Southwest Ramp Agents ready for rain: from L to R: Lori Fletcher, Will Engleman, Trent Williams, James Witherspoon, and Jason Wiggins.
Revised February 14,
2006.
Southwest: the Un-stodgy Airline
In an industry where many falter and fail, how does an organization
stay profitable and resilient?
One company appears to do this better than most: Southwest Airlines.
What’s the secret? Is it some locked-up algorithm of ticket price,
available seat miles and inventory allocations? Sure, Southwest’s
inventory is parked less than other airlines but fully booked flights
take more than that. Visionary leaders? They help, yet those same
leaders disavow any top down cause and effect relationship for success.
How, after 34 years and a work force of over 32,000, does Southwest make
money and avoid enfeeblement, even while reeling from the economic body
slam of September 11, 2001?
In search of an answer, I sampled a slice of life at Southwest: the Ramp
Agent team – a group not dissimilar from the folks who work in our
library circulation departments. During several days at the Raleigh
Durham airport (RDU), I glimpsed some of the attributes that make
Southwest a consistent winner. (See Appendix.) Those attributes offer
clues for improving any business, including libraries.
Ramp Agents are Southwest’s “muscle.” Southwest’s President, Colleen
Barrett, sums up what Ramp Agents do: “… they touch every aspect of your
flight from the time you check your bags until you leave the baggage
claims area. Ramp Agents collect and sort your outbound luggage … and
transport these items to the aircraft. They marshal the inbound flight
into the gate, chock the tires, service the lavatories, and in some
cities, provision the aircraft. …. After the aircraft is closed up, Ramp
Agents push the aircraft off the gate, disconnect the tow bar and
confirm with the Pilots that the flight is ready to taxi.” (1)
Doing all that in 20 minutes or less gets as intense as NASCAR’s pit
road where crews make or break a run for the checkered flag. Ramp
Agents, far from the limelight, have their own race to run: the
industry’s monthly and annual Triple Crown: baggage handling, on time
performance, and customer complaints. Each point on the crown depends on
how well Ramp Agents do their jobs : lost bags and slow “turns” are
guaranteed to trigger customer complaints and late arrivals and
departures.
Letting go:
A vulnerable admission? Not for Southwest, where a healthy self
deprecation is encouraged and practiced. That humility produces an
empowering climate for the many who thrive where there is mutual support
and respect.
There’s a risk - letting go can be seen as weakness, especially in
command and control, stodginess-prone, organizations. Well, the letting
go I saw at Southwest did not mean the leader’s abandoning
responsibility or a leader’s becoming superfluous. Nor did it mean
workers’ getting to pick and choose what they do.
When Executive Chairman Herb Kelleher asserts his job is to liberate
people, he means the people get to use all their skills and talents
without fear of punishment for doing whatever it takes to get the job
done. (3) It’s known and practiced throughout the organization, if you
make a mistake leaning toward the customer, you’ll be forgiven.
Tricia Smith, Field Support Representative for the southeast region,
explains with an organizational maxim, “It’s easier to seek forgiveness
than to ask for permission” at Southwest. She’s encouraging staff to be
proactive, to do what is right. If you err, you’ll be supported.
Letting go strengthens the relationship between follower and leader:
many decisions are best made in consultation rather than in isolation in
an executive suite and many decisions can be made by the front line
worker – within guidelines – without asking permission. Letting go is
akin to Mary Parker Follett’s classic term, “integration,” in which
leaders and followers both “take orders” from the situation, rather than
expecting the leader to make all decisions. (4)
While “legacy” – a word we’ve heard applied to libraries - airlines may
deploy 4 or 6 Ramp Agents for each incoming plane, Southwest generally
works with 2 or 3. Supervisors often are on the front line doing “real
work,” besides observing and monitoring performance data. A supervisor,
including the station manager, may be unloading carts they’ve hauled to
the baggage claim area – a quarter mile away from the gates - or on
hands and knees in one of the four bins unloading crammed in bags.
Southwest Ramp Agents don’t stand around waiting to be told what to do;
they make decisions and anticipate next moves, while getting their
immediate job done. Anyone claiming “It’s not my job” gets an earful
from his team mates. Southwest’s trusting staff to make decisions, to
improvise, and to help out, makes Southwest Ramp Agents contenders for
every Triple Crown.
