Page 137 - HBR's 10 Must Reads 20180 - The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

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their leaders to reflect on what makes them unique and authentic and
how they can shape their jobs—even in small ways—to avoid confor-
mity. Reflection can also be encouraged at other career points, such
as a performance review, a promotion, or a transition into a new role.

Tell employees what job needs to be done rather than how to do
it. When Colleen Barrett was executive vice president of Southwest
Airlines, from 1990 to 2001, she established the goal of allowing
employees to be themselves. For example, flight attendants were
encouraged to deliver the legally required safety announcement in
their own style and with humor. “We have always thought that your
avocation can be your vocation so that you don’t have to do any act-
ing in your life when you leave home to go to work,” she has said.
This philosophy helped make Southwest a top industry performer
in terms of passenger volume, profitability, customer satisfaction,
and turnover.

Let employees solve problems on their own. Leaders can encour-
age authenticity by allowing workers to decide how to handle certain
situations. For instance, in the 1990s British Airways got rid of its
thick customer-service handbook and gave employees the freedom
(within reason) to figure out how to deal with customer problems as
they arose (see “Competing on Customer Service: An Interview with
British Airways’ Sir Colin Marshall,” HBR, November–December 1995).
Another company that subscribes to this philosophy is Pal’s Sud-
den Service, a fast-food chain in the southern United States. By
implementing lean principles, including the idea that workers are
empowered to call out and fix problems, Pal’s has achieved impres-
sive numbers: one car served at the drive-through every 18 seconds,
one mistake in every 3,600 orders (the industry average is one in 15),
customer satisfaction scores of 98%, and health inspection scores
above 97%. Turnover at the assistant manager level is under 2%, and
in three decades Pal’s has lost only seven general managers—two
of them to retirement. Annual turnover on the front lines is about
34%—half the industry average. Pal’s trains its employees exten-
sively: New frontline workers receive 135 hours of instruction, on

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