I once attended an event where Herb [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines] was interviewed about his business strategy. It was a great talk in many ways, but when he began to talk about how deliberate he was about the trade-offs he had made at Southwest, my ears perked up. Rather than try to fly to every destination, they had deliberately chosen to offer only point-to-point flights. Instead of jacking up prices to cover the cost of meals, he decided they would serve none. Instead of assigning seats in advance, they would let people choose them as they got on the plane. Instead of upselling their passengers on glitzy first-class service, they offered only coach. These trade-offs weren't made by default but by design. Each and every one was made as part of a deliberate strategy to keep costs down. Did he run the risk of alienating customers who wanted the broader range of destinations, the choice to purchase overpriced meals, and so forth? Yes, but Kelleher was totally clear about what the company was - a low-cost airline - and what they were not. And his trade-offs reflected as much.
It was an example of his Essentialist thinking at work when he said: "You have to look at every opportunity and say, 'Well, no... I'm sorry, We're not going to do a thousand different things that really won't contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve."
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.49,50
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