“We compete against ourselves.”
Southwest has a tradition of getting better, of making the next turn
better than the last. That may explain why this airline, according to
the Forbes 2005 listing, is the number one most admired company
in the industry, and gets top scores in employee talent, use of
corporate assets, long term investment and innovation. (5)
John Voyles, station manager at Orlando, echoes Bart” “We focus on being
on time and on local performance.” John, who served in the Air Force,
likens each day’s work to a military mission – There’s “a specific
target in mind.”
Southwest is not aloof to the competition. They have a healthy respect
for competitors, but they are less reactive to what the competition does
than they are motivated to get better. Southwest’s dedication to getting
better keeps it out of the obituary pages.
A desirable future.
“This work wears you out,” is how Lori Fletcher, a 5 foot 2 member of
the RDU team, candidly put it. She hopes to qualify as a flight
attendant. Her’s is not a vain hope. Southwest promotes from within – a
policy confirmed to me numerous times by the Southwest people I met.
Many enter as Ramp Agents and then move on to other work, from flight
attendant, to operations, to head of station. Along the way, you can
count on your colleagues to help you pursue your dream: a RDU Ramp Agent
was helped by co-workers in his quest for a new job at Southwest. His
team mates swapped shifts so he could go to school to qualify for that
job.
John Voyles, a former operations agent in Oakland, now station manger at
Orlando, commented on how Southwest was different from other airlines:
There is a “sense of pride, an enjoyment of the job. It’s a career, not
just a job.”
Scott Noseworthy, a Ramp Agent in his first week at RDU, told me he
likes how everyone helps with his training - he even enjoys the good
natured kidding he gets. “It’s a family.” I agree with his assessment.
By my third visit to the RDU station, I was getting friendly punches in
the arm and being asked, “Are you ready to join up?”
New and old staff train extensively – often for weeks at RDU and at Love
Field in Dallas. The training emphasis reflects Southwest’s patent
approach of “hire attitude, train for skills.” Training is anchored in
Southwest’s tradition and purpose with heavy doses of aggressive
customer service. The opportunity to learn on the job in combination
with the promote-from-within policy, helps Southwest people realize what
most workers want: A desirable future.
There is a downside. The combination of the grueling, repetitive nature
of Ramp Agent work and the potential for good pay (the hourly rate tops
out at $23.00, plus overtime and very good benefits) can result in a
disgruntled employee – “lifers” is what they’re called in some
libraries. A few (5% was one estimate) Ramp Agents want to do something
else but cannot qualify. Quitting is undesirable because it probably
means a radically slimmer wallet. So, even if you are well paid but your
job is boring, “It is easy to find things wrong,” as Glen told me. There
is no easy way out of this dilemma, even at Southwest.
Southwest does offer national programs for frank discussion between
staff and top leadership, particularly during the Leaders on Location
and the Message to the Field. The Message to the Field is held 6 times a
year usually at the larger airports. The Message meeting draws as many
as 3000 employees from all over the country to hear candid assessments
by leadership, to get “straight from the shoulder” answers to tough
questions, and – this is Southwest – to party.
Leaders on Location is an annual event with Vice Presidents and
Directors from Love Field visiting 61 locations. Each leader goes to 2
or 3 different airports and spends time with front line staff, and then
hosts a lunch for station managers and supervisors to talk about the
industry.
Recognition and respect can be as simple as RDU shop steward Will
Engleman’s all-you-can eat barbecue for the staff working the July 4th
holiday. Glen English, RDUs station manager, explains: Some of the
“BBQ's are to raise money for charity, but many are ‘just because.’"
“If the plane sits, it’s not making money.”
The efficiency tracking sheets posted at RDU were behind by a month
when I was there, but there was no shortage of understanding about
performance and profit. Lori Fletcher tells it the way it is: “If the
plane sits, it’s not making money.”
The un-stodgy airline.
Cabin crews at Southwest follow the FAA safety rules but in ways
uniquely Southwest. On my flight to Orlando, the attendant joked during
the welcome message: “If you press the attendant call button, you get to
stay and clean up.” There’s more, “We are lowering the lights, so you
get real sleepy and we don’t have to do anything….”
