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Changing The Way We Think About Change
by Harvey Chipkin, Monday, January 21, 2013 5:44 AM
The year is still new, and change lingers in the air. It’s natural to resolve to “change” with the New Year – to eat less, to exercise more, to alter routines.
But is change always good when it comes to goals? Isn’t it better to sometimes stake out a path and stick to it? One travel company has done that incredibly successfully. The
only consistently profitable airline over the last few decades is Southwest Airlines. And as Morten Hansen, a management professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a recent address
to the conference of the Professional Convention Management Association, Southwest Airlines has done very well by not changing. In a 1978 memo that came to be called Putnam’s
List after Howard Putnam, then the new CEO for Southwest, the airline defined its goals/mission statement as:
- Flights under two hours
- Use
737’s
- Quick turnarounds on the runway – 10 minutes
- People, not mail
- Low fares, high frequency
- No
food
- No interlining
- Family, fun
- Simple, no seat assignments.
Amazingly, little has changed on that list.
Yes, some flights are longer than two hours but otherwise the list holds to a remarkable extent. And, in fact, Hansen said that successful companies do change – but minimally.
In his book about successful companies called
Great by Choice (co-authored by Jim Collins), Hansen found that great companies changed their list about 20% over long stretches of time while
also-rans changed more. “It’s the combination of creation and changes that makes for success,” said Hansen; “the path to mediocrity lies in constant
change.” “Not changing” is easier said than done. It seems like we’re expected to change very day – with every new app, every new technology device,
every new trend. But if a company is going to be around awhile, there have to be some things it stand for – and will continue to stand for indefinitely. There are hotel
companies, tour operators and travel agencies that have staked out their niches – and have stuck with them for a very long time. Just the fact that they’re still around proves that the
“non-changing” approach works. So, Happy New Year. Good luck with all the changes you make – but in an ideal world, those changes will be minimal and necessary --
and will not affect the things you want to be known for.