Herb Kelleher Quotes

You don't hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.

As Herb Kelleher famously said, “You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.

Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines, echoed this sentiment when he said, “You don’t have the time, techniques, or enough drugs to change attitudes.”48

In reality, electrons move in “probability clouds.” So what do you tell a sixth grader? Do you talk about the motion of planets, which is easy to understand and nudges you closer to the truth? Or do you talk about “probability clouds,” which are impossible to understand but accurate? The choice may seem to be a difficult one: (1) accuracy first, at the expense of accessibility; or (2) accessibility first, at the expense of accuracy. But in many circumstances this is a false choice for one compelling reason: If a message can’t be used to make predictions or decisions, it is without value, no matter how accurate or comprehensive it is. Herb Kelleher could tell a flight attendant that her goal is to “maximize shareholder value.” In some sense, this statement is more accurate and complete than that the goal is to be “THE low-fare airline.” After all, the proverb “THE low-fare airline” is clearly incomplete—Southwest could offer lower fares by eliminating aircraft maintenance, or by asking passengers to share napkins. Clearly, there are additional values (customer comfort, safety ratings) that refine Southwest’s core value of economy. The problem with “maximize shareholder value,” despite its accuracy, is that it doesn’t help the flight attendant decide whether to serve chicken salad. An accurate but useless idea is still useless.

If you ever hear the words conventional and wisdom conjoined, reject them. Because if it is conventional, it isn’t wisdom. And if it’s wisdom, it isn’t conventional. —Herb Kelleher How has Southwest been able to attain uncommon results in the worst industry in capitalism? The company has succeeded by being unconventional. Herb likes to tell the story of how a Washington think tank told the company that it would not be able to survive without six of the “keys to success” that other carriers have used. Southwest followed none of those keys to success. At every point of Southwest’s history, the company has successfully challenged industry norms. Southwest differed from the competition because of its low-cost fares. In the 1970s, before deregulation, flying was expensive, because the government controlled the prices. Rollin King and Herb Kelleher’s idea was to provide lower fares and enable a greater number of Americans to fly. Southwest would not be competing with other airlines but with other forms of transportation.

Its low fares made flying an attractive alternative for price-sensitive travelers accustomed to driving or taking a bus. In the early years, a shareholder asked CEO Herb Kelleher if Southwest couldn’t raise its prices by just a few dollars since its $15 price on the Dallas–San Antonio route was so much lower than Braniff’s $62 fare. Kelleher said no, our real competition is ground transportation, not other airlines.

Fifth, the companies also had what struck me as unusually intimate workplaces. They were, in effect, functional little societies that strove to address a broad range of their employees’ needs as human beings—creative, emotional, spiritual, and social needs as well as economic ones. Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines once observed that his company’s famously vibrant culture was built around the principle of “caring for people in the totality of their lives.” That’s what the companies I was looking at were doing. They were places where employees felt cared for in the totality of their lives, where they were treated in the way that the founders and leaders thought people ought to be treated—with respect, dignity, integrity, fairness, kindness, and generosity.

Their ability to find people who embody their cause makes it much easier for them to provide great service. As Herb Kelleher famously said, “You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” This is all fine and good; the problem is, which attitude? What if their attitude is not one that fits your culture?

Anda tidak mempekerjakan keterampilan, Anda mempekerjakan sikap. Keterampilan akan selalu bisa diajarkan. Herb Kelleher

We went to look at Southwest Airlines in the U.S. It was like the road to Damascus. This was the way to make Ryanair work. I met with Herb Kelleher. I passed out about midnight, and when I woke up again at about 3 a.m., Kelleher was still there, the *********, pouring himself another bourbon. I thought I’d pick his brains and come away with the Holy Grail.

Herb met client Rollin King, an entrepreneur who had been running a third-level charter airline doing short-haul routes out of Twin Beaches since 1964. By 1967, King had observed and studied the success of Pacific Southwest Airlines, which was the first large discount airline operating within California. Rollin King met with Herb Kelleher soon after at a bar, where King sketched the triangle diagram of the three-city route on the back of a cocktail napkin. After some thought, Kelleher was on board with a $10,000 investment and to provide legal services.

The customer is sometimes wrong. —HERB KELLEHER, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO, SOUTHWEST AIRLINES

As Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines succinctly put it, 'Strategy, overdone; doing stuff, underdone'.