Now that’s different. And what may surprise the “rule abiders” amongst
us, a sense of humor does not mean you are a slacker. This same
attendant helped, more than once, an elderly passenger who had
difficulty walking and seemed disoriented at times. The plane was full –
with many claims on both attendants - yet she persisted in asking him
about his needs, making sure he understood he could have something to
drink whenever he wanted.
Southwest encourages staff to “Feel free to be yourself.” This lack of
pretense contributes to mutually beneficial relationships. An example
is John Voyles’ regarding the Orlando union shop stewards as
leadership positions and meeting monthly with them to discuss
issues.
Irreverence is OK at Southwest; it has a purpose in sustaining humility,
in pricking inflated egos. In the Ramp Agent break room, I noticed a
poster announcing the next “Message to the Field” event. At the top was
the headline: I AM SOUTHWEST, I AM…. with a blank space for the
inventive to write in their attributes. At RDU, the Ramp Agents had
scribbled in “hungry, tired, horny…” Glen saw the graffiti, remarked on
it, but had no intention of whitewashing it.
The prevalent humility seems to reduce workplace conflict. One book
tells us: “You will rarely find SW employees engaged in the kind of
backbiting gossip that puts people down. It’s as though there were an
unwritten rule or cultural norm in the company that says, ‘We don’t talk
bad about family member and teammates.’” (6)
While “seldom is heard a discouraging word,” at Southwest love is an
often heard word. LUV means more than a clever stock listing. Glen
English, e-mailing me that that Gary Barron is no longer with
Southwest, spontaneously added “He is, of course, still very respected
and LUVed.”
"You got to love what you do or your not livin' life!" is how Tricia
Smith sums up her on-the-job philosophy. “If you are happy and love what
you do, then you will be able to deliver the Customer Service people
deserve ….”
In a Southwest recruiting film, an operations agent states what he likes
most about working at Southwest: “The love I get from all my
co-workers….”
Love does not mean a lack of discipline or accommodating bad
performance. Quite the opposite - if you care about people, you
confront issues; not doing so is a lack of concern, a lack of respect.
It is unloving to avoid giving constructive criticism or termination
when an employee repeatedly fails to measure up.
“Help each other out.”
In Orlando, while waiting for my connecting flight, I timed a
competitor’s turn. Thirty long minutes after passengers exited into the
terminal, their offloaded bags were sitting in trucks on the tarmac.
Finally a tractor appeared to haul off the luggage. During that 30
minutes, I saw 6 staff in and around the plane. Two were unloading
luggage. The four who were not helping never made eye contact with the
two luggage handlers. No wonder the last few bags came flying out of the
bins to crash, most emphatically, on the tarmac.
I asked if “whatever it takes” was indeed widely practiced at Southwest?
Bart’s answer: “Some people help so much they miss their lunch.”
Bill McCray, the Training Coordinator at RDU, strives to make sure that
every Ramp Agent has the working knowledge “to think ahead, to
anticipate, what needs doing.” It’s common sense to “Help each other
out,” he told me. “Not helping is rare; you know if you
are helped, you help in return.”
“It’s the people.”
Paraphrasing Burns, Southwest’s organizational genius is found in the
ways smart leaders engage followers in an enterprise that builds on
their own and their followers values and motivations.
Bart Dockins told me about a competing airline’s spying on Southwest.
They were at a distant gate, using binoculars, no doubt looking for
Southwest’s secrets to its “world famous quick turns.”
Bart phoned the other airline and told them to put away their binoculars
and to come on over – there’s no secret, “It’s nothing we do, it’s how
we do it.” Most of all, “It’s the people.”
Author’s note:
NOTES:
2. Freiberg, Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, Nuts! Southwest Airlines'
Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success. New York: Broadway
Books, 1998 p.232
3. Interview with Glen English, February 3, 2005, RDU. N. B. This and
several other quotations in the text come from interviews with Southwest
people during the first half of 2005. In each case, unless otherwise
noted, the quote is from the person named in the segment.
