Kicking over an ant hill resembles an Irwin Allen disaster movie. It is a frantic and desperate scene. Insects scurry in all directions attempting to make sense of the catastrophe and repair the damage. Some ants try to bite or sting the offender who upset their home. It constantly happens in nature, and the scene is repeated in business as unforeseen events conspire with neglect to create desperate situations for professionals. The latest example is the recent trouble at Southwest Airlines as it attempts to recover from bad weather and worse software. Today, we kick over a metaphorical ant hill and look at how to avoid this catastrophe.
News stories circulated over the holidays about Southwest Airlines and countless passengers stranded in the middle of holiday travel. The press was so bad that Southwest offered 25,000 free air miles to its passengers as a sign of goodwill. How on Earth did this happen, and why?
While working on my MBA, Southwest Airlines was a thorough case study on how to run a business properly. Flight attendants worked with management to understand scheduling. The organization and its labor union have a collaborative relationship. A reality TV show featured Southwest gate managers highlighting customer service challenges. Seeing headlines featuring incompetence and dissent within the Southwest organization was discouraging.
How did such a great business fall so quickly? The answer became clear when Business Insider shared an open letter from the head of the pilots union, which pointed out that the former CEO, Gary Kelly, did not invest in updated software for pilot scheduling. Kelly also packed the organization with cronies with a common background from the accounting program at the University of Texas. Discussion about how to run the business moved from the pilots and other employees to the executives' leadership surrounding Kelly. It was great for the organization's profitability, which made money when other airlines faltered, but it was a situation where the qualities that make Southwest unique atrophied. Most damming was the deliberate neglect of technical debt in the company's software scheduling of pilots.
I talk about technical debt as an agile coach and consultant. I have written about the subject on several occasions. Software and data are as vital to customer service as adequately trained people and well-maintained aircraft. As software continues to eat the world, it is incumbent that business leaders pay attention to the operation of their software systems because if they do not, they will experience expensive and embarrassing episodes of business interruption. It appears that Kelly, who is still the chair of the board of Southwest, is being exposed to that costly lesson.
Technical debt in a business organization point to deep organization failures. If a business fails to update its systems, it shows it does not care about the proper operation of the company. Somewhere, someone calculates that updating systems does not have an immediate financial benefit, so they neglect it. Over a series of years, the systems become more brittle and unable to deal with changing conditions. The result is ill will from customers, lawsuits for poor service, and a large financial hit to the organization. All of which could have been avoided if leadership had paid attention to the technical debt sooner. The east coast snowstorm around Buffalo was the final straw, and it took Southwest longer to recover.
I am not surprised by this story. Many organizations have this problem, and it takes an event like this to make it relevant to business leaders. In truth, having your organization experience something like this is an excellent way to avoid inertia and complacency. By having your metaphysical ant hill kicked over, you pay attention to the operational issues that matter. Southwest will pay for this; I hope they have learned their lesson.
Until next time.
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