Replying to LO23674 --
Lest we get hung up on just one example (Southwest Airlines), how about
some others.
I'll start: Ben & Jerry's. Ben introduced the notion of the "double
bottom line" where they pay attention equally to doing social good and to
financial success. There's a model that can be emulated.
Mazda (in the 1980's): The company was dying and the Wankel (rotary)
engine was obviously not a selling point, so they decided to shut down
operations and retool their factories to produce cars with conventional
engines. This put a tremendous financial burden on the company. How did
they fund it? By laying people off? No. The cut the salaries of senior
managers by 50%, of middle managers by 25%, and of front-line workers by
.... nothing! Their stated logic: It was managers' decisions that got us
into this fix, not anything workers did, so why should the workers suffer?
(Note also how practical this is ... cutting one highly-paid person's
salary by 50% is the financial equivalent of firing several low-paid
workers! Take note, GM!! A 50% salary cut for your big guys earning $6
million/year would pay the salaries of a whole lot of engineers and
production-line employees.)
John W. Gunkler
jgunkler@sprintmail.com
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.