4. Follett, Mary Parker, “Coordination” in Prophet of Management: A
Celebration of Writings from the 1920s, Pauline Graham (Editor)
Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996 p. 188
5. “America’s Most Admired Companies Data,”
6. Freiberg, p. 220.
7. Freiberg, p. 57.
8. Burns, James MacGregor, Leadership, New York:
HarperCollins,1978, p.100.
Glen English, station manager at RDU, is more upbeat than usual.
It’s the first day of Spring Break for the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill
schools and colleges: full planes, long boarding lines, and mega
luggage loads. After a post holiday lull, today’s the kickoff for what
looks like a record setting spring and summer travel season.
“An ibuprofen kind of day,” is how Bart Dockins, Operations Supervisor,
sees it. I’m tagging along with Bart.
We start out in the Break Room – it’s where the Ramp Agents rest up
in-between planes – an open space for viewing videos and TV, hanging
out, and eating at a communal lunch table flanked by wall lockers.
Operations agents, pilots, flow through this space, often stopping to
visit.
“Flight 132 is in range” breaks in on the idle chatter, an
announcement giving advance notice to the Ramp Agents. They hear it and
go back to their nachos and watching the ACC basketball finals – the
Wolfpack is on.
Next comes, “Flight 132 is on the ground,” the all-hands-on-deck
signal, the call to get to the tarmac. On the tarmac’s edge, the Ramp
Agents
LA&M
On Managing column
by
John Lubans, Jr.
Summer 2006
Southwest has little difficulty with “letting go” of the command and
control functions (the “holding on”) observable in companies and
libraries, large and small. Gary Barron, the former Executive VP of
Operations said “…I suspect that if you left our people to their own
devices, it would run pretty smoothly out there, without us messing with
it. Maybe it runs despite us messing with it …. Maybe it would
run better without us messing with it.” (2)
Who is Southwest’s closest competitor? Bart Dockins, Operations
Supervisor, knows: “We compete against ourselves.”
The job ad for a Ramp Agent is a challenge: “Must be strong and agile
with ability to climb, bend, kneel, crawl and work out-of-doors in hot
and cold weather.” Handling hundreds of 70 lbs bags and clambering in
and out of luggage bins is distinctly unglamorous, yet, essential.
Ramp Agents are impressively aware of the corporate big picture – maybe
not at the detailed level of a station manager who is conversant with
Revenue Passenger Miles (RPMs) and Available Seat Miles (ASMs), but they
firmly grasp the connect between what they do and the airline’s
profitability.
Many frequent flyers can recite from memory the impersonalized
verbal drill used by flight attendants to greet and inform passengers,
“…pull on the plastic tubing until fully extended…” and the ominous
farewell “… or wherever your final destination may be”.
Southwest is resourceful. Ramp Agents know to plan ahead, to
anticipate. Doing that, assures that equipment is where it should be.
And if there is a shortage of equipment – for example, when all four
gates are taken at RDU, there are not enough belt loaders to go around -
that means adapting rather than delaying the process while waiting for
equipment to come free. "Our turnaround time is not the result of tricks
James MacGregor Burns defines leadership as “leaders inducing
followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the
motivations … of both leaders and followers.” (8)
John Lubans, Jr. is Visiting Professor at North Carolina Central
University, School of Library and Information Sciences. Reach him at
Lubans1@nc.rr.com.
1. Barrett, Colleen. Corner on Customer Service: Southwest Airlines’
“Muscle,” Southwest Airlines Spirit, June 2004 p. 12.
Forbes, March 7, 2005.
APPENDIX: A Day On the Tarmac
Southwest Ramp Agents ready for rain: from L to R: Lori Fletcher,
Will Engleman, Trent Williams, James Witherspoon, and Jason Wiggins.
The terrain around Southwest’s four gates is a confused obstacle course of glistening puddles, uncoiled hoses, power, communication and static lines, all potential hazards to the newbie.
The incoming plane, marshaled through the wind and drizzle, looks like a ship slipping into a fogged harbor. Chocked in place and connected to the jet way, the ship rests, its skin glistening under the gate lights.
Above, the portholes give me glimpses of arriving passengers – enviably dry and warm – slowly exiting, seemingly unaware of what’s happening beneath their feet: the Ramp Agents unlatch the holds and pull themselves in. The luggage is held in place with cargo netting, separating the crammed-in-to-the-rafters luggage on each side of the bin door – a full load.
