Employees must understand the company's mission

(US) Southwest Airlines former CEO James (Sloan School of Management for the IT times) at American Airlines, if something went wrong, the focus of communication was blaming and avoiding blame. Conversely, in Southwest Airlines, if something went wrong, the focus of communication was how to solve the problem. Clear the company's mission, through the "relationship coordination" to solve the problem, enterprises can go in the long run most people know how to complete their work. If they do not know, they must learn and master immediately, otherwise will soon be replaced by others. But do they really understand what the company is trying to accomplish and what role does it play in it? Do they focus solely on their own work, or do they fulfill the company's mission?　　One thing that happens in the civil aviation industry is the answer to the problem. American Airlines incident happened before a new year, it is the peak of the holiday trip, a U.S. airways loaded with passengers MD80 flight, plans to fly from San Francisco to Dallas's Fort Worth airport.　　Unfortunately, the flight was delayed for 1 hours due to mechanical failure. On the way to the flight to Texas State, the airport in Fort Worth was closed because of the abrupt weather at the Fort Walton Airport, which hit the area earlier than expected. However, if the flight were to take off from San Francisco on time, there would be no bad weather. American Airlines hurriedly diverted flights from all parts of the United States to Fort Lauderdale airport to other locations.　　14 American Airlines flights, including the one that took off from San Francisco, were temporarily diverted to Austin, 200 miles from Fort Worth airport. American Airlines ' operations in Austin were almost crushed. The company has only four boarding gates at Austin Airport, and the four boarding gates are already pretty tense.　　The company initially planned to have the 14 flights flown in Austin first, when the weather improved, they flew to Dallas, but the Dallas storm lasted a long time and, worse still, the storm spread to Austin as the planes waited on the tarmac, causing chaos in the operation. After the weather improved, some flights left Austin and flew to the original destination.　　The flight from San Francisco, however, was less fortunate, and the pilot kept asking the company's dispatch in Austin in the hope of arranging a boarding gate that would allow passengers to get off the plane and wait in a relatively comfortable environment. The manager of the U.S. Airways Austin Airport Operations Department has made a terrible decision to prioritize the flights that American Airlines planned to take off in Austin.　　The plane is full of desperate passengers, while the Austin airport regular flights can take off on time. The flight from San Francisco was stranded in Austin without any help from the airport staff. Several other flights to Dallas have been in transit and taking off normally.　　For 8 hours, the plane docked at Austin Airport, just as the American Airlines staff forgot. Meanwhile，The passengers and staff who were "imprisoned" on the plane could hardly believe what was happening here: the bathroom was in a mess, the family with the children had no diapers, and the plane was just about the same as an open-air toilet.　　The pilot repeatedly asked for help on the intercom, and he turned to Dallas's flight supervisor for help at the Austin Airport manager, but received no reply. That night, 9 o'clock, after waiting 8 hours on a runway in Austin, which was nearly 12 hours after they left San Francisco, the captain of the flight decided to resolve the matter himself.　　Ignoring the airport's instructions, he launched the engine immediately after discovering an empty gate, and drove it to the vacant boarding gate. What discouraged them, however, was that when they entered the airport, they did not have any American airlines to help them, to take other flights or to help them find hotels. Some of the baggage was unloaded from the plane, while some baggage was not unloaded. After three hours of waiting in line at American Airlines ' ticketing center, some passengers were told that the problems were caused by the weather and the airlines were unable to offer them a price-friendly hotel. "The most infuriating thing is that no American airline person came to see us and apologized to us."　　"Later," said one passenger. The next day, the flight's passengers were posted on the front page of the Dallas Morning Post, which appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and countless newspapers across the country in the following one weeks. State television has made in-depth reports of the incident, and officials in Washington have asked Congress to investigate the matter. American Airlines is trying to apologize, but it's a long time before it subsides.　　The incident gave American Airlines a reputation for incalculable losses. How could such a bad event happen in a respectable, well-managed company like American Airlines? I think this has to do with the way people look at their work.　　