Shared vision as the DNA of an organization . . .

It’s common knowledge that Southwest is a successful company, but there is a shocking performance gap between Southwest and its competitors. Although the airlines industry as a whole has only a passing acquaintance with profitability, Southwest has been consistently profitable for more than thirty years.

The reasons for Southwest’s success could (and do) fill up books, but perhaps the single greatest factor in the company’s success is its dogged focus on reducing costs. Every airline would love to reduce costs, but Southwest has been doing it for decades. For this effort to succeed, the company must coordinate thousands of employees ranging from marketers to baggage handlers.

Southwest has a Commander’s Intent, a core, that helps to guide this coordination. As related by James Carville and Paul Begala:

Herb Kelleher [the longest-serving CEO of Southwest] once told someone, “I can teach you the secret to running this airline in thirty seconds. This is it: We are THE low-cost airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company’s future as well as I can.

“Here’s an example,” he said. “Tracy from marketing comes into your office. She says her surveys indicate that the passengers might enjoy a light entree on the Houston to Las Vegas flight. All we offer is peanuts, and she thinks a nice chicken Caesar salad would be popular. What do you say?”

The person stammered for a moment, so Kelleher responded: “You say, ‘Tracy, will adding that chicken Caesar salad make us THE low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas? Because if it doesn’t help us become the unchallenged low-fare airline, we’re not serving any damn chicken salad.’”

Kelleher’s Commander’s Intent is “We are THE low-fare airline.” This is a simple idea, but it is sufficiently useful that it has guided the actions of Southwest’s employees for more than thirty years.

— Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Made to Stick

I’m waiting in line at Trader Joe’s while the checkout guy engages the woman in front of me in a conversation about her groceries, her occupation, where she went to school . . . it’s not even a particularly long conversation in terms of elapsed time . . . the guy just talks so fast that he’s able to cover a lot of ground.

Personally, I don’t like conversing with service personnel unless they’re attractive women, and even then I don’t like it that much.

OK, my turn. The first item out of the basket is a package of dog chews.

“What kind of dog do you have,” the guy asks.

I decide to try a little verbal jiu jitsu and say “We don’t have a dog. You ever try those things? They’re really good.”

It doesn’t even slow him down.

“Do they clean your teeth?” he asks. “I bet they do. We’ve got ‘em in mint flavor, you know . . .”

Once upon a time there was a political observer who was thoughtful, intelligent, witty and polite, not an angry demagogue.

I know, it sounds like a fairy tale . . .

I was typing in Microsoft Word and I started a bulleted list with an item like this:

• Topic1. A sentence about Topic1. And another one.

Then I hit the Enter key.

What do you think happened?

Not only did I get another bulleted list item, Word set the font to bold!

So I typed this:

• Topic2.

And as soon as I typed the period, Word turned bold off!! Not only did it figure out that I’m creating a bulleted list, it figured out that I’m starting each bullet with bold font, followed by a period, followed by more text in regular font, and it takes care of everything for me automatically! That’s pretty sophisticated.

Compare that to Lotus Notes, which can’t even figure out when I hit Enter twice that I want to turn the bullets off!

We use Notes at work and I swear to God, if I type a bulleted list and hit Enter twice, Notes gives me this:

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3
•  
•  

I actually have to turn bulleting off manually! Does anyone really want to create a bulleted list with multiple empty items?

I’ve never seen another text editor do something this stupid . . .

I’m working with a company that uses Lotus Notes. It’s been more than 10 years since I’ve had to use Notes and it’s as bad as ever. It’s probably the worst piece of software ever released by a major company.

The worst feature — well, it’s hard to pick a worst feature, but one of the worst features — because I have to deal with it dozens of times a day — is the way Notes makes me reply to email. I can’t just click Reply and start typing. When I click Reply, I get a dropdown list of options and have to select one:

- Reply
- Reply with History
- Reply without Attachment(s)
- Reply with Internet-Style History

The godawful thing about this is that default options for email work 100 percent of the time. I always want to reply with history and without attachments, so why give me a bunch of options that I don’t want and make me explicitly select one every time?

Why would I not want to reply with history? If I’m sending replies without including the original email for context, most people send and get way too much email to remember what the heck I’m responding to.

And why would I send an attachment back to someone with my reply? They already have the document. They sent it to me. They don’t need another copy of it. But every day I see emails going back and forth across the network with multi-megabyte attachments because people have to explicitly select an option to remove it.

“The boy I started tutoring in algebra a couple weeks ago,” I say, “his mom told me he got a C on his last test.”

“You’re fired,” my son says.

My wife stares at me in disbelief for a few seconds.

Finally she says, “That’s not your fault. You can only do so much in one hour a week.”

“Actually,” I say, “she thought that was great. It all depends on your expectations.”

The average software developer reads less than one professional book per year (not including manuals) and subscribes to no professional magazines. These developers are not developing or advancing themselves professionally. About 75% of these people do not have a degree in computer science or a related field. They learn by trial-and-error and on-the-job training, which means that they risk learning other people’s bad habits rather than industry best practices. This method of professional development perpetuates ineffective, inefficient practices that hinder the success of software projects.

— Construx.com

Tell me something I didn’t know!

Thus spoke The Programmer.

My 14-year-old son informs me that he is not “wasting his years” the way I am . . .

“Is that what I’m doing?” I ask. “‘Wasting my years’? How am I wasting my years? Taking care of you?”

“My years are fully utilized and non-refundable,” he says.

“You’re a schmo.”

“Meanwhile, you’re wasting your years, calling people schmoes.”

The most common reason for software project failure is attributed to requirements issues – badly defined, not stated correctly, changing requirements, etc.

— “Tips for Discovering Requirements”

Any project I’ve done that lasted longer than a day had changing requirements. If your development strategy only works with an unchanging set of requirements, you need to rethink your approach . . .

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if boxes, etc., sitting around the office are supposed to go out with the trash. In Southern California, you’ll often see BASURA written on these things because the probability that a Spanish-speaking person will be taking out the trash is high.

We couldn’t seem to get this box removed by writing BASURA on it, so one of our tech support people came up with this sign . . .

“Look at the color of this banana,” my son says as he takes it out of the refrigerator. “It’s black.”

“I think it’s still okay,” I tell him. “It’s not the color of the skin that’s important . . .”

” . . . it’s the content of its character,” he jumps in.

Be careful what you wish for . . .