The Ramp Agent in the bin sends the first bags down the belt loader – as the bin empties the scraped and bruised metal walls of the hold are exposed. Soon the bin swallows up the Ramp Agent as he works further into the bin. At the bottom of the belt loader, the Ramp Agent is steadily filling up the empty luggage trucks, ones he’s pulled nearby.
One by one, each bag is scrutinized for its destination. The tag signals where it goes on the luggage cart – catching a misdirected bag is one more satisfied customer.
Nearby stand several top-heavy tarp covered baggage carts – the outgoing luggage and freight. The outgoing bags were sorted at the Transfer-point. T-point is a vast warehouse space behind where the ticket agent checks in your luggage.
On the side of the plane, Bart spots an off loaded child’s car seat – or, an “assistive device” in airport talk. It’s not necessarily his job, but without hesitation he scoops it up and hurries it up the outside stairwell into the jet way for the exiting passenger to pick up. A job like that is on everyone’s to do list. If you’re in-between tasks, do it.
I sense a mood of “let’s get on with it” among the Ramp Agents. The rain, wind and a couple late arriving planes make the Ramp Agents all the more resolute to make up minutes, doing whatever it takes to empty each plane, gas it up, clean it, fill it with luggage and passengers and send it on its way in under 20 minutes. The challenge is real - there are now four planes on the ground, all four gates full. The Ramp Agents work methodically and steadily, anticipating and helping each other out. Rushing about would only raise the risk level.
The four planes, the gas truck, the tractors, luggage carts, and jet ways, make the scene seem more traffic pile-up than something choreographed. The Ramp Agents do triage on available resources. I glimpse Glen through the rain, in fleece sweater and jeans, wearing earplugs, as he hops up into a hold to pass out luggage – there are not enough belt loaders to go around, so the Ramp Agent pulls the luggage cart up to the bin and with Glen handing down luggage, they fill up the cart.
Where else but Southwest? I glance up at the cockpit windows: there’s a pilot waving at me – a nice gesture for my camera? He’s waving something out of his bag of tricks – a dismembered hand left over from Halloween!
For a few minutes the plane sits empty – a peaceful eddy in the tidal flow of passengers. The tide turns and new passengers come on board, looking for seats and space in the overhead bins. Simultaneously down below, the empty holds are refilled. The Ramp Agent pulls the bags off the staged trucks and tosses them on the belt loader, sending them up to the Ramp Agent in the bin. Both scan the tags to make sure the luggage and bin match their destination. Helping out, Will Engleman, the provisioner, his job done for the moment, works a belt loader sending up luggage into one of the bins.
Bart and I roar off in an open tractor with a full load – 200 bags, probably over a ton of luggage on each truck. Leaving the gate lights, we snake our way out of the congestion into the dark, heading for luggage claim. Once thru the locked chain link gate – a sign requires the driver to wait until the gate closes before driving on – we pull up at the backside of the claim area. The flapped door through which the outside conveyor belt passes, gives me glimpses of passengers waiting for their luggage.
In a matter of minutes, Bart smoothly lifts and tosses all four trucks’ worth of bags onto the conveyor belt. Trucks empty, we circle around and bump along to the security gate, back to the gates to stage the empty trucks and tractor for the next flight.
An outgoing plane, doors closed, passengers peering out of the portholes, is ready to go. The jet bridge moves away. A tow truck, connected with a bar to the front wheel and a line to the communication box, pushes back the plane, out into the open runway. Alongside, a wingman walks the plane out while the tractor driver talks with the pilot. Away from the congestion of the gates, all by itself at the top of the runway, the plane is a thing of symmetrical beauty, burgundy and sand in the reflected light. Telling the pilot, “You’re good to go.” the marshaller hand signals to the wing walker to unlock the tow bar and disconnect the communication link.
The plane, free of its tethering harness, like a mythological winged creature gathers speed, surges into the dark.
Back in the Break Room we hear: Flight 455 is in range….
END SIDEBAR
John Lubans, Jr.
February 10, 2006
On Managing Column
LA&M
Summer 2006