Anywhere you look in business reading, you find stories about Southwest and their great customer focus. Recently, the COVID-19 deal cancelled a trip for a few of my employees and myself. We cancelled our flights earlier than when all the airlines started refunding airline tickets so our tickets sat in a travel fund (individually).

I called and got a little bit of the run around that the tickets could only be used by these two employees. I was frustrated, because our business had paid for them, not them. They don’t really travel so it wouldn’t really be seen as a perk if I just let them use it for personal trips, so the funds would have been wasted. Fortunately, an email and a day later, Southwest came through and sent a personal message with details of the refund. Now, they didn’t get it right at first, but they did get it right. It shocked me a bit that they didn’t get it right the first time, but they have a business system that get’s it right. Building a system that gets it right gets its true test it crisis. They like us, have been exposed a bit by this pandemic.

Building a culture of continuous improvement is at times arduous at best. A new hire started his first improvement project and announced in the meeting when he would finish his project. He then announced, when I am done, you can “show me the money!” Now……I just ignored the deal as we should be committed to the improving ourselves, but now a few of our folks in jest or not are posting their improvements with the #showmethemoney moniker. Might be the worst way to make that happen. Culture has a way to go here.