A legendary CEO Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines passed away last week Many articles have already been written memorializing him including this one by Bill Taylor in the Harvard Business Review and this one by our friend Mark Graban but Id like to reinforce a couple attributes that are important to me The key to Kellehers success was his focus on people customers employees and suppliers He epitomized the respect for people or human nature pillar of lean and demonstrated how effective and powerful humble authentic and empathetic leadership can be Bill writes As I take stock of his life and legacy what strikes me is how much all of us can learn from what he created and how he led that you can create vast economic value based on genuine and generous human values why what you hope to achieve in the marketplace must be reflected in what you build in the workplace how in an age of disruption and transformation simplicity and consistency matter most Southwests mission was to democratize the skies by making it easy and affordable for everyone to fly Kelleher and Southwest succeeded and to this day reinforces this mission by eschewing tactics such as charging for carry on baggage Kelleher viewed corporate rules as guideposts but not walls and encouraged his employees to serve the customer regardless of what the rules were The focus on people was also internal with Southwests 8 Freedoms that created an incredible corporate culture which includes the freedom to innovate the freedom to achieve financial security and the freedom to learn and grow Kelleher viewed business as an ecosystem where everyone could achieve success if they worked together and there are many stories about how he actually helped competitors Andrew Wagner described this well in a reply to Marks article There was an MIT Leaders for Manufacturing dissertation written about ten years ago by Ted Piepenbrock that studied enterprise architectures It outlined two different approaches modular in which the company shareholders employees suppliers and customers were all interchangeable parts and integral in which the opposite was true companies their shareholders employees suppliers and customers were interlinked committed and interdependent on each others success Two companies most epitomized the integral enterprise Toyota and Southwest Airlines I would add competitors to that list as similar to Southwest Toyota has partnered with competitors such as GM NUMMI in an attempt to create mutual value Unfortunately that mindset is so unusual that those partnerships arent often successful Finally a third characteristic that led to Southwests success is a focus on simplicity and consistency perhaps an anathema to the pressure most organizations feel today to rapidly innovate A single type of plane to reduce maintenance costs and increase interchangeability a simple boarding method rather than the ten or more zones of larger carriers and a point-to-point network instead of hub-and-spoke Take some time to reflect on Herb Kelleher How can we learn and improve from his drive to build value via a focus on people How can we grow customer value while also being authentic and empathetic to the needs of our team How can we look outside of our organization even at our competitors and help them succeed so we all succeed And where can we grow by embracing simplicity and consistency