By Brian Rayner
JTB Online
Managing Partner
Jan 29, 2022
This Southwest Airlines debacle is Gary Kelly’s fault…100%, not Bob Jordan as much of the knee-jerk bullshit media is trying to force feed everyone.
This is the direct result of lackluster leadership (not Bob Jordan) and the dwindling business model of all major airlines.
If there is an industry in dire need of disruption, it is the airline industry.
The Southwest Airlines problem is obviously systematic, but it really stemmed from Gary Kelly imho. He is an accountant at heart, and like many accountants at heart…not very forward thinking. This requires having a creative mind, which is the opposite of having the concrete sequential mindset, such as that of an accountant. Nobody on earth with an IQ above 80 wants a “Creative Accountant.”
“Herb Kelleher must be turning in his grave over this…”
As everyone knows, over the busy holiday season, a storm of the century impacted the USA in a very major way. I am writing this as I sit in my nice warm office in Buffalo, NY. We got a direct hit from the storm, as everybody knows by now. So I am intimately familiar with just how brutal of a weather event this was.
This storm caused massive flight delays and cancellations, which is not uncommon in the airline industry. It was how Southwest responded to this crisis, which caught everyone off guard.
The huge amount of flight delays and no contingency backup (DR) plan was a gigantic mistake which was years in the making. Bob Jordan just happened to be the one to inherit this giant shit sandwich.
Bob Jordan is still relatively new in his role as CEO, but this will certainly be a test of his leadership abilities….
Herb Kelleher must be turning in his grave over this….(I always liked that dude…big time.)
One does not need to be as forward thinking as Elon Musk, to know that having a solid DR plan is the life or death of ANY business operation. For now, I am the little dog in a large kennel, and I have a rock-solid DR plan for all my data and business processes.
By today’s standards, lacking innovation and a “forward thinking mind” in today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape, can literally equate to the death of your business.
Just ask Blockbuster Video….