In her book, Southwest Airlines, Professor Zhu Di Guiter is trying to find out why Southwest Airlines has achieved great success. Unlike many people who are unfamiliar with Southwest Airlines, the company found that Southwest Airlines ' low-cost advantage was not due to low wages, non-union or cheap aircraft equipment.　　On the contrary, Southwest Airlines is equal to or slightly above the industry level, and one of the best in the U.S. Civil Aviation Trade union, and its aircraft are Boeing 737, most of which have just been purchased from Boeing. Prof Guiter further concludes that Southwest Airlines ' unique competitive advantage comes from a culture called "relationship co-ordination". In the study, through a wide range of surveys, interviews and statistical analyses, Professor Guiter A comparative study of Southwest Airlines and American Airlines ' corporate culture, and she found that through regular and timely communication, Southwest Airlines staff can respond quickly to changing situations in a very coordinated manner,　　And American Airlines can't. American airline employees are very concerned about one thing that isAvoid being blamed for not having done your job and use it as a center of work. One pilot pointed out that American Airlines ' gate managers were "scared to death for a small delay".　　Thus, such fears produce a series of conflicting goals, rather than a common goal--in American aviation, there is almost no idea of working together to achieve the same goal. The first line of American aviation workers, who have little knowledge of the company's overall workflow, know only the procedures for their part of the work and don't care about the rest, while Southwest Airlines employees understand the overall work flow of the company and understand their work and other functional departments.　　Employees know not only how to do it, but also why. In the civil aviation industry, punctuality rate is an important performance evaluation index. The managers and employees of American Airlines and the managers of the Dallas Operations Department are very clear about their job: to ensure that the flight is punctual. It is also the standard for others to evaluate their performance, and the continual delay of a flight from San Francisco has nothing to do with their performance reviews.　　They just don't understand how their decisions affect the passengers who are in trouble, or how they affect their company's customer service goals. Learn about the company's mission Professor Guiter: lack of shared goals, understanding and mutual respect among organizations will lack a sense of collective identity.　　Individuals do not strongly identify with the organization and do not consider the best interests of the collective, and they tend to focus on how to better accomplish tasks within their narrow areas of responsibility.　　A few weeks after the incident, American Airlines responded to the flood of criticism by proposing a solution to the company's new rule that a fully loaded passenger plane could not wait more than 4 hours on the tarmac. Professor Guiter uses "relationship coordination" to describe the great competitive advantage of Southwest Airlines, which is a term used to describe teamwork. In other words, it is to get people from different functional departments to work towards a common goal.　　"Relationship coordination" can not only create a good organization, but also to make it extraordinary. Some passengers on the Southwest Airlines flight, but also due to the weather caused by the plane delay. It is worth noting that, after the same experience, they banded together to defend Southwest Airlines.　　A passenger was delayed for 5 hours on a flight to Detroit, and he wrote: "The difference is that Southwest has given me 50 dollars in coupons and an apology letter, which was not caused by Southwest Airlines, but by weather." For some reason, low fare companies like Southwest Airlines often score higher on customer satisfaction ratings than those with high fares.　　Companies with low fares tend to pay more attention to customer service, and employees are praised for their enthusiastic customer service, superior performance and creative solutions. Some people think that educating employees about the mission and value of a company is notAcademic experimentation, in fact, is the first step in building a corporate culture. In such a cultural environment, employees can feel themselves committed to the success of the company. In such a team, they are proud, have achieved the goal of a sense of accomplishment, know that they are making a certain contribution.　　This applies not only to the civil aviation industry, but to all commercial sectors. Reducing the amount of coffee in a coffee cup can reduce the cost of production and reduce the value of the customer.　　Replacing the voice of a customer receptionist with a computer-made voice, telling customers that they should press one of the buttons on the phone, may save costs, but it may be frustrating for customers who prefer to respond manually. Professor Guiter that the team composed of "relationship coordination" can improve the working efficiency and customer service level at the same time, and "relationship coordination" is the magic weapon of management practice.