go the pax are all on you are just waiting for the bags to be loaded but so is everyone else.

Once the storm light stops flashing will you be prepared to go down in the pouring rain in your rainjacket to help the boys load bags to get out by curfew? That's the Southwest difference.

I can tell you now it ain't gunna work at QF even if the management were onside.:hmm:

Warning Strong Language

so don't play it loud at work or around the kids.

I feel that we are discouraged, and at times prevented, from being 'human'. If it isn't those in the office stopping us, it is our managers onboard. Many of them have been forced into conformity and towing the company line - too scared to think for themselves. They are almost always wonderful people who are available to help with the workload or customer issues, but it seems many are too scared to stand out (or use the customer recovery tools given to them by the company as they are 'accountable').

Onboard managers have ridiculous KPIs and are threatened with summer schools and the like if they don't perform (read 'comply').

Unionist -

The world (and Qantas) needs more 'dreamers' like Sunfish, in my opinion.

Onanist1974:

Yes, it would indeed be a bad dream.

The only reason I post about Qantas at the moment is that I think that the pilots and engineers need a little moral support at present and Qantas is also starting to stink the way it did during the APA bid.

As for filling in my day, I just had a session of aerobatics, and I'll have to get into a weekly routine of them so that my ears keep adjusted. Then shortly I'm off flying around the outback for a few weeks. Then with luck I'll be building my own aircraft. Then I have a yacht to sail and maintain.....