Southwest Pilot Kelleher Still Flies in Face of Convention

In a world that all too often prizes corporate homogeneity, Southwest Airlines dares its employees to be different. The goofier the antics, the better. And few of the low-fare carrier’s 24,000 workers are zanier than their lanky chieftain, Herb Kelleher.

This is the bargain airline that in its early days recruited Raquel Welch look-alikes to be its hot-pants-clad flight attendants. The Dallas carrier that chose LUV for its stock symbol and gave out peanuts instead of meals before it was fashionable. The company whose flight attendants have been known to dress in elf costumes and serenade passengers with Christmas songs.

And lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Kelleher is the man who roars into company cook-offs on a Harley Davidson. The chain-smoking, bourbon-swilling legend who once arm-wrestled another aviation executive for the right to use “Just Plane Smart” as an advertising slogan. The boss given to hugging and kissing employees, who reward him with the sort of adulation usually reserved for rock stars.

And why not?

In an industry known for clipping the wings of less gutsy competitors, Southwest Airlines has carved a powerful niche for itself as the eternal underdog, “air travel’s greatest show on Earth.” From four planes in 1971, the airline is expected by year-end to grow to 243 planes and sales of more than $3 billion.

Just turned 25, the airline boasts the industry’s youngest fleet and best safety record, along with consistent kudos for strong on-time performance, baggage handling and customer service. And when older carriers plunged into a blood bath in the recessionary early 1990s, Southwest sustained an enviable string of profits.

So much has been written about the airline and its vaunted esprit de corps that they seem almost too good to be true. Now comes another paean to the company and Kelleher’s iconoclastic management style.

“Nuts!: Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success” ($24.95, Bard Press, Austin, Texas) is by San Diego-based management consultants Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, who spent two years interviewing Kelleher, his right-hand woman, Colleen Barrett, and scores of employees to get a handle on what makes the company tick.

At Southwest, the book notes, sassy, flamboyant marketing has always overshadowed a fierce corporate discipline. The scrappy airline takes no guff. When a rival laid claim to the industry’s customer service crown in 1992, Southwest responded with a print ad declaring: “After lengthy deliberation at the highest executive levels, and extensive consultation with our legal department, we have arrived at an official corporate response to Northwest Airlines’ claim to be number one in Customer Satisfaction: Liar, liar. Pants on fire.”

Kelleher came through Los Angeles recently to promote the book and shared some of his thoughts on corporate success.

On leadership: “It really signifies getting people, through both example and persuasion, to happily join together in pursuit of a worthwhile common cause.”

On how a company can change a stodgy corporate culture: “It sounds so harsh, but if you were to come in and try to change it, you’d have to eliminate the keepers of the old culture. If you’re going to redefine the oracle . . . you have to change unbelievers into believers.”

On corporate blunders: “In the longer term, [downsizing] is a mistake. We haven’t had any furloughs at Southwest, although obviously during the recession we could have made more money if we had. The disaffection it engenders, the distrust, the angst. Once you do it, [workers] don’t forget about it for a long time. Our focus is far beyond. What are we going to be in the year 2015?”

On hiring: “We work at it a lot harder than most. It’s not at all unusual to do 100 interviews for one flight attendant spot. We want that servant mentality. We want people tested for a sense of humor. It’s very simple to see whether they have one. We have said to a group of pilots in the lobby, ‘We won’t interview anybody in a suit.’ ” (P.S., Southwest knows of at least two schools that have programs to teach pilots how to interview successfully for jobs at the airline.)

On hiring mistakes: A woman was once let go because of poor attendance. As Kelleher told her: “We can’t love you from afar. That’s not the Southwest spirit, because you let everybody else down.”

On life at Southwest after Kelleher, who turned 65 this year: “There’s no retirement age at Southwest. People at Southwest are truly my elixir. I don’t want to leave them. There’s no need to spend any more time on this, because I’m immortal.”

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Does your company have an innovative approach to management? Tell us about it. Write to Martha Groves, Corporate Currents, Business Sections, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. Or send e-mail to martha.groves@latimes.com