Happy Sunday Everyone:
I’m sending this from the lobby of my hotel in San Diego. We are down here for my Grammie’s celebration of life.
Services were at 11:00 yesterday, plan was to take the 7:30 Southwest flight out of Oakland to San Diego. Easy 1 hour flight, never had an issue in my life with it. We’re out on the tarmac and all of the sudden captain comes over the mike and says we need to go back in for a quick mechanical fix as the auxiliary starter isn’t working (always great to hear). My folks were already down here so it’s my sister, Kim, and me. We’re on the ground for about 45 minutes and start realizing we might miss the service, of which I’m one of two planned people speaking. My sister grabs the stewardess and states the obvious “we have a funeral for our Grammie at 11:00, do you know if we’re going to be off soon?”. The stewardess gets a look of concern on her face and tells us she’ll be right back. As she suggested, she’s back 2 minutes later and says there is a flight leaving in 20 minutes and she’s going to help us get on it. She gets us up, has another SW employee waiting just outside the plane. That lady confirms the issue, (literally says “you’re the 3 who need to get to the funeral?”) walks us over to another service counter, stands with us while we get new boarding passes. She then jogs with us across the airport to the new gate and walks us on the plane and wishes us her condolences and luck. We arrive at the church 10 minutes before the service starts with our bags in tow to what Kim said after was the best celebration of life she’s ever witnessed.
Why do I tell you this story? Southwest has created a culture for caring about their clients and I just witnessed it firsthand. Until you need it, you don’t really understand the extent of it. Granted the stars were aligned with the availability of another plane but this stewardess could have so easily just mailed it in and said “I’m so sorry”…and moved on. From what I understand, the culture starts with Southwest taking care of their employees first. I have a few clients at Southwest and know a few pilots who all express the same message, which is simply to say they love working for Southwest, all of them. Oddly enough, my team and I had our quarterly meeting on Friday at my house (mixture of q3/q4), our theme for the rest of the year was taking care of one another first, after realizing we got away from our own internal team culture.
Biggest point for me, and something I “try” to think about as often as possible is this; if I were on the opposite side of working with me, or our team, how would I feel? If we’re paranoid about the answers to that question being anything other than “WOW”, we’re going to run a better business. It’s in the words we choose to use, the processes we have or don’t have, and following through on what we tell people we’re going to do for them, all while doing it with gratitude. The gratitude is the special sauce and you can’t fake it. I believe this to be even more true internally with your employees.
On a separate note: My Grammie’s “special friend”, Ervin was at the service. I had the pleasure of spending an hour with him last night at dinner. Ervin is 103, he is the oldest living survivor of the battle of Midway in WWII and a true American Hero, and like my Grammie, still lives at his home. I was sitting there last night just listening to him tell stories. My favorite was him getting torpedoed and receiving a ton of shrapnel in his arm. They flew him out for recovery and to keep his arm heated they packed it in sulfur. He’s giggling about everyone else on the plane wondering what smelled so bad with this giant smile on his face (Picture attached). My point is this, and I’ve said this before, probably because my Grammie was so absolutely amazing…..older people aren’t just cute, they have so much wisdom and guidance for us if we listen to them but we need to take the time and listen. Most people have the best of intentions with older people but when you get interested in what they have to say they seem to come to life and share more than what’s on the surface, and that’s when the magic happens.
Have a great rest of the weekend.