A Company that hires people who colour outside the lines? The story of the United States-based Southwest Airlines is as much fun to read as it is reader-friendly and useful. A critic called it the blueprint for all organizations that want to succeed—not just airlines.

The Hindue
Sunday, August 9, 1998

Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher is possibly the nuttiest executive in the country, a boss who once settled a legal dispute with an arm wrestling match (he lost) and bopped through an airport in full Elvis regalia.

He leads an airline where customers come second (employees are No. 1) and planes are painted like whales and state flags.

But Southwest is no joke and Kelleher is no laughingstock. The USA’s eighth-biggest airline is the most consistently profitable and routinely captures the Department of Transportation’s top rankings for on-time flights, best baggage-handling and fewest complaints.

Kevin and Jackie Freiberg studied Southwest carefully when they did their doctoral dissertations on leadership. The result was a book—NUTS! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success.

USA Today
Monday, November 11, 1996

Southwest Airlines has a crazy recipe for business and personal success, but it works as well as any sane approach.

The people of Southwest are firmly entrenched in the idea that profitability is the precursor to job security, share-holder return, and investing in the community. They are also in business to make a difference.

Executive Excellence
Drs. Kevin and Jackie Freiberg

Nearly every book on management that’s been written in the last quarter century has at least one chapter on Southwest Airlines and how it has achieved success. So, when San Diego business consultants Jackie and Kevin Freiberg decided to write a book on management, they naturally thought of Southwest Airlines.

But the book that came from the husband-wife collaborators—NUTS! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, $24.95, published by Bard Press of Austin—is more than just a look at the maverick airline.

The book, which explores every facet of Southwest’s growth from a brash start-up to America’s fifth largest carrier and from 198 employees to 23,000, is more an example of how people can enjoy themselves at work.

In writing the book, the Freiberg’s interviewed thousands of employees, including many who helped start the airline and later resigned, industry analysts, officials of competing airlines and CEO’s of major suppliers such as Boeing and General Electric.

The result is a highly readable book that most executives will find fun and fascinating.

The Journal Record
Bill May

Authors Kevin and Jackie Freiberg present a lively, easy-to-read account of a company filled with adventurous, fun-loving mavericks who embrace their work with an entrepreneurial spirit.

O’Neill [principal of the Capstone Group] said he believes that everyone, regardless of the size or type of their business, will be enriched professionally and personally by reading this atypical account of such a fascinating company.

Baltimore Business Journal
Pam Goresh

The Freibergs take the reader through the turbulence and turmoil that accompanied the creation and the ensuing problems connected with Southwest, the recipe for ‘positively outrageous business success along with trying to define the reasons for Southwest’s success.’ They point out that although Kelleher is a dynamic personality, he hasn’t hesitated to surround himself with , and give credit to, his employees.

The Freibergs, who crisscross the country fulfilling speaking engagement and consulting assignments through their firm, also wrote in the prologue, ‘The more we saw people searching for meaning in their work, the more we wanted to share the principles behind Southwest’s success. . .On an individual level there is an emptiness, a lack of spiritual and psychic gratification that stems from meaningless and exhausting work. With most of these people we have shared some part of the Southwest Airlines experience. Feeling uplifted, inspired and challenged, they always react the same way: "How can we learn more?"

And learn more is just what happened to the reader, including this one, who has never been, nor obviously ever plans to be, part of the business world. Much of the company’s credo, which is summarized at the conclusion of most chapters and titled ‘Success In a Nutshell’, can be applied to one’s personal life.

Freibergs bring the book to a close with: ‘America would be a lot better off and people would be a lot more fulfilled if we could only learn that true happiness is not found in self-interest and self-service but rather in giving ourselves to purposes that transcend self. This country needs bold images of leaders who dignify the role of servant.’

Rapid City Journal
Marian Eatherton

NUTS!, then, has the potential to drive readers crazy, and not just because of the foreword by Peters. The authors, Kevin and Jackie Freiberg of San Diego Consulting Group, Inc., California, have given a thoroughly research account of a genuine American success story—Southwest Airlines.

Kevin and Jackie have captured all the delicious myth, disarming magic and serious message of Southwest Airlines without reducing it to business trivia. Their book is a manual on leadership; a primer on how to deliver high value service. Obviously, the management philosophy of Herb Kelleher, the airline’s CEO, needs to be studied. And emulated.

Indian Management
Promod Pathak

Just when you thought you had figured out the formula for business success and mastered all the habits that lead to a higher state of fulfillment, along comes a book that contradicts many of the B-school theories and flies in the face of standard business practices.

I learned how other major companies can emulate Southwest’s crazy recipe by encouraging a can-do spirit among its employees and building a reputation for success based on unorthodox core values such as Fun, Family, Love, and Altriusm.

The bottom line, according to the Freibergs, is that Southwest Airlines employees have become ‘the most productive work force in the industry.’ No one needs a doctorate degree to figure out that productivity plus happy employees nets higher profits for a company.

Perhaps the most revealing passage in this profound book comes from Southwest’s Roy Spence. He told the authors, ‘Southwest Airlines really isn’t in the airline business at all. This company has a much higher calling. Southwest is in the business of allowing people of every walk of life to see and do things they never dreamed of.

While Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher gives customers a terrific deal on an airplane seat, he makes it clear that his employees come first—even if it means dismissing customers. But aren’t customers always right? ‘No, they are not,’ Kelleher snaps. ‘And I think that’s one of the biggest betrayals of employees a boss can possibly commit. The customer is frequently wrong.

NUTS! is a superb cookbook for success in the 21st century. No doubt it will confound the traditional business gurus who might argue that such a maverick approach to doing business is half-baked.

The San Diego Business Journal
Tom Hinton